Meme'd: 8 random facts

Mary of Animal Person tagged me with a meme (what that heck is a meme?). Although I am up to my eyeballs in stuff I need to do, I thought it would at least be a good way to update my blog, since I haven’t in eons.

There are rules to this meme and here they are:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are 8 random facts about me:

1. I am a human barometer. I get nasty sinus headaches whenever it is going to precipitate. One of these days I want to keep a chart on severity of pain compared to inches of rain/snow to see if there is any correlation.

2. I have been making oatmeal-raisin scones every week for the past 20+ years. I put them in the freezer and take one out each morning for breakfast. The recipe came from a Quaker Oats recipe booklet. An early variation on that recipe was using applesauce for half the butter required in order to make them lower in fat. Now, I substitute vegan margarine for butter, egg replacer for the egg, and soy or rice milk for cow’s milk to make them vegan. Photo above shows “Sconehenge,” as created for breakfast on the winter (or was it summer?) solstice many years ago when I worked at the MFA, Boston. The figures are plastic cowboys wrapped in brown paper toweling; they were meant to portray druids.

3. I read the meme responses of Deb, who tagged Mary, who tagged me. As one of her facts she had that she has a slight degree of face blindness. I have been reading a lot about face blindness lately, it seems to be in the news. Funnily, at Harvard, I was a research subject, participating in the psych studies examining face blindness. But my fact is that I have the opposite of face blindness. I guess it would be a photographic memory for faces. I few years ago I recognized a guy on the street in Cambridge; he was my TA for German class at UMASS Amherst in 1980. I am surprised when people I’ve eaten a meal with don’t recognize me. I am always saying “hello” to people on the street who I’ve met, and I know they haven’t the foggiest idea who I am.

4. If there were such a thing as a “former life,” I would have been a Punjabi. Doing bhangra seems to be in my blood. See here and here.

5. I am a hoarder packrat.

6. I am more turned off by food textures than food tastes. I have a hard time with: carbonated drinks; peaches (I prefer fuzz-less nectarines); raw spinach and that metallic feeling your teeth get from it; custard-like (or “mucus-y,” as I call them) desserts; and meat (good thing I’m vegan).

7. I have a tattoo that reads “Ahimsa” in memory of my dog Rudy. Or would read if my skin hadn’t rejected the ink (it is the color of a henna tattoo). So it looks like a mess. Just today, a guy asked me if it was a burn. Ouch! Here is a photo of what it should look like.

8. It’s a rare day that I’m not wearing bangles.

I don’t know many other bloggers and the few whose blogs I do read have already been tagged. So, I am only tagging 5 others. They are Desi in Boston, Vegan Heart Doc, The Lifelong Activist, and to expand internationally, Straying Around and anakbrunei.