I have been posting a lot lately, but I can't sleep and my sister tagged me to write 8 random things about myself and then tag 8 others to do the same (and has been harassing me constantly to get it done). What the hell is a meme? Apparently this is it. So here, have some facts about my first 29 years:
1) Not really a drama queen: I was the first female in my highschool class to become a thespian. Of course, I am not much of an actress (I had my own monologue in a one act play), did mostly 'techie' work, and purely did it to hang out with my sister and stay out of our crazy house, but it's a nice factoid. Later, the school ditched thespians and labeled themselves 'Drama Club' instead. I thought most of the Drama Club people were nuts.
2) If you know me, this isn't surprising: I actually won an award in a high school summer program for having 'The Loudest Volume of Voice." Hey, for two summers in a row, I lived in dorms with 70 other high school kids...you had to be loud if you wanted anyone to hear you. It was an awesome program though which allowed me 9 weeks out of every summer to escape from my house and also helped me to become the first person in my family to graduate from college.
3) Fish in the burbs: In elementary school, I lived in a suburb with a community pool. My favorite thing to do was these extravagant flips off the diving board ALL day...until one day. The lifeguard on duty said that I should be careful because my head was too close to the end of the board when I did my flips. After her comment, I could never bring myself to do another flip again and I am still pissed about it. Another part to this is that we got to live in the suburb because my aunt wanted us to grow up in a nice place, so she registered the house she owned in the neighborhood to qualify for low income housing which made it affordable for my single mom and three kids to live there. Thanks Aunt Marlene!
4) Which one are you again? I have had two boyfriends with the last name Gardner and dated two guys with the last name Turner. AND, in highschool I dated two guys named Brian at the same time, which made messages left for me in my absence hard to figure out
..."Well, which Brian was it?" "I dunno." The Gardner men were close together and had similar first names, so people would accidentally refer to the new one as the old ones name. Oh gosh, this is a terrible factoid that surely will not make a father proud.
5) Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh: In high school, I had some guy friends in a neighboring town who created a song about me while we were on a spring break camping trip. It was essentially my name over and over. It went (as Julie Engel can sing perfectly) "Dun nuh nuh nuh nuh, Sarah C----." Two years later, a college classmate mentioned that he had been down by the river a couple nights before and 'some guys were singing a song with your name.' It was pretty embarrassing because I had a huge crush on the guy (well, maybe it captivated him, because he eventually asked me out and was my boyfriend for a couple months). I think there is actually a recording of that song out there somewhere.
6) My suppressed childhood: In highschool I had to tell a judge my opinion on the custody battle for my brother to either live with my mom or my aunt. I apparently told the judge that I thought he would end up dead if he had to live with my mom and her then husband. After, I yelled and screamed at everyone that I wanted them all to get along. To this day, I can't remember anything about that day except for what others tell me, but I am happy that my aunt raised my brother. Thanks again Aunt Marlene.
7) Speaking of: Well, since I have mentioned her a couple times already, lets just tell this story: My Aunt Marlene is actually not even related to us. She is the sister of my mom's first boyfriend after my parents got divorced. The two were not together that long, but we gained some great family members from the relationship...the boyfriend is now 'Uncle David' and their mom was our 'Grandma' who passed away while I was in high school. They did a lot to help us kids turn out okay.
8)
Study by song: I used to make up songs out of the words in my textbooks in order to memorize important information and prepare for tests. It really worked.
So, now I get to tag eight other people. Sadly, my blog friends and 'regular reads' don't write so much anymore except for Benny K, who my sister already tagged, and Zach Braff, who, well, lets just say probably doesn't have time for this. So, this will bring me to tag...
#1 JB! JB leads an
incredibly interesting life and surely has 8 facts to write about himself. So JB, write away and spread the love.
#2-8...Well, the rest are MySpace bloggers with private accounts, so what is the use in tagging them? But, I think that Marni, Louise, Liz, Sarah K St J, Julie, and Wes may actually take a stab at it because they write ever so often. So if you read this
(in MySpace World), write something girls (and guy). So, there you go. Don't say I didn't try sister Jennifer.
I took part in a mud volleyball tournament over the past weekend and thought I would share some pics from the experience. My hesitation about spending a day in the mud quickly disappeared after I duck taped up my shoes (you have to if you want them to stay on in the mud and not get cut by the rocks underneath) and jumped in. We beat our first competitors 15-1 and ended up 4-2 to clinch a spot in the third place bracket. To the left is part of our team, The Itsy Bitsy Spikes, after three games. Not so dirty! There were some teams with people swimming, floating, and diving into the mud, but most of our team heeded the warning that sharp rocks were at the bottom of the pits (may have had something to do with our team being one of the fewer sober teams there).
I am pretty certain that true volleyball skills had little to donate to this tournament. Knee deep in mud with eight to a team, the spikes were few and far between, and several times, the ball would just thud onto the water right outside arm's length, splashing tons of lovely mud right up into your face. There were quite a few rallies though and it was hard to not just dive for the ball (though hilarious when people did...they'd lie there for a minute and then stand up, soaked and shocked, covered from head to toe).
