Pieces of Eight

Blogsis Kat tagged me with a blogosphere meme pool tag game, “Eight Things About… Me” or some such. Here are the rules, right from the Kat’s meow:

The Rules are: Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Well, since it’s Kat, I’ll play along. 🙂 If you read her post (DO read it!), you may notice a similarity between her first four “things about me” and mine. No, I didn’t JUST steal her first four and paste ’em here just to get this over with. Her first four things about Kat are just too darned close to things about me to NOT list ’em. Still, she says it so well…

1. I hate typos and misspelled words. When I catch them in a post, or in a comment I just submitted, I cringe in embarrassment, and try to fix it ASAP. Chronic peeves: breath vs. breathe; taut vs. taunt; to, too, and two; and its vs. it’s.

Yeh, well me too. Of course, that doesn’t keep me from excelling in typos, misspelled words and grammar oopsies. Sometimes the voices in my head are all talking at once and my fingers get confused… (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.)

2. I don’t usually like help in the kitchen unless it’s for cleaning up; I have a very particular way I want things done, and usually I get too much into the assumption that I’m the only one who knows how to do it properly.

OK, clarification: I AM the only one who knows how to do “it” properly… *heh* I have my system, my preferred workflow and method of cooking. I also like things put away where I can put my hand on ’em w/o having to look for a tool. When I’m cooking, I want to do things my way, RIGHT NOW, no dodging another cook, no looking for where someone put THAT particular spatula, etc. But cleaning up? Gimme help! (Just put things away in their proper place!)

3. I love to cook…

Well, Kat has a longer expression that diverges from my “thing” a tad. I love to cook; love to cook experimentally. Some dramatic successes d0o result, but also some hilarious failures (Do NOT try to cook tuna enchiladas. Just sayin’… )

4. I can be extremely obstinate; when my mind’s made up, ain’t nobody gonna change my mind…

Here we diverge a bit more. I am NOT “obstinate” but stubborn, muleheaded, adamantine. Anyone who wants to change my thinking on a matter had better marshall their FACTS, make clear, concise, detailed arguments that address the issue, and avoid arguments from emotion or fallacies of logic. Even then, changing my mind will be a difficult task for folks because… I’ll marshall facts, make arguments in rebuttal, etc. Since so few folks will play by the rules of fair argumentation, I rarely feel the need to exercise myself much in rebuttal of their “arguments”.

And departing a tad from Kat’s list, now, as an example of my sometimes irascible nature,

5. When dealing with obstreperous students, I sometimnes offered, “I’m mean and I’m ugly and I have bad breath; and I’m not afraid to prove it to you. Want to try me?” (They rarely did. *heh* Kid walks into first class: “Andre, here’s your pass to the principal’s office.” “But I haven’t done anything!” “You were going to. Goodbye.”)

6. I still have 10 fingers and 10 toes (and–mirabile dictu!–most of my hearing and even some of my sanity) in spite of having taught seventh graders during one dark, dark period of my life.

7. Of all my degrees, I find my PhDBS to be the most helpful in my daily life. (Yes, an honorary doctorate in “bovine scatology”)

8. Call me “Handy”. If it’s broken (whatever “it” is), there’s at least an 80% chance I can fix it. If I can’t fix “it” (whatever “it” is), there’s a very good chance I can make a better one from scratch or from junk n bits n pieces I have laying around.

There, with a little ripping off of Kat’s post, that’s eight pieces of me.

Who to tag? Two with one tag: Diane and Mel! Beth, Angel, Maggie, Lisa, Curt, Adam and one to grow on, TRY (Well, since DIane and Mel might just count as one, that gives me the chance to invite My Favorite Yak to play. :-)).