100 Things, give or take, about me, sort of:

1. I am the second child of five. All of my siblings are male. I always always wanted a sister. I still do.

2. My dad is the chair of the theater department at a community college. He is also the sole technical director for said theater department. He also teaches speech and acting and directing. He also directs at least one production a year and he also acts in community theater. Every single member of my family, save me, has tried his or her hand at acting.

3. My mum is a therapist. She works full-time at a community college and has a part-time private practice and is a full-time student in a PhD program for higher ed. administration.

4. My brothers: Oliver, age 29, graduated in 1998 from law school and has yet to pass the California bar. He works as an investigator on the ethics committee for the city of San Francisco. He is straight, but is often confused for gay. He is an absolute priss and vain as a rock star and would probably like nothing so much as to wear pink frilly dresses and have people tell him he's pretty. Dan, age 24, recently moved back in with my folks. He recently graduated from college. Major: philosophy. Minor: linguistics. Vocation: writer. He�s cool as hell. He�s a raging alcoholic. Joe, age 23, recently moved out of my folks� house for the first time ever. He has ADD and was frequently threatened with expulsion and corporal punishment in our fine public schools when he was a kid. He has an AS in graphic design and an AA in...well...whatever people get AAs in. He is now living in the dorms and getting his BFA in art. He really likes role-playing games and hugs and working out. Shawn, 14, is an amateur naturalist and child of my heart. I am his godmother.

5. I am a lapsed vegetarian. I did not eat meat until I was 5. I stopped eating meat when I was 14. I started back up again in the last year. I don�t know why.

6. The first concert I ever attended at my own choosing was the Moody Blues when I was 12. This was also my first experience with marijuana. I find these facts extremely embarrassing.

7. I am easily embarrassed.

8. I developed everything early. I walked at seven months. I read at age three. I got my period at age nine. I stopped growing at age 10. I am 5� 7�. I find these facts freaky and disturbing.

9. I started babysitting when I was nine-years-old. Isn�t that outrageous? But there it is. I was the neighborhood babysitter in high school. I saved all of my earnings and used them to go to Germany when I was 16. I never liked babysitting. I did not enjoy traveling.

10. I earned my BA in English when I was 24 and my MFA in creative writing when I was 26.

11. I have made honest money in the past in these ways: making pizza, making sandwiches, babysitting, landscaping, retail, secretarial temping blah, interview transcription (fate worse than death, my friends), writing, editing & designing a newsletter, web design, library work, teaching English (fate equal to death)

12. I am a loner.

13. I don�t have a dream job.

14. I am a cataloger at a state university. I am also in charge of the processing area in the catalog department. I love my job. Is it my dream? Nope.

15. I am endlessly fascinated by the lives of my cats and dog. I spend hours watching them. I also enjoy discussing their lives endlessly. This is best done with my mother who is also endlessly fascinated by her cats. She�s not so interested in the canines, though.

16. I consider my parents two of the finest most interesting people I�ve ever met.

17. I never wanted to be popular.

18. I am deeply opposed to the death penalty.

19. I love surprises. I love surprises even when I know about them in advance. I love packages. I love mixed tapes.

20. I hate iceberg lettuce. It is the only vegetable I refuse to eat.

21. I believe in god. And I pray.

22. I think librarians and public libraries are wicked cool.

23. I have been stopped for speeding three times in the last two years. I have had to go to court each time.

24. I no longer speed. Much.

25. I love Square Pegs and Degrassi High and Robotech and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Those are my favorite TV shows ever.

26. I just got a $100 bonus at work. This confirms that I make shit money. Only the lowest wage-earners got the bonus this year. Cold comfort.

27. I love to swim but I do not know any strokes. I never learned, though I seemed to have spent my entire childhood in the water.

28. I used to pay my brothers to let me read out loud to them. I always wanted to be from a family who read books out loud to each other.

29. My older brother paid me to play Dungeons & Dragons with him.

30. I played the baritone in the marching band in junior high. I played the trombone in symphonic band.

31. I was a loser in high school. Luckily. I mean, thank god. You know?

32. I was the biggest loser in elementary school. I was the kid you made fun of.

33. The only time I ever hit anybody in my life was when I was seven. A mean boy called my mom a gimp so I hit him. Then I threw up.

34. I lost my virginity, age 18.

35. I refuse to ever use instant messenger. I hate that shit.

36. I crochet, but badly.

37. I despise gratuitous wealth.

38. I have no stomach for violence of any kind.

39. I am easily made uncomfortable by excessive candor or sex talk.

40. I like salad, pie, fresh bread, fresh fruit, and cereal. Those are my favorite foods.

41. I have broken up with every boy I have ever dated except one.

42. I have only been in love once. He broke up with me.

43. I do not take sex lightly. I have no stomach for casual sex.

44. I have never cheated on a boyfriend. I have never been cheated on. That is a world I cannot fathom.

45. I have a weakness for teenage angst.

46. I am not a moral relativist.

47. I have a hard time with paper work. Strangely, I enjoy doing taxes. Sometimes I do my friends� taxes, even.

48. I blush with very little provocation.

49. I have never broken a bone in my body.

50. I have a soft spot for stupid action movies.

51. I love mystery novels.

52. I can go days without saying a word.

53. I hate travel.

54. I am a worrier.

55. I have convinced myself that I am waging a one-woman protest against supermarket discount cards. Do not burst my bubble.

56. I don�t trust people easily.

57. I trust dogs unequivocally.

58. I had a lisp as a kid. Sometimes I forget and lisp back into my lisp. Sometimes I lisp on purpose because I find it comforting.

59. My middle name is Colleen, which is what my mother calls me 80% of the time. Nobody else does.

60. I don�t like girl stuff. Mostly. I despise girl talks. Mostly.

61. I always wished I enjoyed playing roll-playing games, but I never did.

62. I love all card games. Bridge, spades, and poker are my top three.

63. I do not take care of my fingernails. I don�t chew them, but neither do I trim them. Mostly I just rip them off to keep them from getting long. I hate long fingernails.

64. Of all the famous people in the world, I most want Joss Whedon to be my boyfriend and Parker Posey to be my girlfriend.

65. I have pierced ears. I got them pierced in fourth grade, which is the year I went to Catholic school, which is the only year I was popular, which is the year I acted like a girl, which is why I convinced my parents to let me get my ears pierced. I stopped wearing earrings in the fifth grade. My holes still have not closed up. I like to check every few years or so.

66. I have no other piercings. Neither do I have any tattoos.

67. I love talking on the phone with good friends.

68. I refuse to answer the phone unless I know and like the person on the other end.

69. Caller ID is my favorite invention of the last 10 years.

70. I had a blast in college.

71. I have made money selling drugs. I am not proud of this and would not do it again.

72. I have stolen money. Again. Not proud, not likely to repeat it.

73. I have a sweet tooth.

74. I do not like prepackaged foods of any kind. Do I? That may be a lie.

75. I sometimes lie, but inadvertently.

76. I am clumsy. I trip and fall all the damned time. I also run into things a lot.

77. I often find lots and lots of inexplicable scratches all over my hands.

78. I am highly freckled.

79. I don�t like eating on anyone else�s schedule. This, more than anything, is why I could never live with my parents again.

80. I have never dated anyone with blond hair. They have all been brunettes, except one. He was a redhead.

81. Twice, boys have dated me in secret. One boy couldn�t tell his parents about me because I was not Jewish. One boy couldn�t tell his parents about me because I was not black.

82. I have lived outside of my means. This is my greatest regret so far in life.

83. I like my coffee with cream or black. No sugar.

84. I don�t drink soda. I mean, sometimes I do, but mostly not.

85. Drinks I partake of regularly: coffee, water, juice, beer.

86. I can be an absolute jerk.

87. I am tremendously shy.

88. My friends and my family keep me alive. No� they keep me wanting to be alive.

89. I would always rather be outdoors than in. Unless it�s very cold outside.

90. I�m not very cuddly and don�t like hugs.

91. I am, however, quite affectionate toward my dog and my cats and my little brother Shawn.

92. I always wear too many clothes.

93. I always carry too many things in my bag.

94. I refuse to call my bag a purse. Which it ain�t. It�s a damned tote bag.

95. �The way of love is not a subtle argument.��Rumi. I believe that completely.

96. My mother speaks in tongues.

97. My least favorite word in English is moist. Ew.

98. My favorite word may well be fuck. I love that word, man.

99. I didn�t curse out loud until I was 16. I was too embarrassed before that.

100. In the which-celebrity-would-play-you-in-the-story-of-our-lives game, my friends all say Mary-Louise Parker would play me. She�s annoying.

101. I like to stay very far away from the center of attention.

102. I love more in theory than in practice.

103. I want to love more in practice than in theory.

104. I hate pretentious people and intellectuals and phonies and self-congratulatory types and Poets and Writers and Academics.

105. I have many secrets which I will never tell.