Seven New Facts

Sweet Marilou of Twenty York Street just granted me the Stylish Blogger Award.  I suspect she was motivated more by the candor of my recent posts than my rudimentary fashion-style, but I'll take it any way I can get it. :)

A perk of the Award is the chance to share seven facts about myself.  Hold onto your fascinators; here we go!

1. I love words and eagerly add new ones to my vocabulary.  Recently, I've started using "sanguine" (cheerfully optimistic), "dolorous" (full of grief and pain), and "hypergamy" (a woman marrying above her class [e.g., Kate Middleton]).

2. My mind retains trivia of almost every kind.  For example, did you know that Hawaii used to be called the "Sandwich Islands"?

3. The primary reason I love motorcycles is because riding them is dancing with nature.  Operating a motorcycle is about movement and balance, skill and grace.

4. I grew up with a younger brother, Richard, whom I loved.  Sadly, Richard died of a sudden heart attack when he was only 33 years old.  Death at that age is too young to be caused by heart disease so doctors suspect he had a congenital heart condition (something genetic he was born with).  Many of my family-members have had heart problems so I don't take life for granted.

5. I grew up during the 1960's when having long hair was really important: it showed the world who you were.  Unfortunately, my father had been a barber before he became a cop and he didn't want Richard and me to have long hair so he physically wrestled us into the basement and cut our hair short, over howls of protest.

6. My parents tightly controlled my childhood and closely monitored everything I did.  To evade their scrutiny, when I was 10 years old, I furtively kept an empty coffee-can buried in our backyard.  I used the coffee-can to hide my secret pair of pantyhose.

7. Blogging, and meeting blogger-friends, has been the most joyful thing to happen to me in decades.  You guys rock my world. :)

Thanks, Marilou!