25 Things

A few people are listing 25 things about themselves that others may not know about them. Maybe I will try to list them in the order of shock and awe that you may feel when these truths are revealed.

25. I drink Mt. Dew. Pretty much everyday. Twice a day. Rarely three times a day. Non-shocker.

24. I don't like coffee. I like fruity alcohol drinks, but not beer or wine.

23. My wife and I had most of a house built for us, and then we finished it. I personally did the following: cleared the trees; helped put the radiant floor heating tubes in the basement, first floor, and second floor; built the U shaped stairway - both floors and all aspects of the stairs; built a few half walls and railings; installed the hardwood floors on all three floors; did all of the plumbing (supply and waste); installed the kitchen; helped do the concrete counters; cut most of the tile (which Crab-Mama put them down); painted; put up some of the siding; built window trim for the outside; built cabinets for the mudroom; wired the house for internet and phone and cable; destroyed my 30 year old table saw in the process; and got a whole lot of new tools. I am exhausted just thinking about it. I should also mention that my father has done a HUGE amount of work on our house also. Without him, our house would have no window or door trim, no doors, few cabinets, no bench in the mudroom, and many other things would be missing from our lives. Thanks Dad!

22. I don't really like watching sports on TV. Except the Tour de France. In Fast-Forward.

21. I have been married twice. To the same woman. Separated by 6 months. The second one was a fake. Sorry Mom.

20. I don't really like my job. Not really because of my job, but because I take on too much responsibility and get extremely stressed out. I did this as a bagel baker. I would definitely expect it as a professor. I am trying to reduce stress in my life. Trying.

19. I watch TV. I watch a fair bit of TV. I love comedies the best. 30 Rock. Arrested Development. The Office. I love that crap.

18. One of the reasons that I like to watch TV is that I need some down time at the end of the day. I like to sit and turn my brain semi-off for an hour or two. Well, I also sometime work a bit while watching TV. Coding is easy to do during this semi-off time.

17. I wish that Heroes was a better show. I want to love it. I really, really do. The plots could be just a bit better.... The forth season of BSG sucks. *ss. Oh, I guess you think that these things don't state any facts about me, but, I think they do. They really, really do.

16. I don't like to tell people what I do. The typical reaction to my job is to want to leave my company as soon as possible. The second most common reaction is to ask me about astronomy or astrophysics. Both of which are definitely not my field of interest. Or knowledge.

15. I hate travel because I can not bear to be away from my kids. This means that places that are a long ways away, even though they are exotic, are just painful for me to go to. I don't want to be away for that long.

14. I am a slave to e-mail. My Blackberry pretty much sealed my fate.

13. I make noise, just to make noise. Like my son. I am but a child. If no one is talking in the car, I will talk.

12. I love the idea of video games, but I don't ever really play them. I would like to, but I don't. I just don't know why.

11. I wish that I could play an instrument, like the drums or the guitar. I can't. I can barely sing. I sing loud and I sing proud. But not well.

10. I love music. I would listen to music constantly, if my wife liked music. We are truly opposites here - she likes talk radio on all of the time, and can stand to have it going while talking to other people, but thinks that music is very distracting. I can't stand to have talk radio on while I am trying to talk to other people. It drives me insane. Music is the thing for me.

09. You can tell that I am a geek because I include the "0" in front of my single digit numbers. This orders them in the correct order in Unix. Without the zero, "2" comes right after "19", which doesn't make any sense. Except it does.

08. I am mildly allergic to tomato sauce. Fatty foods also tend to do not so nice things to me. So, pizza is the devil's food. It is utterly blissful to eat, but I pay for it. Dear lord, do I pay.

07. I believe my daughter and I are "super tasters". We are both extremely picky eaters. I am pretty ashamed of not being more adventurous with food. I just don't like very much. I pretty much eat the same things at restaurants all of the time. Eating in a foreign country scares the crap out of me, since they may put something on the food that I absolutely detest. Like pickles.

06. I love to bike. I love being on the road and sweating. It is a great feeling. Drinking a Mt. Dew after 2 or 3 hours in the saddle is fantastic. I would say better than sex, but that would be a lie. Maybe better than bad sex. I love when I can eat anything that I want because I burn 1000 calories in a day. Except a Whopper. You can never really eat a Whopper.

05. I used to really love to woodwork. I think that it was teaching me patience. I am a person who believes whole heartedly that you should finish a task 80% of the way done as fast as you can, and screw the last 20%. I will settle for a B, thank you very much. The problem with this mentality is that the last 20% is extremely important in a wide variety of things. Definitely in woodworking. Definitely in science. Patience. I need to learn patience. The problem right now is that building a house cured me of wanting to do woodworking. Now I just want to sit on my *ss and do nothing. Well, maybe blog.

04. I am addicted to schedules. I want to know when something is happening. I want to know what I am supposed to do next. I want to know what to expect. Follow the schedule. Live the schedule. I have a thing for clocks. I am starting to collect them at work. I want a clock in my line of sight, no matter which way I am looking. I don't know, but this might be the opposite of patience?

03. I fear death. That is because I don't believe in God. Or in Heaven. I am sorry. I am just too hard-core of a scientist. I believe that when you die, there is nothing left. That scares the sh*t out of me. If you think about it, there are probably only a few hundred/thousand people who are remembered beyond a generation or two. Everyone else is gone. That is really depressing.

02. I pretty much only cry at the movies. All other times, I go to a place in which I am just angry.

01. I purchased Madonna's first album, and I own almost all of her albums since then. Now you know. The shame. Oh, the shame!