Ten things about me that you probably didn't know, but will absolutely not change your life anyway:

1) I'm a phone-a-phile. Our mobile phones run our lives, because that's the business we're in (makes me wonder what I'd be like if I ran a butcher's shop. Or a whorehouse. In some circumstance, I guess they're the same thing.) We both have specific ways our phones have to be set up or else we get all twitchy and emotionally unavaibale, and for me ring tones are key. Although I am not adhering to it currently as we're testing a number of phones for work purposes in the house (therefore changing out our handsets constantly), generally when people ring me I know who is calling as I have a set number of ring tones I use to identify people. Bloc Party's "So Here We Are" is my general tone, "Tainted Love" comes up for Angus, my project managers on my team all herald their arrival with the Snoopy Dance song from Charlie Brown, and my managers get the Star Wars Death March.

When I get a voice mail, the message comes up as "Beans" as my hatred for kidney beans is equaled to my hatred of voice mails (during busy times, I have been known to amass over 30 voice mails a day. My hatred is thus well-founded.)

2) I have a birthmark on my left hip that is the size and shape of a strawberry. I think it's cute., however no one but me ever seems to remember that I have one. It's one of my favorite quizzes to pull on Angus. "Where's my birthmark, baby?" A frowed brow ensues, along with "Umm....the inside of your right elbow?"

See? He clearly has a perfect mind map of my body.

3) I cycle through breakfast foods. I will have a monthly favorite that I will eat every day (London travel permitting), and I will look forward to it every morning like a kid dancing around the soggy gin-soaked department store Santa knee at Christmastime. In April, I had a 4-minute boiled egg and toast every morning. I craved it, I might've died without it, I had to have it. In May, it became yogurt topped with granola-if I could just have it every morning, the world would be a safe place for both pedestrians and children. Now I am in-between-June has started and I need a breakfast pattern, only I haven't decided what it is yet. I think it may involve tofu bacon. I have a hankering (for a hunk of cheese) for that right now.

4) The perfumes I wear smell like things-Stila's Creme Bouquet, Demeter's Laundromat, Jaqua's Buttercream Frosting. Scents mean more to me when they are tangible comfort smell, I wouldn't know a ylang ylang if one came up and smacked me in the face and told me I owed it money.

5) I just started something I used to swear off-I like puzzles. Not those things that have a loop stuck around two pieces of wood, where the object is to get them off the wood and use them as a belay device a la McGuyver, (I think those puzzles have only one purpose-to beat the inventor of them and tell him that if stops making those puzzles now, he may get to keep his monocular). I mean I like things that make me think (although again strangely, I don't like sudoku. I don't see the point. If you want to do a punnet square then do one, don't fuck around with numbers 1-9). The computer and DS games I play have some kind of puzzle element. I was never a fan of jigsaw puzzles, only I opened one up last weekend and put together the 1000-piece puzzle and immediately ordered another one once that one was finished.

I can't believe I am publicly confessing I like jigsaw puzzles. I may be one step away from making crochet hats bearing googly eyes for my spare toilet paper rolls now.

No that's not true. I'd stop at the googly eyes.

6) I stress out badly with certain time-restrictive things. Not so much stress, really, as "freak the fuck out and take everyone with me" kind of reaction. Trains are one of my triggers-I like to leave the house 30 minutes ahead of time so that I can park, get my ticket, and wait on the platform with nary a drop of perspiration jetting down my forehead (I'm totally lying there. I don't usually get forehead sweat, I actually get the Asian-pattern top of lip sweat, aka the sweatstache). I get extremely razzled by running desperately for trains, I just hate it. It's the same thing with flights. That "be there an hour and a half before the flight" thing? Fine with me. I'm happy to park my ass with a book and wait, just so I don't have to stress. On a less severe note, strangely the same applies with movies. I want to be there early so I can have the seat I want. I detest running late for a film start, and while I don't love the 20 minutes of ads, I will sit through them in order to not be stressed.

I know-I am one step away from being Meryl Streep's character in Lemony Snicket.

Actually considering my love for grammar, I guess I'm already there.

Fuck.

7) I cannot tolerate people that leave the stickers and plastic film on their items. People who do that have something chemically wrong with them, like people who wear Members Only jackets and those who don't own a TV. Some of my team used to keep the film on their phone screens but they know better than that now as I can't resist taking off the film-if they bring it within a 5 meter radius of me I will have to remove the plastic. I literally can't stop myself. These days Peter just plunks down a box of new phones in front of me and lets me go to it. Film left on phones is the equivalent of covering the couch in a layer of cling film-who does that? Why would you do that? That's like packing up your couch in tupperware, minus the burping. It is absolutely a compulsion I can't resist-if the prime minister walked by with plastic film over his phone I'd be sent down to prison for assault as I reached for him to take it off. A guy I work with had one on his PSP, and I took it off, kissed it, and put it back on for him.

I will get a song in my head and then have to have it on my iPod, where I can listen to it many times in a row until the compulsion has worked its way out. It was like that recently with Metisse's "Boom Boom Ba". I heard it on my Dead Like Me DVD and thought: If I don't get this song I may die. It was so desperate that I had to break down and order the soundtrack to The Next Best Thing just to have it, and that's some kind of shame, ordering a CD from a Madonna movie. It's a sign of collapse. I mean, what's next, watching Swept Away in my former wedding dress while eating chili and swigging liquid from the bottom of my ficus tree?

9) There are two things that a refrigerator must always have-juice and cheese. Many things can come and go from a refrigerator but my own Midas evaluation comes from cheese and juice. There's no cheese and juice in there, then we have a category 4 emergency, which is second only to a category 5-emergency, known as "Oh My God, Run For Fuck's Sake As There's Another Robert Urich Made For TV Movie On Again" (This is where I get Billy Bob Thornton's strange phobias. He has phobias of antiques and the color orange. I myself nurse a Robert Urich phobia. And if it's a Robert Urich/Rue McClanahan made for TV movie on then I simply curl up in a ball and go catatonic.)

10) In this house, when the going gets rough, we have a drink (yeah, um, I know that's not really news. Consider it the introductory premise of this point then, yes?). In this house, we also try to get away for a few days to put the balance back in the bubble level (again, not a shock if you've been reading here for a while. Work with me here.) Since we have had a massive amount of stress lately (think 2000+ unread work mails, my complete inability to sit down and write anything, the past two weeks of daily fucking rain and a few other problems) we are then heeding our own advice, and going away.

We leave next Tuesday for 7 days on the Greek Islands of Santorini and Crete (but only if I can get the ferry right between Santorini and Crete, otherwise we have 7 days in Santorini, and this is stressing me to fuck. I absolutely know this will have little sympathy-Me: "Wah! I can't get the timings right on my exotic and beautiful Greek holiday!" You: "Really? Cry me a fucking river, babe.")

It will of course also entail introductory anxiety over train times, flights and ferries, but you can't win all the time.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:18 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1584 words, total size 8 kb.

1 Aaah, poor Robert Urich. The man is dead, give him a break. There won't be any new movies of his to freak you out.

Posted by: angela at June 01, 2006 11:59 AM (FlZPw)

2 I can so totally relate to the song thing. I don't have iTunes on my work computer and its driving me nuts. I get just a phrase stuck in my head and it keeps replaying until I get the song and listen to it for a week straight. Current song stuck: Dave Matthews Band, not sure of the actual name but the line just keeps replaying "And tomorrow we go back to being friends"...

Posted by: sarajane at June 01, 2006 12:47 PM (t5Xsa)

3 Seriously what do you have against Urich? Spencer for Hire rocked.

Posted by: mike at June 01, 2006 01:48 PM (DngOs)

4 Oh yes, my husband is a 'film' lover. It pisses me off to no end. Just to fuck with him (and the fact that I can't be trusted around plastic film) I always pull off just the corners, then dirty them up so it won't stick back on. That usually does the trick.

Posted by: Teresa at June 01, 2006 01:50 PM (uUfM/)

5 we have entirely too much in common. I cycle through breakfast foods. meee tooo. I have no idea how my husband manages to eat Honey Nut Cherrios every.single.day. I would shoot myself. he's been doing it for around 2 years now. The perfumes I wear smell like things-Stila's Creme Bouquet, Demeter's Laundromat, Jaqua's Buttercream Frosting. I looove Jaqua Buttercream Frosting. Emily bought me some last year. I use it on my feet (well, my husband uses it on my feet when he rubs them). I love Demeter stuff too. my favorite is the Orange Cream Pop. it totally brings me back to childhood. I actually get the Asian-pattern top of lip sweat, aka the sweatstache) I hate when I get this! not only do I get the sweat, but I also get flushed around my upper lip and the rest of my face gets really red, so I have this weird pale upper lip thing going. I want to be there early so I can have the seat I want. I detest running late for a film start, and while I don't love the 20 minutes of ads, I will sit through them in order to not be stressed. absolutely. I'll just wait for the next showing if we're running late b/c I have to sit either in the row in front of the bars so I can put my feet up or in the row on the aisle so I can stretch out. I hate having someone in front of me. I also have to be dead center or I'm very unhappy.

Posted by: girl at June 01, 2006 02:02 PM (ZIi+3)

6 I'm the same way about being early for flights and trains and such. I have never missed a flight, in fact that is my worst nightmare. I have a phobia of having a stop on any long flight because I am terrified I could miss my second flight. If I have to have a stop, I will give myself the longest amount of time possible between flights. One hour is simply not enough. And my husband has trained me to be psycho about the stickers and film too. What really pisses me off is when they use an adhesive that refuses to come off. Why would they do that with a sticker that is obviously meant to be removed? The sticker itself is not as bad as the remnants of the sticker that you couldn't get off. I will work obsessively to get all remaining bits of sticky off before I can do anything else. I'm like a dog with bone that way. Have a great trip to Greece!

Posted by: donna at June 01, 2006 03:01 PM (U1Lnv)

7 I have a phobia about hearing the song Tainted Love. I despise that song. I hate it with the heat of 1,000 suns. If I got a wayback machine I wouldnt save Kennedy, I kill whoever wrote that song. Ahem. Sorry. I hate emails and voicemails and messages in general and have been known to turn off my cell phone for months at a time. I need popcorn every day. And I have cycles of food obsessions about a lot of things - breakfast, candybars, etc. I have done many jigsaws and have never felt the need to knit toilet paper cozies. But if you get the urge (or want a good laugh)... http://www.threadbared.com/ Hugs!!

Posted by: That Girl at June 01, 2006 04:51 PM (QzfsY)

8 I could just hug you right now.

Posted by: Margi at June 01, 2006 05:14 PM (BRtaN)

9 I am with you on the stickers and plastic film. I wrote a whole post about it. Price stickers drive me nuts too and I will go to any length to remove them.....LOL I wish I was going to Santorini and Crete! I know you will have a great time - how could you not??

Posted by: kenju at June 01, 2006 07:28 PM (2+7OT)

10 Wow. Greece. Excellent!

Posted by: caltechgirl at June 01, 2006 08:18 PM (1mfa4)

11 I don't hate having plastic films on, I just loooooove pulling them off! I often will reapply them, just to pull them off again. Which sounds kinda wierd out loud, but you know how it goes. Have a great time on the vacation!

Posted by: A Duck at June 02, 2006 12:43 AM (DsS6B)

12 Oooh, Santorini and Crete! I was lucky enough to make that trip with a good friend and my archaeology professor fresh out of college. We spent most of the time on Crete, though. I will warn you, the ferry between Iraklio and Santorini, she can be rough. I hope you have a wonderful time! In my opinion, there are few things in this world more beautiful than the view over the bay/"blast zone" in Santorini. Just thinking about it makes me yearn to be there. I'm sure you have everything planned, but I'm happy to give you any information I can regarding recommendations and the like. By the way, Cretian wild thyme honey and fresh yogurt would make a lovely breakfast obsession! I know *I* had it every morning in Greece!

Posted by: Sharon at June 02, 2006 02:18 AM (pgnbp)

13 haha, you crazy-girl... be sure to take your camara...would love to see them greek isles (I vacation vicariously)

Posted by: J.M at June 02, 2006 05:36 AM (k3v0Q)

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