The Lazy Blogger

There's this Facebook meme going around where you post 25 things about yourself and link 25 friends to your posting in the hopes that they'll do the same thing. It's pretty memed out by now, but I finally got on the bandwagon and posted my own list, which is really just a reduction of my entry in the 100 Things About Me meme that was racing around the blogosphere four or five years ago. And how lazy am I to make a blog post out of Facebook content that was originally a blog post? I'd answer that question, but it would require too much effort.

1. I am in one of those blissfully happy relationships—the kind that probably makes other people want to throw heavy objects at us.

2. My boyfriend/domestic partner/fiancé/whatever and I plan to get married whether or not the government and other curiously interested parties think it’s OK.

3. I used to get upset about gay-marriage inequality on a theoretical level. Now that it affects me directly, it makes me so angry I want to hurt people.

4. I love pets, but I’m more a cat person than a dog person. Mostly because cats are self-pooping and self-cleaning.

5. I am currently catless.

6. I grew up Lutheran, but I knew early on that my true religion was None of the Above. I don’t consider myself an atheist, because atheism seems obsessed with the existence of a god as well. I simply don’t believe and I totally don’t care.

7. In 1988, I lost five friends in two plane crashes and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. One of those friends was murdered by the December 21 terrorist bomb that blew Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.

8. I’d never really had an opinion on the death penalty until then. Now I’m a huge fan.

9. I studied the piano from second grade until I was in college.

10. I’ve taken tons of dance classes (gay!) and I’m still a pretty good tapper (gay! gay! gay!).

11. I’m a HUGE and unrepentant show-tune queen. (butch! I mean gay!)

12. I sang and danced and played the piano in theme park shows all four summers I was in college.

13. I got a job as an advertising copywriter when I got out of college just to pay the bills. I’m still here. And I neither love nor hate it.

14. I was a skinny, 155-lb scarecrow all through high school and college.

15. Tired of being ignored by the guys I was attracted to, I joined a gym after I graduated, and I’ve been lifting weights 5 days a week since then.

16. I started running in 1994, and even though I never really liked it I somehow got kind of addicted to it.

17. So far I’ve done two triathlons, five marathons, more half-marathons than I can remember, and one race up the stairs of the John Hancock Center.

18. I haven’t thrown up since I got food poisoning on my 23rd birthday.

19. I was born with my tongue connected to the bottom of my mouth and behind my bottom teeth, and I had to have surgery at birth and again in junior high school to correct it. Just talking about it still makes the end of my tongue tingle. In a bad way.

20. All my life I’ve gotten sweaty, panicky and physically ill in crowded social settings like classrooms or bars or parties. For me, talking to strangers was more terrifying than being chased by lunatics with giant knives. After seeing a therapist in 2003 and getting diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder, I at least had something with a name I could fight, and I made great headway in overcoming the problem on my own. But I still wasn’t better, so I saw a hardcore therapist for four months at the beginning of 2006 and I finally feel like I’ve escaped from my prison. And now I’m having way too much fun walking up to strangers and starting conversations. Just like normal people.

21. I am extremely loyal to my friends and family and would never say or do anything to hurt them. And I expect the same courtesy in return. If you do something malicious or hateful or staggeringly immature to me or anyone I care about, you will have almost no chance of regaining my respect or friendship.

22. I have a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on my left ankle, a tattoo of my first marathon date and time on my lower back, and a tattoo of a tiger (a ferocious tiger who’s not afraid to use his claws or his biting sarcasm) crawling up my abs.

23. I’ve been skydiving seven times. I’d do it again, but now that I’m an uncle, dangerous things like skydiving have lost their appeal.

24. Being an uncle has also made me more emotional. I’ve suddenly started tearing up over the most benign things. Like Kodak commercials. Or the National Anthem. But I’ve always been a sucker for patriotic stuff.

25. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who don’t look where they’re going. I’ve been known to get in their way so they bump into me, and then I wait patiently for them to apologize. I look at this as a public service.

26. I have a wide array of superpowers. For instance: I can tie a bowtie.

27. Also: I can drive a stick shift.

28. One more: I can fold a fitted sheet.

29. I won’t buy something until I have the cash to pay for it.

30. I rarely buy things (from salad dressing to clothes to furniture) that aren’t on sale. I don’t mind stopping back and “visiting” things until they go on sale, either. It’s like a game to me.

31. I have a hard time counting to 25.