Posts Tagged e-mail

I’m usually late when it comes to memes, and I had actually posted much of this on my Facebook notes way back in February. But I realized I never posted them here.

So, for your entertainment/amusement/shock/whatever, here are twenty-five random facts about yours truly.

1. I have severe social anxiety; I have to force myself to leave my apartment. I also deal with arrested development disorder and dysthymia (long-term depression).
2. I do not own a car. I ride a 2007 Suzuki Burgman 400 maxi-scooter. I also own a 2004 Yamaha Vino 125 scooter that is retired in my ex-wife’s garage after riding it over 25,000 miles. In the event of my imminent bankruptcy, HSBC Bank will get it back.
3. I purchased said Burgman in September of 2007. I’ve ridden it over 20,000 miles since then.
4. I’m a Disney freak. I spend nearly every weekend in Walt Disney World. When I lived in California (until 2000), I spent almost every day in Disneyland. I would bring my handheld PC with me to work on my invoices there.
5. I once rode my Vino 125 from Lakeland, FL to Daytona Beach to attend a F.A.I.T.H. Riders chapter commissioning. It was a four-hour backroads trip that required me to leave at 4:30 in the morning in order to arrive by 8:30 AM. They made me trailer the bike home. The trip has become somewhat of a F.A.I.T.H. Riders legend.
6. While I receive a lot of compliments on my penmanship, I don’t like to write by hand. You will rarely get a handwritten letter from me.
7. I was bullied daily from the second grade through high school. It still affects me at the age of 37 (see #1).
8. Because of the aforementioned bullying, I intentionally flunked a semester of P.E. in high school by refusing to change out of my street clothes into my P.E. uniform (t-shirt and shorts). When I made up the semester my senior year, it was the only time I ever got an "A" in P.E.
9. I am genuinely afraid of answering a telephone (see #1 again). The best and quickest way to reach me is by e-mail. It drives my girlfriend nuts.
10. I first learned how to play guitar. Then I learned how to play keyboard by matching the sounds of the notes on the guitar with the notes on the keyboard. I then learned to play in church by ear. My friend, the church pianist, would play the song and I would figure out the chords by ear to play on the keyboard.
11. I met my now ex-wife in an AOL chat room. The first time we met face-to-face was the night we got engaged. She also told me she was filing for divorce in an e-mail.
12. In spite of my severe social anxiety, I love public speaking and especially sharing my story with others.
13. I was told at my mother’s funeral in 1996 that I should consider a career as a writer for Hallmark.
14. My musical tastes range from classical to smooth jazz to country to gothic metal. I do not like rap.
15. I am a huge Mylène Farmer fan. Laurent Boutonnat is a songwriting genius.
16. I will often turn off a TV or radio program or commercial where the protagonist is in an embarrassing or compromising position (or is otherwise generally behaving like an idiot) out of embarrassment for the person in the commercial.
17. I am convinced that most of the drivers in my area received their driver’s education at the Richard Petty Driving School.
18. I don’t drink because I don’t like the taste of alcohol, although my girlfriend/fiancée has turned me on to local wines. However, I haven’t had any since she returned to California from her last visit (in February).
19. I first met my current girlfriend in junior high school; then we lost touch for 20-plus years until 2008 when she found me on MySpace several months after my divorce.
20. I do most of my grocery shopping at Walmart at 3 or 4 AM. It’s the center of Plant City social life.
21. I am not much of a reader. Reading books puts me to sleep. Maybe it’s because of all the scholarly texts I had to read in bible college. Since graduating Bible college in 1996, of the many books I have started to read, I have only finished two of them—Mark Lowry’s “Live Long and Die Laughing” and the biography “Rachel’s Tears” (the story of one of the Columbine victims).
22. I’m a visual, hands-on learner. I’d rather just use the product to learn it or work with examples.
23. I am self-taught with HTML, PHP, VB, VBA, DocBook, and TeX/LaTeX.
24. Since moving to Florida I consider any temperature below 70°F to be "freezing."
25. I write nearly all of my correspondence using LaTeX rather than Word.