Because I’ve been tagged again, I will try my best to come up with 25 additional things that may be of interest and/or amusement about me.  I might fail, though, so don’t hold your breath.

1. I really enjoy baking bread.  I likes kneading it, and I likes eating it.
2. I wrote my senior thesis on Joseph Conrad even though I didn’t really like him.  In retrospect, I’m not really sure why I got such a good grade on it.
3. I go through phases in which I’m really interested in alchemy.
4. I would really like to learn Esperanto for absolutely no good reason.
5. I used to think that if I ever moved somewhere new, I would like to go by my middle name, which is Marie.
6. I was a practical instructor for the med school at the University of Illinois.  This meant that among other things, I taught med students to do breast and pelvic exams.
7. As a result of #6, I am now quite competent at breast and pelvic exams, though I’m totally not diagnostically qualified to do them.
8. Also as a result of #6, I know that I have an anteverted uterus and nodular breast tissue, and both of those things are NORMAL.
9. Also as a result of #6, I learned the word ‘os’, which has come in handy while playing Scrabble recently.
10. I’m about six weeks away from defending my thesis for my Certificate of Advanced Study, a degree I’m completing mainly because I left a doctoral program and didn’t want my work to go to waste.
11. I wasn’t allowed to watch cartoons when I was a kid, so I missed out on all of the theme songs and commercial jingles that Shane and Keem seem to know so well.
12. My first pet was a fish from a carnival.  It lived a lot longer than carnival fish should.
13. Since then I have had: 4 cats and 1 rabbit, plus other secondary pets owned by roommates.  I think I also had a fish, but I can’t really remember.
14. I love love love county fairs, but really only the ones that have small animal barns for my perusal.  I particularly like the chickens that appear to be wearing pants.
15. I currently have my tongue, ears, and tragii pierced.  I used to have my belly button pierced, along with a second stud in my tongue.
16. When I went to library school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I thought it might involve kids.
17. Within the first week of library school, I decided that I didn’t want to be a librarian – not because I didn’t like library stuff, but because I was much more engaged in other things.  Whoops.
18. Last year I canned vegetables and made pickles for the first time.  I’m looking forward to expanding my canning empire in the new year.
19. I infinitely prefer sleeping with the windows open to the alternative, even if it means that the light makes it harder to get to sleep.  This may be a reaction to the fact that most of my relationship dudes have preferred a very dark bedroom.
20. I love ranch dressing.  It’s a fault, and I know it, but I don’t really care.
21. I am Very Bad at video games.
22. I played volleyball in junior high and high school.  I’m not sure why I was encouraged to do this, as I wasn’t very good.  Things that involve hand-eye coordination and/or things flying at my face are generally a bad idea for me.
23. In college I wrote some very melodramatic poetry that was published in the school literary journal.  But then who didn’t?
24. When I was 4, I was very concerned about extinction.  To wit, I cried when I learned that the dodo was extinct.
25. Serve me a relish tray, and I’ll be happy.  It was always the first thing to go at the holidays at grandma’s house because my sibs and I would steal all the olives and pickles.  That hasn’t changed.