First was the always-entertaining and mysterious Marinka. If you aren't reading her yet, get started. I'm pretty sure she's Russian royalty in hiding in NYC, but she will neither confirm nor deny. She's a fan of my photography so she's pretty OK in my book, no matter what's behind that gauzy veil. She tagged me with the six odd things about me meme.We'll get to that one second...since that's kind of one of the odd things about me.
Next, the marvelous and magnanimous Mama Ginger Tree sent me a candy-gram from the Candy Cane Forest and tagged me with the Sixth Photo meme. The rules are to choose the sixth photo from your sixth album and post it along with a description or the story behind it. I don't really have any photo albums, so I took the CDs I've burned my photos onto -- which I spent a great deal of the weekend working on -- and picked the sixth one in the stack, then went to the sixth photo on it. Here it is:
It was taken in January 2005 in Hope Valley, near Tahoe. As you're probably not familiar with it: Hope Valley is a gem of a spot about a half hour from the south shore that's a popular area for cross-country skiing and sled dog training. I found a nice article about it that can tell you more if you're interested. You can see the tracks on the snow from people skiing and traipsing around, but you can also see that it's uncrowded and unspoiled.
It was a beautiful, clear day and this was taken during a break from snowshoeing. I like cross-country skiing, too, but I've found that snowshoeing is just as good a workout but a lot more enjoyable (i.e., less falling over). One of the photos that came after the one above is a favorite of mine, and it's related, so I thought I'd share that one, too.
On to the six odd things about myself.
1. I'm not a fan of doing the expected. I've mentioned here before that the more popular a book is, the less inclined I am to read it. Or if everyone else is turning right, I'm probably going to turn left. I'm not a non-conformist, really, because I do like following the rules, but if you have something with choices, I'm probably not going to take the one everyone else does.
2. The way I know I'm sick, like with this cold that's still dogging me, is when the roof of my mouth starts to itch.
3. I have an irrational fear of skunks. I can't explain it, I can't figure out why, and there's no good reason for it; I've never been sprayed. Spiders? No problem. Snakes? I think they're pretty cool, actually. Mice? No squealing here. But a black and white striped bit of vermin? I completely freeze up and my mind goes blank.
4. I pretty much won't answer the door or the phone if I don't have to. If I'm not expecting you to come by my house -- or you don't have a warrant to search the premises -- I will probably not even open the door. When I lived alone, I almost never answered the phone because no one who called it was someone I wanted to talk to; everyone else had my cell number.
5. I can flip my tongue over both ways in my mouth. Try it, it's not easy. It comes in handy for my one and only bar trick: quickly tying maraschino cherry stems with my tongue.
6. I am fond, really fond...really, really fond of ice in my beverages. "Ice is nice" is pretty much the motto I live by. Friends and family have become accustomed to my ordering extra glasses of ice, repeatedly, pretty much everywhere I go.
So, there you have it. And because I don't like to do the expected, I'm not going to tag anyone in particular for either of these memes (I'm supposed to pick, you guessed it, six people for each of them). If you want to do either or both of them, just let us know in the comments so we can come by and see; self-tagging, if you will.
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