10 Random Stories from My Life
Oct. 24th, 2007 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroy1) The reason I have long hair is that once, when my girlfriend dumped me, I couldn't bring myself to get a haircut for almost a year. At that point I just decided I liked it.
2) When I was in high school, I spent an entire summer designing and printing my own collectible card game based in the Doctor Who universe. Most of the cards had graphics, they were double-sided on sturdy cardstock, and I figured out a way to print out random sheets of cards with the appropriate rarities using Microsoft Word macros. I still have those cards, actually-- it was a better game than the real Doctor Who CCG that came out the next year.
3) I've conducted two weddings, which means I've already married four people. I was visibly shaking during the first ceremony and managed to switch the bride and groom's middle names (Anne and Allen, anyone could have done it), but everyone was genuinely complimentary about it and lo, I was asked to do it again by some other friends a while later. There's a standing offer with a couple I know that if they want to renew their vows in the nude, I'm there.
4) When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had all four out at the same time and they had to put me under to do it. I woke up, I was totally fine, and a few hours later my parents left for vacation. Several hours after that I started hiccuping, and couldn't stop for 72 hours. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't concentrate, and eventually I got to find out that they do in fact make medical-strength anti-hiccup medicine. To this day I still get stronger than usual hiccups; fortunately a teacher of mine once told me that a spoonful of peanut butter always stopped it for her. Try it -- it really works!
5) My parents popped for a trip to Europe when I was a teenager. They essentially looked in Consumer Reports and on the big graph of prices they picked the second one from the bottom. It was called--and I am not making this up--Cosmos Tourama. Every morning was a hard roll with jelly I didn't like followed by getting to an attraction just after it closed. The tour guide was a highly effeminate man whose nationality I still can't pin down named Willie, and the bus driver was named Paul, smoked continuously, and lied about not speaking English so he wouldn't have to talk to us. We met a very nice couple from California on that trip, but I don't think we ever really talked to them again.
6) For a while I was a member of a highly irreverent cult which spent half its time trying to crack jokes and have a good time, and half trying to bond with each other and improve ourselves. We all had titles (I was the Cleric of Mystery), and rituals, and running jokes. I remember ending up hiding in a bathroom once to help the God pull a prank; I also remember taking long walks by a pond talking very seriously to a friend about Spirituality.
7) I play a lot of City of Heroes. Not as much as I used to, and not with as many characters as some friends of mine, but it's still a staple of my life. My second character was a sorority girl who found a magical artifact and decided to become a hero-- everyone on that server thought I was a girl for a year and a half.
8) An ex-girlfriend of mine used to work at the only science-fiction bookstore in Chicago-- tiny place with just a few staffers, but absolutely fantastic. At one point the owner of the store came in with a copy of Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. She couldn't put it down at work, so one of the other workers asked about it, and borrowed it, and then she couldn't put it down either. It made the rounds of everyone in the store, and eventually people started asking why they had never heard of this wonderful book. It had a small print run, but the owner was determined to spread the word about Bridge of Birds; eventually she tracked down a warehouse where they had three crates of the book lying around. She bought them all-- several hundred copies, which was an enormous investment for a bookstore that tiny. And she put out a sign with the display saying "100% Money-Back Guarantee. If you don't like this book, return it and we'll refund the whole price." And the books sold. Over a year, over 2/3rds of them walked out the door. And out of those two-hundred-plus copies, only three ever came back.
9) I didn't start drinking until college, and then only in my senior year. My education cohort had a bar with a mug club that they frequented, and they dragged me there to see that it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it was. My parents were both tee-totallers because my grandfather was an alcoholic, so I was frankly terrified. It turned out to not be so bad. Now I have an occasional drink, but I try never to forget about my granddad, either.
10) I own a sizable collection of polyhedral dice accrued over fifteen years of playing various roleplaying games. I have a bag of d10s in my backpack right now. Traditionally I keep my dice in a pretty floral tin which used to contain candy; everyone always laughs when they see it the first time, but no one ever tries to steal it.
2) When I was in high school, I spent an entire summer designing and printing my own collectible card game based in the Doctor Who universe. Most of the cards had graphics, they were double-sided on sturdy cardstock, and I figured out a way to print out random sheets of cards with the appropriate rarities using Microsoft Word macros. I still have those cards, actually-- it was a better game than the real Doctor Who CCG that came out the next year.
3) I've conducted two weddings, which means I've already married four people. I was visibly shaking during the first ceremony and managed to switch the bride and groom's middle names (Anne and Allen, anyone could have done it), but everyone was genuinely complimentary about it and lo, I was asked to do it again by some other friends a while later. There's a standing offer with a couple I know that if they want to renew their vows in the nude, I'm there.
4) When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had all four out at the same time and they had to put me under to do it. I woke up, I was totally fine, and a few hours later my parents left for vacation. Several hours after that I started hiccuping, and couldn't stop for 72 hours. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't concentrate, and eventually I got to find out that they do in fact make medical-strength anti-hiccup medicine. To this day I still get stronger than usual hiccups; fortunately a teacher of mine once told me that a spoonful of peanut butter always stopped it for her. Try it -- it really works!
5) My parents popped for a trip to Europe when I was a teenager. They essentially looked in Consumer Reports and on the big graph of prices they picked the second one from the bottom. It was called--and I am not making this up--Cosmos Tourama. Every morning was a hard roll with jelly I didn't like followed by getting to an attraction just after it closed. The tour guide was a highly effeminate man whose nationality I still can't pin down named Willie, and the bus driver was named Paul, smoked continuously, and lied about not speaking English so he wouldn't have to talk to us. We met a very nice couple from California on that trip, but I don't think we ever really talked to them again.
6) For a while I was a member of a highly irreverent cult which spent half its time trying to crack jokes and have a good time, and half trying to bond with each other and improve ourselves. We all had titles (I was the Cleric of Mystery), and rituals, and running jokes. I remember ending up hiding in a bathroom once to help the God pull a prank; I also remember taking long walks by a pond talking very seriously to a friend about Spirituality.
7) I play a lot of City of Heroes. Not as much as I used to, and not with as many characters as some friends of mine, but it's still a staple of my life. My second character was a sorority girl who found a magical artifact and decided to become a hero-- everyone on that server thought I was a girl for a year and a half.
8) An ex-girlfriend of mine used to work at the only science-fiction bookstore in Chicago-- tiny place with just a few staffers, but absolutely fantastic. At one point the owner of the store came in with a copy of Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. She couldn't put it down at work, so one of the other workers asked about it, and borrowed it, and then she couldn't put it down either. It made the rounds of everyone in the store, and eventually people started asking why they had never heard of this wonderful book. It had a small print run, but the owner was determined to spread the word about Bridge of Birds; eventually she tracked down a warehouse where they had three crates of the book lying around. She bought them all-- several hundred copies, which was an enormous investment for a bookstore that tiny. And she put out a sign with the display saying "100% Money-Back Guarantee. If you don't like this book, return it and we'll refund the whole price." And the books sold. Over a year, over 2/3rds of them walked out the door. And out of those two-hundred-plus copies, only three ever came back.
9) I didn't start drinking until college, and then only in my senior year. My education cohort had a bar with a mug club that they frequented, and they dragged me there to see that it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it was. My parents were both tee-totallers because my grandfather was an alcoholic, so I was frankly terrified. It turned out to not be so bad. Now I have an occasional drink, but I try never to forget about my granddad, either.
10) I own a sizable collection of polyhedral dice accrued over fifteen years of playing various roleplaying games. I have a bag of d10s in my backpack right now. Traditionally I keep my dice in a pretty floral tin which used to contain candy; everyone always laughs when they see it the first time, but no one ever tries to steal it.