My wonderful wife, cheryl, was recently "memed" or tagged by our friend Tomoko to share 8 random & little known facts about herself; she in turn has tagged me. However, after reading Tomoko's "random 8" on her blog last week I already posted 8 facts just to see what I could come up with. You can find them here. Anyway, I'm going to try & post 8 more. Hey, why not? Here goes.
I was a ten month baby. I mean my mother carried me through pregnancy for ten months. It runs in the family, especially with the boys. My due date was August 7th & I was born on September 4th. Imagine my poor mom, living in the 100 degree + summer heat of the desert & having to carry a baby for another month...
On my mother's side of the family there are a slew of theatre technicians, all who worked in Las Vegas. My grandfather did sound at the Flamingo, my grandmother was a stage mother to the dancers & two uncles did lighting, one for Caesar's Palace. I'm guessing this is likely to be where my interest in theatre came from.
I have- or used to have- better than 20-20 vision. I'm the only one in my family who never had to wear glasses. My eyesight has always been sharp as an eagle's. It still is but it is now getting noticeably weaker. When I was a freshman in junior high the eye doctor told me my sight would certainly go very early because of this condition, while last year the eye doctor told me that it has probably lasted this long because of it. You just gotta appreciate the randomness of science.
When I was a child I used to have "premonition dreams". I used to see events of the future in my dreams and would recognize it when they occurred, usually by a strong familiarity with where I am & a comfortable sense of belonging. Usually these dreams mark a significant change in my life and on two occasions they involved the death of someone I had grown close to. It still happens occasionally but rarely. I've come to believe that these dreams occurred to prepare me for changes that were about to happen.
Many "well known personalities"- ie., celebrities, have eaten food that I've cooked, including Roy Rogers & Dale Evans, Cathy Rigby, Alan Hale, Jr., Larry Bird, Tracy Kidder, Jamaica Kincaid, John Deutch, Marc Ribot, G Love (& Special Sauce), Ben Affleck & Gwenyth Paltrow (on a date together), to name only a few that I know of. They seem to have not suffered any long lasting side effects because of it.
When I was very young- probably about three years old- I jumped off the high dive & into an inner tube that my father held in place for me. Probably due this I have a simultaneous fear of heights and an urge to jump off of roofs.
My family on my mother's side is supposedly descended from Native American Indians, possibly Cherokee or Comanche. There is also a rumor that we are descended from Royalty in Britain as well as France. None of this can be verified and no one from either side has attempted to contact us.
In 1999 I somehow found myself on stage performing in an opera with several Nobel prize recipients who were dressed up as sheep. I was tenor clone #3. That was the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony and you can read the libretto transcript at http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig99-seedy-libretto.html
That's my eight. I now have to pick eight people to list eight things about themselves. Here they are:
Baird T. Soules
Susannah Black
Josh & Carrie Rubero
Dee Yeh
Steven Yeh
Araz Inguilizian
Mike & Katie Peterson
Ali Langsather
