Saturday, August 04, 2007

OT: Eight Random Facts

Well, as I was minding my own business researching some posts, David over at woodcreeper tagged me for the "Eight Random Facts" meme that is currently percolating through the blogosphere.

These are the meme rules:

Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Please pardon this brief detour from the main business of this blog. Think of it as summer vacation reading, if you like. Birding will resume shortly.

1. My 500th life bird was a Brown-headed Nuthatch at Chincoteague in Virginia.

2. Three of my ancestors fought in (and survived) the Civil War: Henry Milton Kromer (88th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, 142nd Indiana Volunteer Infantry), Joseph Christian McKenzie (regiment so far unknown), and Seymour Pugh Snyder (44th Indiana Volunteer Infantry). If you hadn't guessed, genealogy is one of my non-birding hobbies.

3. Starting in 1997, I attended the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival for ten straight years. This year broke the string, alas, but I hope to start a new run next year on FRFF's 20th annniversary.

4. Major league ballparks where I've seen baseball games include Fenway Park, Shea Stadium, Tiger Stadium and Veterans Stadium. The Vet no longer exists, Tiger Stadium is about to be demolished, and Shea is due to be retired soon.

5. In my college and immediate post-college years, I entertained myself by drawing comics, including a humorous space opera and a disorganized Lovecraftian pastiche. Oddly enough, drawing comics has helped my field sketching; both types of drawing place a premium on catching a quick impression of the subject.

6. My favorite ice cream flavor is pistachio.

7. I was an extra for a background crowd scene on a Star Trek book cover...well, two of them, actually (two covers, one cover shoot).

8. I'm about to launch into another stage in life...grad student! This fall, I'm beginning studies at Rutgers University's School of Library and Information Sciences.

Now comes the hard part...tagging. This meme has made a lot of progress around the blogosphere, so some people I would tag have already posted their eight random facts. I also don't spend nearly as much time reading blogs as I used to do, so coming up with eight is a bit of a challenge. Plus, not everybody goes for memes, either.

So I'll take the same way out as the gang at 10,000 Birds: if you read this, haven't been tagged for "Eight Random Facts," and want to give it a shot, go for it. Just leave a comment on this post with a link to your meme post.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

2 comments:

David La Puma said...

Jennifer- awesome list! It's amazing how much you can learn about someone just from 8 random facts. Good luck at Rutgers....hmmm....there may need to be a Rutgers WSOB team in the near future. Okay...gotta run- Mets are up on the Braves 1-0.

Jennifer W. Hanson said...

Thanks, David! There's just a sampling of my eclectic interests in that list. Technically, my current WSB team (usually known as Schrodinger's Catbirds) is a Rutgers team; all three of us are Rutgers alumnni and all of us have taken at least one post-graduation class (or we will have when I start taking classes). One of us currently works at RU, as well.

Let's go, Mets! (they're my NL team; my main rooting interest is the Red Sox.)