On July 6th, Ilona of True Grit posted eight items she assumed we didn't know about her. Common to the meme, she listed five new bloggers to continue the faux chain, and apparently, I was one of those selected. Until last night, I had no idea. Amazing what an overlooked link will do.So, in order to be a good blogging citizen, here we go.
Eight things you probably didn't know about me, likely in near chronological order, just because.
1) I was born two months early and weighed just over four pounds. The ambulance, on its way to Stanford from Salinas, had to stop mid-trip and I was delivered in San Jose. My poor father, meanwhile, made the trip to Stanford, and missed the birth. He has since made up for it. And lucky for me, modern medicine was just good enough to eventually kick me out of the hospital.
2) In order to display how disappointed my 3rd grade teacher was with my studies, he broke with school tradition and gave me letter grades, instead of the standard Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory marks given my peers. The first quarter, I got two C's. They may have been my first, but unfortunately, they were not even close to my last.
3) I graduated from junior high school twice. After attending a 7-8th grade school, we switched school districts, and attended a 7-9th grade junior high. I got to walk on the stage both years.
4) I was pulled over by the county sheriff during Drivers' Training, when I was 16, allegedly for having my rear right tire pass over an empty parking space as I turned right into an intersection. This greatly amused the other students in the car, and befuddled the instructor.
5) I was stood up on my first date after turning 16. My date's best friend had unbeknownst to her, brought a friend, which preempted me. Instead of enjoying the homecoming dance, I waited out the three-hour drama until my ride came. It later turned out to be a recurring motif through high school.
6) My senior year of high school, I was the station manager, and DJ, for the campus cable radio station, and logged hundreds of on-air hours playing Depeche Mode and Inforrmation Society to earn my A.
7) My original college of choice was UCLA, where I had hoped to be roommates with my best friend. Due to a bureaucratic snafu on the UC's part, and my typical lack of following instructions to a T, I didn't get in to UCLA, but did get into UC Berkeley, which made the seeming crisis a lot easier to handle.
8) I once took a 4-plus year self-imposed sabbatical from church, which overlapped with college, before deciding on my own it was time to go back and follow what I knew to be right. Had I remained stubborn, I never would have found my wife, among other things.
With all that said, the typical next step is to tag five more unexpecting victims.
Those targets:
* Ben Homer
* Jason Kaneshiro
* Earl Moore
* Jeff Narduzzi
* Farrah Walker