i know. i'm blushing.

This has been going around on Facebook.  I’ve been tagged multiple times now and figured the time has come to cave.  I’m posting it here as well because, well, why not?

So here you have it… 25 random things about me.

1. Before college, I had only ever lived in one state: Connecticut.
2. In fact, grew up in the same house.  Never moved once.
3. I still have frequent dreams about my old house and my old neighborhood.
4. When people find out I’m from Connecticut, I feel the need to clarify that I’m not from “the rich part.” I don’t really know why I do that, but I nearly always do.
5. I am irrationally obsessed with trees, probably because I grew up in New England. It’s a totally nondiscriminatory passion; if something has a tree on it, I’ll fall in love with it for no other reason.
6. Fall is my favorite season. We know I love trees, so you can imagine how I feel about glowing red, orange, and yellow trees with leaves that fall down on you like rain.  Heaven.
7. Actually, I pretty much just like it when any season changes into another. I like the hint of something new around the corner. Plus, at those times of year, it’s as if you can tangibly experience time passing. Very cool.
8. I hope I always live in a place with four distinct seasons.
9. But at the same time, I’ve come to know that I can be happy living pretty much anywhere. That wasn’t an easy lesson to learn. It took me a couple years in Utah and a semester in Europe to figure it out.
10. I never, ever thought that I would live in Utah for as long as I have.
11. But another good lesson I’ve learned is that life usually doesn’t bring you what you expect… which has been a very good thing for me.
12. I’m not a fan of the “supposed to be” mentality. You know… when people freak out because life’s not going how they imagined it would go? I’m not going to lie, unexpected twists in the road can definitely freak me out.  But ultimately I think that if we thought life was “supposed to be” some way, and it actually always WAS that way, life would be mundane and unexceptional. Plus, we’d never grow much.
13. I tend to get overly analytical and philosophical about life, the universe, and everything.
14. Sorry about that.  Let’s switch gears.
15. I’m picky about some really arbitrary things. For example…
16. I always put two spaces after a period. Always. What’s with the trend towards one space? It’s no good, I tell ya.  It irritates me that my blogging software automatically converts my two spaces to one.  Grr.
17. I always squeegee the glass doors in the shower. You would be anal about this, too, if you had to scrub off the hard water marks yourself. (Or maybe you just wouldn’t worry about the hard water marks in the first place…)
18. I live by the mantra: burp ziplocks as much as humanly possible before zipping shut. Just thinking about an unburped ziplock makes me shudder.  (Um, that’s not actually my life’s mantra.  Honest.)
19. When I notice something has a spelling typo (for example, something like “fantasric”), I always look to see if the misused letter (the “r” in “fantasRic”) is close to the letter on the keyboard that should’ve been used (in this case, “t”). And if the letters aren’t close I think, “Wow, how’d they do that?”
20. I know. I’m ridiculous. And quite possibly unbalanced. ;)
21. I can’t believe this list isn’t up to 25 yet.
22. I think everything would be a lot better if we all listened to Bob Marley every day. Who doesn’t feel better after hearing a little Bob Marley?
23. Actually, I don’t really think that.  But I do know that as I was driving today, the sun was shining, and my window was down, and I had Bob Marley singing to me about “takin’ it easy, takin’ it slow” …and I’m not sure it gets much better than that feeling I had right then.
24. Another one of my favorite feelings is having dried clay on my jeans.  I took a ceramics class my last year of college.  I wasn’t very great at it, and I haven’t made anything since then, but it felt so good to bury my hands in that cold, wet clay and spin something up on the wheel.  Even if it was a tad lopsided.  The clay on my jeans would remind me of that feeling for the rest of the day.
25. I wish I were more concise and am frequently embarrassed about how looong my posts are.  But then I go ahead and post them anyway. :)  So here you go.

If you feel the urge to do it too, then I tag you.