Top 100 things about...well...ME

Instead of how my day went, here's something about...well...me!

Image found on the Internet and all rights belong to their owners.

Seen these list everywhere (well, if it's a blogger or a homepage.) Been meaning to do one of these for a while. To be a little different, I'm gone divide the list among different entries. Hopefully that'll keep you comin' back, salivating* for more.

1. My real name's not Joel.
2. My last name's pronounced differently depending if you ask me, my parents, or if you speak spanish or italian (or both).
3. No, I'm not Hispanic despite my appearance.
4. No, I'm not of "mixed blood" despite my height and build. And, no, I've not been adopted nor a "half" to any of my sibs (in either direction.)
5. I've always looked older than my age: in high school, most of the students mistook me as a substitute teacher.
6. I have only one set of parents.
7. My parents wanted me to be either a doctor, a nurse, an accountant, or an engineer. I did none of these.
8. I once wanted to be a marine biologist.
9. I have a bachelors in business adminstration which I have yet to use.
10. I have two younger siblings.
11. I have worked primarily in the IT field but as a writer or support staff, not a technician.
12. I was in a business fraternity in college.
13. I have yet to travel back to the Philippines since I arrived in the U.S. at age four.
14. Yes, I'm an American citizen.
15. I have two nephews on my side of the family. If I count R.'s nephew's, I'd have three.
16. I considered my ex JC's two boys (from the first marriage) as my own kids.
17. My family's only had dogs for pets. (And, no, we didn't eat them.)
18. Did you know you can burn a doll's hair against a lit lightbulb?
19. Yes, sticking a key in an electric socket can hurt you.
20. My family's first cable provider was ON TV. (Anyone else had it?)
    
21. I started to wear glasses when I was seven years old.
22. I had piano lessons as a child.
23. I don't speak or understand tagalog. Same with any of my parents' dialects. (This lack of ability is my parents' fault: they stoppped speaking their language to us kids when we were young.)
24. I do not have an accent: folks have told me they picture this "tall, blond-haired, guy." Well, at least they got the 'tall' right.
25. I do not find the term "flip board" to be demeaning to Filipinos.
26. I am not offended by the term "coconut" ('brown on the outside, white on the inside') personally offensive.
27. I used to eat bagoong but not anymore.
28. I have been shot by BB guns.
29. I have never eaten balut and have no desire to do so.
30. Yes, you can make kites out of shopping bags and rice.
31. When I was younger, I did some...really bad things...with bricks, needles, syringes, scalpels, and toads. (And, no, you don't want to know or see pictures.)
    
32. Did you know snails dehydrate really fast if you put them in a jar and pour salt on them?
33. I won a class short story contest in junior high.
34. I've only experienced four earthquakes since I've lived in SoCal.
35. I stopped watching the Ms Universe pagents in elementary school. (If you don't know the significance of this statement, ask your Filipino friends.)
36. I nearly drowned while on a junior high trip to the beach.
37. I learned how to type in junior high. My max speed is currently 88 wpm. Not fast but not slow, either.
38. I started reading comic books in high school and continue to read and collect them.
39. I used to know the X-men comic book history in intimate detail until the second death of Jean Grey/Phoenix.
40. My stack of comic books is easily over eighteen feet.
41. I read voraciously and can handle four novels, dozens of comic books, a newspaper, the Internet, and a couple of role-playing game books in a day with ease.
42. My first job was a part-time one in Winchell's Donuts.
43. I used to build models as a child. R2-D2 was my favorite.
44. My first car was a Malibu Classic. It was painted bright yellow. I never had a prob finding it in a parking lot.
45. I hate large SUV's, trucks, and vans, finding them wasteful in both fuel and space.
46. I've ridden a motorcycle once. Brrr.
47. The first role-playing game I played was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition.
48. I buy role-playing games just to read.
    
49. I learned how to stuff a rat in high school.
50. I tried to join the military twice: once after high school (Navy) and during college (Army). Backed out both times.
51. In my junior year in college, I was working three part-time jobs for three months at one point.
52. In college, I wrote a short story for a midterm. The professor pulled me aside and asked if I ever considered submitting it to magazines. Hmmm. Do I see a career direction here...?
53. I took martial arts in college and would have been the equivalent of a green belt if I had taken the tests.
54. Once I wanted waves in my (I thought) straight hair so I got a perm. Unfortunately no one told me that I already had waves in my hair (from my grandmother's side of the family.) When the stylist was finished, I had an afro. (Mercifully, that was flattened by lots of conditioner and salt water.) No, I don't have any pics of that...incident.
55. My first crush was (true) blond haired and blue-eyed. And a scholar-athlete. Thus, I'm highly attracted to athletic-looking, intelligent (i.e., knows the difference between there, their, and they're), stereotypical Nordic-lookers. (And they're rarer than hen's teeth, damn it!)
    
56. When I figured out my relationship-0rientation, I didn't want a relationship: I wanted sex, baby!
    
57. My ex took me inside the huge Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints in L.A. in a vain attempt for me to convert to Mormonism.
58. I met R. in 1994 a few months after I graduated from college. And it wasn't love at first sight. We at least exchanged phone numbers.
59. I dated R. for six months which is the same amount of time my parents dated before my dad proposed to my mom.
60. While dating R., I lived with my ex JC, who had remarried. I lived in their downstairs bedroom. The kids (who knew JC and I for three years) got confused.
61. My future spouse answered my query about our finances by stating we'd combine them "of course." I nearly fell on the beach in shock and said, "are you nuts?"
62. I proposed, after six months, to R., who, crying, accepted the ring.
63. I spent two years after college learning how to write novels. Oops.
64. At this time I have started four novels.
65. My first visit to England was during a heatwave, so hot the asphalt was melting at the Wimbleton. And, of course, all I had were long-sleeved shirts.
66. Stonehedge is way smaller than you see in pictures.
    
67. While visiting Africa, I saw a huge herd of elephants, one of whom I thought had a very long tail. Damn thing practically touched the ground. When it got closer, I realized the animal was male and that was not its tail.
68. On our last major cruise (Africa, the Middle East, then Greece), I gained so much weight so fast that I ripped apart all my pants.
69. At last count, we have nearly nine thousand hard-back books in our house.
70. We have over forty coffee cups in our household.
71. My highest weight was 225 pounds which was back in 1997. Whew! Stopped myself in time. Now it's below 200.
    
72. Step aerobics is my exercise of choice. I did six classes a week at one point.
    
73. My stack of fitness mags is easily six feet tall.
74. I'd rather play sports than watch them.
75. I used to be able to work out two or more hours regularly, usually combining an hour of weight training followed by an hour of cardio (usually step aerobics) four to five times a week.
76. I once caused (accidently) my heart to go into atrial fib by taking a sudafed, drinking a cup of coffee, and inhaling my asthma meds all within thirty minutes. I was hospitalized for a couple of days.
77. Ibuprofen, over a long period of time, can kill me without my knowledge. Eek!
78. I was hospitalized for three days a few years ago due to an ulcer I never felt until I collapsed in shock after losing five pints of blood. (Humans normally have eight.) My spouse was so not happy but I finally lost five stubborn pounds.
79. If anyone ask if I take steroids, I say yes...for asthma. And only en extremis.
80. My appendix exploded when I was younger and I was in the hospital for ten days, losing over fifteen pounds.
81. When I say I'm hungry, you better not get between me and the nearest food source (e.g., refridgerator, fast-food place, etc.) Same if I say I'm "crashing" (hypoglycemia.)
82. Alligator tastes like chicken. So I've heard (when I received a can of alligator soup.)
    
83. Ostrich tastes like beef. So I've heard (when I tried the ostrich burger in South Africa.)
84. Rabbit tastes like chicken. So I've heard (at the restaurant...)
85. I tip regular servers at my regular eateries at least twenty percent.
86. I don't drink alcohol. Even the smell makes me nauseous.
87. I love desserts, especially anything chocolate.
88. When my dentist introduced me to nitrous ("laughing gas"), I suddenly began to make my quarterly cleanings and check-ups.
89. I like asses and breasts and I'm not talking about horses or chickens.
90. I have attended...erotic...clubs with my spouse's permission. All I did was watch. Really.
91. I believe in sex on the first date. Get rid of the insignificant stuff first. If you both have nothing to discuss in the morning, then that relationship was a flop (so to speak.)
92. Yes, you can climax while driving in a car. So I've heard.
    
93. Yes, you can climax while attending a boring lecture and without touching yourself. So I've heard.
94. My philosophy on sex: the more, the better (the activity amount, not the number of participants. Unless you both want to, of course.)
95. I'm agnostic.
96. I would declare my closest "spiritual path" to be (Zen) Buddhism but then I would not be following Buddhism. So I keep my mouth shut and know The Way.
97. I've never watched any reality show for any length of time, especially the current batches. If I wanted to see people act stupid, I'll look around me or remember my high school and early college years. Besides, those shows are as "real" as televised wrestling.
    
98. My view of famous people: they all look the same in surgery.
99. I do believe there's extraterrestrial life "out there", but I'm skeptical if any has visited Earth.
100. I got at least one friend to regularly blog.

*Hmmm. What's with it with food these days? Is it my diet or other oral fixation stuff...?