Twenty-One Little-Known Facts

This may be about as narcissistic as it gets, but as another blogger wrote, this is my blog, and I get to decide what goes on it.  :-)  After I become a regular reader of another blog, I start to wonder who this person is. I appreciate knowing some things about him or her, though I also understand the need for privacy. For some reason I feel like it's vain of me to do this (and therefore will probably delete this post), but I don't feel the same about other bloggers who do. Hm.

1. I'm a homebody. I'd far rather spend an evening at home alone reading than out at a bar or a party. My husband feels the same, and so we prefer to spend our evenings home alone together.


2. It drives me nuts when I publish a blog post after proof-reading, then review it the next day (or months later) and find typos. What the heck?!


3. I truly admire my parents for the volunteer work and the many volunteer activities they have been involved with all throughout their lives.


4. My life's dream has always (or at least since age 20) been to write a novel that would be deemed worthy to put on the reading list of an English (or German!) course taught at my alma mater.


5. I think I wish I could have learned Latin in high school. (I passed up the chance in college.)


6. I hate everything in the "bean" family. If they're related to beans (like lentils), I won't eat them. Lima beans are the absolute worst, followed closely by the nasty brown ones people put in chili - kidney beans? Blech!


7. I have some sort of strange illness which manifests itself by grammatical errors and typos jumping off the pages of anything I'm reading. This is even happening to me in German by now. E-Books are the worst. Who types those things?!? Why, in that case, occasional typos still slip past me in my own posts (see #2) is a mystery.


8. When I left Germany in 1986 after my 5 1/2-month exchange experience was over, I sobbed as the plane took off. It wasn't that I didn't want to go home, but rather that I didn't want to leave. I think I met my "old soul" here, and a part of me was coming home every single time I returned to Germany after that.


9. My son gives the greatest hugs of anyone I know (besides my husband).


10. I don't have a bucket list. I love my life so much as it is and has been that I have no unfulfilled wishes. I love reading others' lists, though!


11. I cannot swallow coconut. If I take a bite of a dessert with hidden coconut shavings, I find a discrete way to get it out. I'd rather eat dirt. Or beans.


12. München (Munich) is the only big city I have ever been to that I like. Chicago? Yuck. Big, gray, ugly rectangular buildings. Stuttgart? Great for shopping, lacking charm and a beautiful Altstadt. NYC? Chicago, only bigger. Great theater opportunities, though! Berlin? Culturally and historically rich, but gray and cold otherwise. Hamburg? Ok, that one's got potential, but I wouldn't want to spend more than a weekend there. Gosh, I have not been to many big cities! 


13. I truly love traveling with my daughter. She is calm, likes doing many of the same things I enjoy, is interested in the world, doesn't mind turbulence on planes, handles unexpected problems well, and is open to almost anything.


14. Esslingen, Germany, is my favorite city in this whole world.
    
    
    


15. I don't remember a time when I didn't have tinnitus (ringing in the ears), though I only realized how constant and loud it is after I moved to Germany. I would really like to know what silence sounds like again.


16. My mother-in-law is one of my closest friends.


17. If I were stranded on an island and only had two books with me (like that would be my biggest problem), I'd hope they were the Bible (because it would take a looonnnnggg time to get through) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (because Mark Twain was brilliant and that book is like an old friend though I have read and taught it more times than I could count).


18. My three biggest common (American) English grammar pet peeves, which sound like metal forks on a chalkboard to me, are "I should have went/ran/gave/came...", "Me and...", and "I did/am doing pretty good." There are 34 other ones, but those are the biggies.


19. I have an old-school cell phone which I use twice a month at most. It holds a charge for more than two weeks and I usually forget to charge it because I use it so rarely. I don't text, and I don't even know my own number by heart. I do not understand the appeal of Smartphones, iPhones, etc. and I hope it stays that way.


20. I love writing letters, cards, and postcards by hand and sending them through snail mail even though it takes 5-7 days to get to the U.S. from here.


21. I don't wear or even own make-up and haven't for many years. I think it's because I can't be bothered and because my husband has always said he prefers the "unpainted" me. I'm a lucky wife!

P.S. If you see any typos, for heaven's sake, let me know!