100 (More) Things, Part 1

So now that I'm mostly recovered from the flu, non-swine variety, I find myself really, really wanting to blog but there is nothing Sabres-related going on. I cannot find anything even slightly interesting to say about the little signings. I can't even work up much feeling one way or the other about Drew Stafford and his lack of a contract. Whatever.

But like I said, I want to write something so I thought I'd tackle a topic I find endlessly interesting. Me! Heh. Last summer I wrote a series of posts called "100 Things About Me." I can't promise that I'm going to make it all the way to 100 this time since this is really just a time-killer. We'll see.

1. I never wear a watch. I don't even own one. I hate the way they feel. I am almost always slightly late. It's possible that these two things are related.

2. I own two dresses and one pair of dress shoes. According to a Facebook quiz, I'm 0% girlie. That seems pretty accurate. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not even sure one of the two dresses still fits.

3. I've had seven teeth pulled, none of them wisdom teeth. Take care of your teeth, kids.

4. I have a dimple in the back of each shoulder. In related news, my second toes are longer than my big toes.

5. If I had to marry a movie character it would be Bert from Mary Poppins.

6. If I had to marry an animated movie character it would be Beast from Beauty and the Beast. But only in beast form. I found him a lot less appealing once he transformed to human form. Not sure what that says about me.

7. If I could live in any imaginary world it be the Shire in Lord of the Rings. Beautiful surroundings, bare feet, and many, many meals a day? Sign me up. Every time I read those books or see the movies, I wish I was a hobbit.

8. Forget Frodo, I believe Sam is the real hero of Lord of the Rings. I will not be convinced otherwise.

9. I have my library card number memorized.

10. When I recently filled out a meme that said to list the first 15 books that came to mind, here are the ones I said: The Outsiders, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Westing Game, The Great Brain, Little House on the Prairie, A False Spring, The Boys of Summer, On Writing, The Stand, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Matilda, The BFG, Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds, and The Lords of Discipline. I think it's interesting that so many of them are books I read at a young age. I can't swear that these are the best books I've ever read - though some of them definitely are - but I can look at almost all of them and tell you exactly when I read them and why they made an impression.

11. Five movies that really make me cry no matter how many times I see them: Field of Dreams, The Lion King, The Lord of the Rings (let's think of it as one big movie), Dead Poet's Society, and The Shawshank Redemption. Sports movies, dead fathers, teacher/student relationships, themes of hope all get me. Here's a more specific breakdown: Field of Dreams gets me when Ray asks his dad if there's a heaven, he replies with "Oh, yeah. It's the place where dreams come true," and Ray looks around at his house and his wife and daughter and says, "Maybe this is heaven." The Lion King is, of course, all about Mufasa's death. When Simba runs up to his body, tries to wake him up, yells, "Somebody! Anybody!" and then tucks himself under Mufasa's big paw... Well, heck, I'm almost crying just thinking about it. In Fellowship of the Ring it's the scene at the end between Frodo at Sam ("I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise! Don't you leave him, Samwise Gamgee. And I don't mean to. I don't mean to") in The Two Towers it's Aragorn assuring a very young solider, "There is always hope,", and in The Return of the King it's pretty much the entire last half hour or so but especially Sam and Frodo reminiscing about the Shire and Aragorn's, "My friends, you bow for no one." In The Shawshank Redemption it's Red's monologue about hope that ends the movie.

Whew. Got a little long-winded there.

12. I could easily make a whole different list of movies that make me cry because I cry really easily.

13. My five favorite non-musical sounds are trains, typewriters, a can of pop fizzing open, one of my students really laughing, and film rolling through a projector.

14. I once read a book in which someone asked a friend who worked in a school very similar to mine how she goes on every day, working with kids in such dire circumstances. She responded with, "If we can't defeat despair, sometimes we can interrupt it." I write that at the top of my desk calendar at work every month to make me feel better on the really hopeless days.

15. I've never gotten a speeding ticket.

16. The only ticket I have gotten was for driving with a broken headlight.

17. We've gotten an increasing number of kids with PDD/Asperger's in the last few years. I've done a lot of extra reading on my own and I find autism and how to teach those kids endlessly fascinating.

18. The one thing I do really hate about Twitter is any and all "Let's get Topic X on the Trending Topics list!" tweets. Hey, I'll talk about that topic if I want to, all right? Don't push me.

19. I hate using abbreviations or shortcuts of any kind when twittering but I've found that I will eliminate extra spaces between words without too much problem. I'll also lose commas. My comma usage varies widely depending on mood anyway. I'll use "u," "ur," and "fave" if I absolutely have to. I will not, under any circumstances, use "luv" or eliminate apostrophes.

20. When I was a kid, I used to tell people that Rickey Henderson was my uncle. He isn't.

21. I love taking personality tests. I always come up as INFP on Myers-Briggs tests which means, in a nutshell, that I'm a dreamy, slightly introverted, idealist. Famous INFP's include William Shakespeare, Mister Rogers, and Mary, the mother of Jesus so I feel I'm in good company. Yeah, don't ask me how they managed to test Mary.

22. My current favorite non-hockey blog is Fake Neal Huntington. Huntington is the GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Fake Neal is so funny, I'm just going to pretend he's Real Neal. I've almost started a fake Bucky Gleason Twitter a few times, but I don't think I can make it entertaining enough.

23. My favorite celebrity couple is Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany. Honorable mention to Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

24. I've never had a TV in my bedroom.

25. A few months ago, a friend posted the video below on her Facebook. I bookmarked it and on really bad days, I watch it, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm sure Mr. Rogers is talking directly to me.