100 things

[written March 26, 2007]

1. I was born in the O.C.

2. My parents separated/divorced when my sister and I were 7.

3. I have a twin sister. (Who kindly supplied corrections comments, which I've marked in green.)

4. She's 5'10" (when people find out I have a twin sister, invariably the next question is "How tall is she?"--I'm 6'8").

5. I never played basketball--I have bad land coordination (but do function well in water).

6. My mom, sister, grandmother and I moved to San Antonio when I was 8.


7. My dad was a high school art teacher, served in the Coast Guard Merchant Marines in WWII (and the Army in the Korean War), and used to be a swim & water polo coach. He used to take me to games/meets with him.

8. I now run into people who coached against him or had him for art class--some initially have not made the connection between he and I.

9. My dad and sister still live in Laguna Beach in the house where we grew up. (She moved back to California after high school.)

10. The house is within walking distance of the beach. During summer visits with Dad--when my sister and I were kids--my sister and I would spend everyday at the beach.

11. I am no longer awed by the beach, nor need to go to it when it is near (e.g. everyday when I'm at the pool).


12. My mom still lives in San Antonio; she's remarried and both she and my step-dad are now retired (when she isn't writing a book).

13. My mom wishes she lived near the beach again.


14. I started this list in the middle of the night because thinking of things to include on it prevented me from going to sleep.

15. My drink of choice is Dr Pepper.

16. I have a stuffed-animal version of Lucifer the cat from Cinderella, that I got at DisneyWorld a few years ago--he's awesome (he's got claws). I don't think Disney would get away with naming a character "Lucifier" or "Devil" (Cruella De Vil) today (which is a little sad).

17. I didn't realize that Cruella's last name was a play on "devil" until 2-4 years ago.

18. This trait may be genetic: my mom learned from me about 5 years ago that Aretha spells out R-E-S-P-E-C-T; she'd known the song since it came out, just not that she was spelling "respect" (she doesn't really listen to lyrics as much as I).

19. In some respects, I'm a music fiend (I currently own almost 600 cds).

20. Macs are cool. :)


21. I was an alternate for the 1996 USA Olympic Swimming Team.

22. I spent the summer of 1996 alternating between hoping/praying for 1 of 2 people to get hurt, and feeling bad about it. It was an interesting/revealing summer. (One of them did get hurt, and still swam anyways.)


23. My mother's family is Roman Catholic; my father's is Mormon.

24. I'm not very into organized religion, yet at the same time have a strange attraction to religious-related movies/books (e.g. Dogma, Stigmata, Constantine).


25. I still hold school records in swimming at my high school and college (although the latter have been dropping like flies of late).

26. The same person who's breaking my college records, broke my Texas HS State (meet) record.

27. Records are there to be broken/bettered.


28. I've been known to sing Heatwave (either Martha & the Vandellas or Marilyn Monroe) in practice when the water's too warm.

29. I use lyrics for subjects of my blog posts to decrease the likelihood of my spouting them at random in conversations (it appears to be working... somewhat).


30. I miss Tex-Mex, and am afraid to eat Mexican food here in Florida other than Taco Bell (the latter's ok because I know what I'm getting into).

31. I moved to Fort Lauderdale 2 weeks before Hurricane Wilma; it was my first hurricane.

32. Prior to leaving San Antonio for Florida, I dealt with side effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (Katrina evacuees where in San Antonio and Austin. Corpus Christi and a portion of Houston evacuated to SA for Rita).

33. I had to alter my route when initially moving to Florida to drive around the Katrina/Rita damaged areas (I-10 wasn't open back up yet).


34. I studied French in high school and college; I thought I forgot it all.

35. When learning Spanish for work, I realized I hadn't: in the middle of constructing/saying sentences in Spanish, the correct French words would come out for parts of sentences. I was glad that I still knew the French, and frustrated because it was supposed to be Spanish.

36. I now tend to co-mix the two languages without knowing it, only realizing way after-the-fact, say, when a group of visiting Algerians start looking at me funny because of the random Spanish words intermixed with the French I'm attempting to speak to them with.


37. I'm a C.P.O. (certified pool operator--at least for another year/so)


38. I had my first swimming lessons when I was 2, swam summer league at 7, and started swimming on a year-round USS club team when I was 8.

39. I started swimming year-round because I missed the summer league season while moving to Texas.

40. I swam USS competitively for 22 years, and officially retired in 2004.

41. I had to officially retire so that I would be removed from the drug testing (DT) list, and not have to report my day-to-day whereabouts nor fret about taking any over-the-counter medication.

42. The answer to life, the universe and everything.

43. A guy I know tested positive on a test due to stray chemicals in a supplement he was taking (they were left over from what was mixed in the vat prior to the components for his pills--the FDA allows this). He was banned for 2 years from the sport. He has now finished his ban and is back swimming, hoping to make the USA 2008 Olympic team.

44. In swimming, a person qualifies for the DT list by being ranked in the top-50 in the world in an event.

45. I have certificates documenting this achievement.

46. At work I'm now in charge of printing and mailing these certificates (they just went out for 2006).

47. Once you get placed on the testing list, you're on it for life; so, if I want to go back and swim "competitively" again, I have to re-subject myself to drug testing (which I don't mind so much).

48. I'm currently plotting to unretire when I'm in my 40s to point out to the futility of my still being on the list.

49. I now swim Masters, partially because there's no drug testing.


50. I was and am a distance swimmer. At one point I had some ok 100s, and could fake a 50 free when needed.

51. I have now lost all ability to sprint, and can't fake a 100, let alone a 50. I am working to get it back, though.

52. I puzzle my swimming friends in the meantime by not really liking the short events (and avoiding them at meets) and negative splitting (second half faster than the first) things that shouldn't be (e.g. my 100 back in Houston last weekend).

53. My best event over time changed: from the 1500/1650 free to the 400/500 to the 400 IM to the 200 fly.


54. I swam my best time in the 1500 in 1990 when I was 16 years old (15:17).

55. I almost beat the time in 1993.


56. I once screwed up a World-Record attempt--he got the record later in the same meet.


57. While in high school, I swam in meets in Tallinn, U.S.S.R., and East Berlin, East Germany. Both are part of different countries now (Tallinn is in Estonia, Berlin is now undivided into East and West, as is Germany).

58. I returned to Berlin in 2002: I didn't really recognize anything (though it's ridiculously cool that they've marked where the wall was with a line of bricks in the street, and the juxtaposition of old buildings (built in the 1600s/earlier) with modern buildings, and that at the time the city was building a entirely brand new district in basically the middle of downtown).


59. Do you have a flag? No flag, no country; you can't have one. These are the rules I just made up...


60. I am very near-sighted (20/200 or so), and have worn glasses since 2^nd grade.

61. I remember at least one day in elementary school where I forgot to put on my glasses in the morning and couldn't see all day.

62. I do not wear "corrective" goggles while swimming: I grew up without doing so and am used to not seeing clearly while in the water (there's really not much to see).

63. The only things I really have problems seeing are pace clocks and swimmers on the other side of the pool (the latter I don't really need to see, and the former is also hampered by things like glare and poor contrast levels).

64. At the pool I currently train at, I requested/created a template for the scoreboard pace clock that is big enough to be seen literally a mile away (if not more). I'm not the only one who appreciates this... :)


65. Having analog (sweep-hand) pace clocks while growing up swimming helped me be able to better visualize mathematical patterns, and consequently be better at math. I've noticed that people who have only used digital pace clocks (which are now the norm), don't see the patterns as easily.

66. In college, the team once got into a disagreement about where we were in a set, when we were on an interval (55, I believe) that took 12 cycles to loop through (making knowing where we were in our set of 16 easy to identify).


67. At my first major international meet (in Rome), I was not use to the crosses on the bottom of the pool and misjudged where the wall was, turning about 6 inches from it and causing my shoulder blades to hit the wall and the lower half of my body to go up in the air. I had to wait for gravity to pull me back down into the water. I went from being a body-length ahead of the field to even with them: at the 200 mark of the 1500.

68. I hear the turn was quite an entertaining sight to behold.

69. Since that swim, I no longer use the crosses on the bottom to spot the wall, but rather spot off the wall.


70. Myself and two other Texans once raced side-by-side in a meet in Sheffield, England.

71. We wondered if we should have just raced in Texas (like we had before and would do after), rather than have gone all the way to England.


72. I tend to talk on my cellphone headset while driving.

73. I get a signal in my car, and tend to drive better while on the phone (I think because it focuses my distraction to one thing).

74. I don't really have a cell signal inside my condo.


75. Because of swimming, I didn't know the true color of my hair (dark brown) and that it was wavy until I in my late 20s. The chemicals in the pool and the daily shampooing/conditioning damaged my hair to the point it was straw-like in color and texture.

76. People at work thought I'd dyed and permed my hair when it grew in undamaged.

77. They didn't apparently understand that the sport tends to cause swimmers to not care that much about appearance. (You can't fix your hair (salon products aren't really designed for daily use, and actually make your hair more vulnerable to being damaged in a daily swimming environment), the chlorine smell only goes away when you're out of the water for a week (at least), and you usually get up way too early in the morning and have too little locker space (never mind that it's probably wet) to not have messed up clothes.)

78. In high school, the swim team was the only one who could really pull-off wearing their sweats to/in school.


79. During high school, I would get up at 5:55 ever morning to swim before school, and had no problem waking up. Same with college.

80. I now don't know/understand how I did that (I've been trying to get up at that same time for almost a year now, and have failed miserably--I've not given up hope yet, tho).


81. By taking "Regular" English (i.e. non-Honors) in high school, I missed reading almost every "classic" book there is to read (regular read 1 book a year, honors 12-20).

82. Since college, and since I've started to enjoy/like reading, I have been trying to make up for this. (That's why the current book I'm reading is posted on the page.)


83. I once worked for the USOC and lost my job when they cut the program I was part of.

84. I was not full-time employed for over 2 years. My family was ridiculously nice, patient and helpful during this time: thanks.

85. I started having minor insomnia while looking for a new j-o-b.


86. Eye tend two switch homophones when tired.

87. My word usage also tends to be somewhat shifted from others, and consequently, people misunderstand what I mean semi-frequently.

88. For example, a few months after moving here, I sent out a mass text message that I "hit" a drawbridge, meaning the drawbridge went up right before I got to it and I had to sit and wait for it. People outside the Ft.L area thought I'd run into the drawbridge--that I got into an accident.

89. I tend to not correct people when they infer/take the wrong meaning of things I do/say. Most of the time, it's not really that important, and in most cases my trying to "correct" their perceptions doesn't seem to help.


90. I (finally) started rowing right before I left Texas--I had wanted to try it for several years, but my commitment to swimming prevented me from doing so.

91. I drove 90-miles one-way to Austin in order to row, and didn't mind it.

92. I've not rowed since moving to Florida: I haven't been able to fit it into my schedule (excuses: there's too much traffic to the club in Miami, I don't know if the closer club got knocked out by Wilma, I left all the cool rowers in Austin...).

93. I miss rowing; moreso I miss the folks in Austin that I rowed with--crewÜ--though I do keep in touch (they just ignore me, Courtenay... ;).

94. They were the critical reason I started this blog: I had pondered starting one before, but their desire for me to start one once I left was what actually caused me to do so.

95. I had a major break in posting right after I started (2 months/so), however, due to Hurricane Wilma.

96. Because of Wilma, I: didn't have running water for 2 days, didn't have power at home for almost 6 weeks, and work was derailed for over 2 months. Showers in cold water because of no water heater was the worse part (particularly the day I had to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a flight--I dressed in a suit in the dark).

97. I've still not cleared up the email backlog Wilma caused (since Oct.05): currently I've got 23 "unread"--I return them to unread if I still need need to act on them--and 164 emails in my Inbox.

98. I miss cold weather here in Florida.

99. It is actually more humid here in Lauderdale than in San Antonio: SA's just hotter in the summer and colder in the winter.

100. I am tempted to have 101 items on this list, and put some Depeche Mode song for this post's title (but will refrain from both).


Comments welcome (that's why the options there, d'oh!).