Last week I was tagged by Dayna at A Bug’s Life and Barbara K at In Sickness and In Health for the “7 Random Things” meme. I am getting to it a few days later and I am studiously ignoring my husband’s little smirk that says “Only seven random/weird things? However will you narrow it down?” but I am getting to it nonetheless.

With no further delay, seven things you wouldn’t necessarily know from reading this blog:

1. I once broke my finger when someone hit my hand with a balloon. Yes, a balloon. When I rock my bone density scans, I am the only one there under 80. Good times.

2. I have an amazing capacity for monotony–when writing my book, I listened to the same song on repeat. Six days a week for six months. I only changed it once for half of a song and when I did, I couldn’t string a sentence together.

3. I spent a year studying at Trinity College, Dublin and while there, I went spelunking off the west coast of Ireland, near the Cliffs of Moher. See #1 on this list to understand why my relatively unscathed return from this trip was momentous.

4. I was a competitive figure skater (solo and precision team) for several years when I was in grammar school. Again, see #1 on this list and pretty much any random entry on this blog to see why that could never end well. I had heart, but my various plaster casts made for some lopsided spins and jumps.

5. I went to an all-girls’ Catholic high school run by nuns. Instead of bells to signal the beginning/end of class, we had classical music. If you hadn’t arrived at your next class by the last violin strain, you were in trouble. Looking back, this seems really weird to me, but at the time I thought that was how everyone did it.

6. My mother wanted me to be a Latin teacher when I grew up. I was kind of a Latin dork. I got perfect scores on the National Latin Exam and spent surreptitious weekends in May competing in the state Latin/mythology championships at the behest of the little nun who taught my high school Latin classes. My brothers forbade me from telling anyone this. I’ve forgotten a lot of what I knew then, but every now and then an arcane mythological reference comes to me or some Latin idiom crosses my mind and I realize I am still a dork.

7. I’m extremely competitive and I am a terrible loser. My husband and I have a running Scrabble competition–I am up 37 games to 32, but who’s counting? Whenever it looks like I am going to lose, he claims I suddenly get “really tired.” Lame of me, I know.

According to the rules, I must now tag seven other bloggers:

Girl, Dislocated, because she is hilarious. And has broken waaaayyy more bones than me!

I’d Like to Buy a Bowel, because she is also really funny, and brings new meaning to toilet humor

Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good, because she is so creative and reflective

Sick Girl Speaks, because she is incredibly wise. (She also just published her own book and I had the pleasure of reading it!! Wonderful work, Tiffany!)

Sick Momma, because I think she’d have really interesting entries for her list of seven things

Fluent, because I think her arm is better and I’m hoping she’s up for it!

A Medical Mystery, because she’s really honest

Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.