Random Things

It is the week after Easter. Whew. That was a busy week. And so serious! Look at the blog entries for last week. Long tomes on the Gospel of Luke. Dark poetry. Serious stuff indeed!

But I do not always want to be serious. My Facebook presence is really quite silly, and I am lucky to have a lot of long-time friends who are silly with me. I guess this is where I come to express my more serious and questioning side.

Which, frankly, is what it is for. But sometimes it is a bit much even for me.

I have a friend who blogs and a hate her because she has so many more followers and gets more comments for a post reading "not posting today" than I get for some piece I have spent weeks writing.

But I realize it might be hard to post comments. After all, you have to sign in and if you don't have a user name you have to create one blah blah blah.

Well this same friend, whom I hate, showed me how to change the settings to allow anonymous comments, which I have done, in hopes of encouraging more comments. After all, isn't the blogging world really, at the end of the time, a competition? :-)

Anyway.

I am not very techie. I knew the end had begun when I went looking for a cd player for the car. The salesman was showing me all of the latest models with all these bells and whistles and I said "I just need something that will play a cd". Then it hit me. I am old.

So I don't really get a lot of the things other people do on Facebook. I don't quite understand all the "apps". And I came to believe that Farmville really should not be as difficult as it seemed to me so I gave up. (do you hear that all of you who keep sending me these silly farmville requests)

But there is one thing that Facebook folk do that I have thought about doing and decided to do it here. List 25 random things about yourself.

But I thought I would add a twist. Here are 24 random things about me people probably do not know. But one of them is not true. Can you guess which one? (Man I am desperate for comments)

These are in no particular order, it is just the order in which I think of them (as I am making this up pretty much as I go)

1 My first career was as a radio/TV sportscaster. I have interviewed athletes such as Reggie Jackson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

2 My brother is a former space shuttle astronaut who has flown in space five times

3 My father offered a prayer at the national memorial service for the astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger. (If 2 is true than 3 is probably true)

4 I am completely in love with my Ipod Touch

5 I think the first three seasons of Spongebob Squarepants are funny and I have them all on DVD

6 I have written a thesis of poetry but, prior to that, had never written a poem in my life.

7 I nearly died during my birth, as my umbilical cord became separated from me while I was still in the womb.

8 I have experienced an earthquake, blizzard, and tornado in my life. But no hurricane.

9 I am a Sigma Nu--- having joined that fraternity in college.

10 I was also a member of a secret, sub rosa organization in college (although I cannot recall what if any purpose it had)

11 If I were not a Presbyterian I would be an Episcopalian.

12 If I could make one pilgrimage in my life it would be to Cambridge, England to witness A Festival of Lessons and Carols by the King's College Choir.

13 My life is not very interesting so it is difficult to come up with 25 of these things.

14 My children are the dearest thing in the world (you may not select this as the untrue item)

15 My first car was a Ford Pinto

16 I have offered the opening prayer at a session of Nebraska's Unicameral Legislature (there was no one in the chamber at the time I did it)

17 Although I have lived in Nebraska 11 years, I have never been to a Nebraska football game.

18 My daughter has published a poem.

19 My son has fired a shotgun once in his life and hit the turkey he was aiming for. 1 for 1.

20 I am sad right now that it is so difficult, after 49 years, to think of enough interesting things about myself to fill up a mere 25 slots.

21 I am afraid of heights... or ladders... or roofs. But I cannot go up a ladder and I am scared of edges.

22 I nearly died one day in the Adirondack mountains. I was sliding off a rock and gripped it with my fingernails when I realized the size of the drop had I not been able to stop.

23 All of my siblings are PhD scientists and teach and major state universities. Each is highly decorated in their respective fields.

24 My father was in a play in college with the actor Peter Falk. And had a bigger part.

25 My eighth great grandmother and eighth great aunt were accused of witchcraft is Salem, Mass. and my aunt was hanged. There is a movie about this called "Three Sovereigns for Sarah". My eighth great grandmother was named Sarah Cloyce.

Well there you have it. A bit of non-essential writing for the day.