10 Things Tagging

Monica tagged The GabWagon authors with this one. Since I haven't done this yet and it's not my day to post over there, I'm putting it here.

It's not COMPLETELY accurate, because someone knows all of these things about me. But they're lesser known. :)

10 Things No One Knows About Me

1. I love Pringles, but not all kinds. I gobble up the regular Right Crisps and love the Sour Cream and Onion Right Crisps. That's not so interesting, but I lick off the sour cream and onion powder.

Okay, maybe less interesting, more gross.

2. I won the Ruth Davies Award for Excellence in Writing in college for a term paper on Deforestation, and that was one of the driving forces behind my decision to pursue fiction writing.

Well, it was third place. But still.

3. I got laid off from my job at an ad agency four days after finding out I was pregnant with my first kid. My husband was concerned about finances, so I got a data entry job via a temp agency when I was about four months along. It was supposed to be a two-week position but I was so fast and efficient they let all the other dozen temps go and kept me for several weeks. I was making less net than I'd been getting on unemployment, so I complained to the agency, who got me my last job, which not only paid decently and used my skills, but also allowed me to take the baby to work until she was nine months old.

Classic window/door situation, and why I always feel things will work out, no matter what.

4. I was born in England and lived in Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. California was about two weeks before my mom got sick.

I liked Michigan the best, was happiest in New York, and miss Massachusetts the most, and I still identify with Mass even though I've lived in Pennsylvania just about as long.

5. I like my food hard. I cook meat until it's dry and love it when it's crunchy on the edges. I fry pasta and onions and mashed potatoes (not together) and when I sauté veggies I want them carmelized.

My husband is less than enthused, but until he starts doing the cooking, he has to put up with it.

6. Because the grinder place next door to where I grew up had a lot of gristle and bone in their meat, I've learned to mistrust such things. I can't eat a whole sandwich/hamburger/sub/whatever. If I make it to the last bite without gristle/fat/skin, I put it down and gag at the thought of trying to eat it.

7. I am an oldest child (oldest cousin all around, too) and always wanted a big brother. Which probably explains why I have a lot of older brothers in my fiction, and why the brother relationship on Supernatural is so powerful to me. Also, though, I have a fabulous little brother, so that contributes. :)

8. When I was in first grade, I fell off the bus and got gravel in my head, along my hairline at the top of my forehead. There's still a bump of scar tissue underneath the skin. I think I was so embarrassed that I tripped I blamed the white strip at the edge of the step (turned out it was painted on) and then said I must have been pushed.

If you were the one behind me and didn't push me, I apologize. I have no idea what really happened.

9. I crack the binding on all my books. I have a very strong pinky (I can read a hardcover one-handed on the treadmill) but I don't want to work that hard.

10. My friend Tammy and I went skinny dipping in broad daylight in a lake her mother and stepfather brought us to one time. I think I was about 9.