Sixteen Random Things

I was tagged a while back to post sixteen random things about me to facebook. I am not one to keep chains going so I dismissed the idea and decided to spend time at work doing some actual work. And then at home, I wanted to spend time with my family. So both of you reading this blog have been put on hold for a while. Deal with it.

Anyway, I really could not think of sixteen random things all at once, so I decided to just create a draft and add line items as they came to me with the idea that once I get to the full sixteen I would post the full list. Well, here you go.

1. I love movies. Really love them. Good movies, bad movies, it doesn’t matter. I could watch movies all day long.
2. I love popcorn. See above.
3. I used to coach High School basketball and coaching hoop remains the one job I would do for free. In fact, I have often said that I would pay for the privilege of running a team or program, that is how much I love the sport.
4. I won my first 33 games as a coach, and never lost a game on the road in Massachusetts as head coach (19-0) or Idaho as an assistant coach (2-0).
5. I ran the 2006 NYC Marathon. And I finished running, painfully in stride, through Central Park.
6. I have six fingers on my right hand. No, not really, just seeing if you are still reading, or if you have ever seen The Princess Bride. See above.
7. I desire to move to Sonoma, CA. Or to Cassis, France. Either one is fine.
8. I played saxophone in Middle and High School, a total of eight years. I have probably played it eight times since then.
9. I have a Master’s degree in Mathematics from Washington State (thus explaining why I was coaching basketball games on the road in Idaho).
10. I love bacon. It is almost an unnatural attraction, really, and I am sure it will be my undoing.
11. I once participated in a two day interview for the NSA, complete with psychological exams and a lie detector test. It remains the toughest interview I have ever had in my life, and every other interview pales in comparison to those two days at Fort Meade.
12. I enjoy Astronomy and my Master’s Project at WSU was titled “The Interstellar Radiation Fields of Globular Clusters”.
13. I shook the hand of a man who shook the hand of Harry S Truman.
14. I played rugby for four years, until my children were born and I decided I wanted to be able to play with them and not be confined to a wheelchair because some idiot on the other team doesn’t know how to enter a ruck properly. To this day I believe rugby training to be the highest level of fitness for any recreational sport on this Earth.
15. I believe in the power of positive thinking and that we can control (to some degree) the events in our lives. In other words, when you think about all the good things in life you start to find that all the good things are already surrounding you. For more details go see the video called “What t?e #$*! D? ?? (k)?ow!? “. Don’t forget a nice tall glass of Kool-Aid while watching.
16. I love food. I enjoy eating, cooking, and baking. I have a recipe for shortbread that comes from the von Trapp family that everyone loves. Yes, that von Trapp family.
17. I was born on June 17th. My grandfather, who I was named after and was very close to my heart, passed on my birthday several years ago. My son was born two years later, on June 17th as well. And last year the Celtics won their seventeenth title on June 17th. So there.

Because number six was not really a random item about me, my list has seventeen entries. Again, just deal with it.