Seven random things. Tag!!!

I have been tagged. Thanks Annie! Seven random things about me! Besides the fact that I miss you all?

1. At one point in my life I undertook a rigourous course in Wilderness Psychology which included completing two vision quests. One was in Death Valley in December. What no one told me is that it is dark by 5:00 p.m. Death Valley is below sea level and the sun goes to bed very early there. I spent four days and four looooong nights with no food, no shelter and no company. I endured a fifteen hour sandstorm, freezing temperatures, and mice running around under my thermarest every night. I also received visits from a kit fox each night. He would scratch and sniff at my water jug and whine like a puppy until I poured him some water.

2. One night a few years ago I was awake at 3:00 a.m. (kind of like I am now) and CNN announced that the shuttle was about to land. They said it was going to fly over the northern U. S. starting at San Francisco. I ran outside and waited and waited. I had given up hope, not knowing what to look for, when I heard a loud rumble. The spectacle I beheld can hardly be described. Imagine the exhaust trail of a normal airplane times 100. The glow from the tail and the very wide exhaust trail had a purple glow to them. To say that the shuttle was streaking across the sky would be an understatement. It crossed the sky so quickly I had to catch my breath. I wept at the speed and beauty of it. I ran in to watch TV and about six minutes later the shuttle touched down in Florida. Try to imagine something flying at 20,000 miles per hour.

3. I moved to New York City to be a nanny. It was completely horrible. When I tendered my resignation, after only two weeks on the job, the woman of the house said, "Did my husband touch you? We have had problems with that in the past." He had not touched me, but I was not going to wait around for anything. I called a cab in the middle of the night. I met a friend in Brooklyn who put me up for a week. I found a job, an apartment, and stayed in New York City for four years.

4. I spent my last three weeks of high school in Italy with my cousin ( and I still graduated). While there I met up with an Italian friend and after spending the evening with her in Rome she gave me directions back to my pensione. As I walked alone down a dark narrow street I saw a large gang of boys and felt an overwhelming sense of dread, but decided to keep walking with my head up. An arm reached out from a darkened doorway and grabbed me and pulled me in. There stood a nun in full habit. She put finger to lips and we both pressed up against the wall. After the boys passed she ushered me into the alley with a pat on the head and an iron gate clanked shut behind me. Can't help wondering about that one. Angel or what?

5. Jerry and I were apparently meant to meet. Jerry and I were at the same Lionel Richie concert at Madison Square Garden in 1986. Neither one of us enjoy his music, but we both had free tickets. We did not meet until four years later.

When we did meet Jerry said, "I think I know a couple of Mormons." He described meeting a guy who ran a club in Colorado who had a bunch of kids, "so he must be Mormon". I pressed him for the guys name and a couple of times he said, "You wouldn't know him." Finally he said his name was John McEuen. That is my uncle and the bunch of kids were my six cousins. The first day we met, Jerry mentioned my uncles name to me without having any way of knowing that was my uncle. Weird!

Jerry's grandfather and my grandmother died one day apart in 1969, so we often wonder if they were waiting in line together and schemed to get us together. I think we were destined to meet.

6. I share a birthday with my father-in-law and his father. All three of us have/had a small mole in the exact same spot on our ring toe of our left foot. That is where our similarities end, seriously, I am nothing like them, nothing at all like them.

7. I did not apply to be in my masters program. One day a week or two before graduation from undergrad one of my mentors asked me if I would like to be a masters student in the fall. I said, "Yeah sure." The next day with no prep I took the GRE and did alright, good enough to qualify I guess. Just like that I was in graduate school. Five grueling years later I graduated. I made up for my lazy entrance with an excruciatingly long exit. It was my own fault. I was trying to write the quintessential book on the psychological benefits of knowing your family history. If you want to know what the benefits are you can read my magnum opus in the Sonoma State library. Finally a friend said, "It is just another school assignment. Turn in your homework and be done, once and for all."

I tag Malinda, Kara B., Laurel, and Patience (and Heather if she is still blogging) One extra for good measure!