Man, all I seem to do on this blog is get tagged, lately. This is probably a sign that I should write more. Anyway, Marika sez:

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

OK, seven random facts about me.

1) I never won any prizes at school until sixth form, when I won the Sociology prize *and* the Sociology cup (yes, there was a Sociology cup. Why? I don't know). Unfortunately, at the prize-giving assembly, this necessitated two consecutive walks across the stage to accept the prizes, so I had to tear frantically down the stairs, across the floor in front of the stage, and up the other side at terrific speed. It rather undercut my immense 16 year old dignity. (Ironically, I have come to regard Sociology as a rather problematic, ahistorical, bean-counting discipline in later life.)

2) When I was born, I had to be assisted with one of those weird suction-cup things because I was facing up instead of down. This caused my head to look slightly like a Smurf's hat. My mother, who was one of the last, blessedly generally anaesthetised of her generation, woke up to find a child she thought was deformed. Oh, did I mention that we were in Venezuela and her Spanish was limited? Yes. It took some time for her to have things explained in an intelligible way.

3) The herb I use most at home when cooking is coriander/cilantro. It is a major factor in Indian, Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Mexican foods. Annoyingly, it is also one of the herbs my next-door-neighbour-and-gardener mother hates growing, because it goes to seed so fast and needs so much space. Thus, I have way more sage than I know what to do with, and way less coriander than I need.

4) The show I miss the most from living in the USA is not anything actually awesome, like, say, The Colbert Report or Conan O'Brien - that shit is downloadable. No, it's Cheaters. It never shows up on any file-sharing networks, because it is a horrible schadenfreude-y nastiness low-budget reality show, originally filmed in Dallas. Brent and Gary and I loved it so much. We watched it religiously on a channel with absolutely no reception and terrible snow.

5) When I was a really little kid, my father made me a slide and swing set from scratch. I don't know how he managed to make a workable, non-splintering slide from wood, but he did. He also made me a mock-Tudor playhouse with a real glass window. This does not in any way detract from his general assholery in later life. I think my mother was a good influence on him. Unfortunately, I have not inherited a) his mathematical ability or b) his DIY skills. I can, however, cook nearly as well as him.

6) I have over fifty pairs of shoes, fifty handbags and fifty brooches. I also have more than one cape. 'Who wears a cape?' Yet with minor variations, I wear the same thing to work every day.

7) My first Beatles albums were Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, and Abbey Road. The first four were my mother's original albums from the 60s. The last one was my uncle Gary's original album from the 60s. (They were all scratched to hell.) As a result, I never heard arguably the best Beatles music until my teens. I received The White Album as a reward for getting chickenpox in 1989. I got Revolver last - and it's my favourite! When I met Brent, we discovered that we followed the same pattern of Beatle-album-collecting, at about the same time. It was a sign.

Bonus random fact number eight: I never tag people when I'm told to. Suck it, tag-rule-makers!