Green Oasis

The truth is I’m not very big on the whole blog meme thing. No disrespect to those who like these things. I just have this reflexive aversion to anything that smacks of a chain letter. Because of my respect for Kullervo who tagged me and because he’s a great guy, I’ll participate, but under certain conditions.

1. I reserve the right to be a meme cul-de-sac. If I don’t feel like passing on the viral goodness, I won’t.
2. To keep the meme noise to a minimum, I only plan to respond to them on Fridays.
3. I reserve the right to guiltlessly not respond, especially to anything that seems too much like those meeting ice-breakers that I detest.
4. I won’t be bound by any rules that I don’t like.

Now that I’ve vented my curmudgeonly spleen, on to eight random facts about me:

1. My second toe is longer than my big toe. All of my toes are longer than average which confers some prehensile advantages. I’ve passed this trait on to my daughters (you’re welcome girls), so I’m hoping it has some evolutionary advantages. Here’s to the future long-toed race of übermenschen. In the same vein, my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers…
2. …which leads me to the next fact. (Wait, isn’t this supposed to be random?) I took my first college calculus class while in high school in an early studies program at the local university. I aced that first class, but flunked Calculus II twice. I went on to take more math than anyone except math majors, and perhaps physics majors. I went so far as to take a complex analysis course for one of my electives. In summary, I took my first college class back in 1992. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in 2003, eleven years later!
3. I just saw The Godfather for the first time last night. Excellent movie. I stayed up until 1AM last night to finish the three hour movie. Now I get all those quotes everyone has used all my life. I had avoided seeing it because of the dubious LDS ban on R-rated movies. Now I’m on a binge of forbidden movies to catch up on all the good stuff I missed all those years.
4. I don’t have favorites of anything.
5. I kissed a girl for the first time (with tongue, clumsily) when I was about five-years-old. We hid in the bushes in a neighbor’s yard. I remember that her tongue tasted fruity. One might augur from these auspicious beginnings a life like Casanova’s. Alas, my love life has not been characterized by abundance. What it has lacked for abundance, it has made up for in the end by bringing me my lovely wife.
6. I gained 15 pounds in my five weeks at the MTC. I think they intend to fatten up the foreign missionaries before they get tapeworms: every meal was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Unfortunately, I was going stateside, so I was just collateral damage. Being from Vegas you might expect me to have built up a resistance to buffets. But I was powerless. I had noticeable body fat for the first time in my life. Before the MTC, I could whip out about 20 pull-ups (25 if girls were watching). After the MTC, 10. The body fat has never gone away since then.
7. I enjoy the odor of diesel engine exhaust and fresh asphalt.
8. I’m wearing boxers today.

Today, Kullervo, I settled all Family business.