January 19, 2007

• Six Weird Things About Baldmike

  SIX WEIRD THINGS CHALLENGE

  
  

  
  I'm doing the "Six Weird Things" challenge. I don't usually participate in these kinds of exercises, which I have been known to call "time wasters" on the internet, but in the spirit of fun, I have decided to accept rrrteeessst's challenge. She tagged me on Saturday, and I promised her I would write a blog this week containing "six weird things" about me.

  
  

  THE RULES:  Each player of this game starts with 6 weird things about you.  People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state the rules clearly.  In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names.  Don't forget to leave a comment that says, "You are tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

  
  

  
  1. I eat only one meal a day, and while that might be weird enough, I always eat in a restaurant. I can cook, but for the past 12 years I've lived with my roommate Joel, who is Oscar to my Felix. He cooks, but he NEVER cleans, so I don't use the kitchen. Actually, I began eating my one meal in a restaurant earlier than that. When I lived with Bob in "The Frat House", I didn't use his kitchen either, for much of the same reasons.
  I usually eat the same meal in the same restaurant. I eat at lunch on weekdays, with an hour off from work, so I bring the newspaper to lunch, and read the news while I eat. Every day I go to a different restaurant, and in at least three of them the waitress begins to prepare my order as soon as she sees me coming in the door. I have to have the table arranged a certain way, I need my "extra napkin", and before I'm ready to enjoy the meal, everything has to be "just so". I'm not that compulsive when I dine with others.

  
  

  2. When I was a child, I used to "rock" myself to sleep. I'd get up on all fours, as if I were crawling, with my head down against the pillow, and I would rock back and forth sideways until I fell asleep. I kept this up until I was in the fifth or sixth grade. To this day I have problems getting to sleep sometimes, and I tend to "twitch and turn",

  
  

  3. Although I can multitask pretty well, I would always rather complete one task before attempting to begin another, and sometimes I can be a bit obsessive about the project. For instance, I'm making another one of my "MikeVideo Internet Movies", and it's taken a week to create the six minutes I now have in the computer. Two days last week while editing the "movie" from the time I get home from work, I finally would get into bed at 11:00 p.m. or thereabouts, because I just couldn't stop the process. The closer I am to finally finishing something, the more obsessive I seem to get. At work, when this happens, and somebody comes into the office or calls on the telephone, I am sometimes apt to become upset at the interruption, and perhaps seem to "snap" at the person, so I have to continually watch myself.

  
  

  4. I hang all my shirts and pairs of pants on plastic hangers. (I hate using those "wire" hangers) Even if a shirt is dirty, I hang it up instead of dumping it in the hamper. I flip the hanger the other way to alert me that the shirt needs washing. I always buy permanent press clothing, and I will sometimes iron in extreme circumstances, but I prefer not to, so by hanging the clothes, they don't wrinkle too much.

  
  

  5. It has been said that if you ask me the time, I'll tell you how to build a clock. That's a nice way of saying I like to "explain" things, sometimes to the point of "over-explaining." I never know what knowledge anybody possesses about anything, so if you ask me a question, I'll probably start at the beginning, assuming you know nothing. At work, our engineer has the worst memory I've ever encountered. I don't like to waste time, so I usually begin any conversation by referencing the customer and the project, but sometimes when asking a simple engineering question regarding something he has taught me previously, he'll look at me like I'm crazy, because he forgot what we talked about previously. So now I'm apt to begin conversations referencing something he's told me by telling him what he said prior to asking the question.

  
  

  6. Lastly, unlike our engineer, I have near photographic memory. For years, the CEO relied upon my memory of work we had done in the past. I  can still remember clearly events from my own childhood as clearly as if they happened yesterday. I usually remember names really well. I made a joke once to a client about his memory skills. He was in his mid sixties at the time, and I was 30something. He told me he'd probably forgotten more than I remembered since he'd lived twice as long.  I always thought this was a great bit of information. I've actually deliberately "forgotten" things that I don't consider important in order to "make room" for other memories. Now that I'm approaching 54, I'm beginning to worry about the random "senior moments" which seem to occur more often. I hate it when I can't remember something. I call my brain the "search engine." When asked something, I might say I don't know right now, but a while later, the "search engine" will find the bit of info in my brain, and recall it, and then I will answer.

  
  

   

  
  

  I tried to think of physical traits that were "weird", but I'm relatively normal. So I just started thinking about the most interesting weird behaviorial quirks, and looking this over, it seems that I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, although I don't think of myself as such. I will admit to being anal-retentive, but I'm "learning" to tolerate sloppiness after living with my roommate for 12 years. I like things in "their place", and can't abide people who can't rememeber where they put stuff and tend to "lose their keys" like my ex-girlfriend Pat, about whom I've written that I made it "my job" to remember where she dropped them when she came home from work every night because she wouldn't remember.

  
  

  
  Almost everyone on Xanga has already participated in this challenge, so I will leave it to any readers to consider themselves "tagged" if they wish to participate and haven't seen this challenge as yet.

  • 10:26 am
  • 44 Comments