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December 22, 2006

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

I was tagged by Terry with this meme and I found it really difficult, but here goes:

1) I can't sleep with socks on. As a child, I would go to bed with socks on, then kick them off under the covers - I don't know if it was before or after I fell asleep. My mom would complain about having to take my bed apart to find all my socks. Now, I just don't go to bed with socks on. I even have to take them off to nap on the couch.

2) I still sleep with stuffed animals. I'm a cuddle-sleeper, I need to grab on to something or someone. I had the same Teddy bear from 3rd grade up until Terry and I moved in together. Teddy (I was so original with the name, right?) was a gift from my maternal grandmother and he currently sleeps in a hammock behind the bedroom door. Teddy is a little big, so now I have an Eeyore that I bought at Disney World a couple of years ago as my primary sleep companion ("Big" - you may have seen him playing guitar in the Eeyore Quintet). But Teddy comes back from retirement when I am sick. He's very dedicated that way.

3) I'm very shy. I was horribly mocked, teased, and socially outcast in elementary school. I think a lot of it had to do with clothes, as I remember moments of acceptance revolving around clothes. We didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. My dad was diagnosed with MS when I was in 1st grade and forced to retire from being a police officer. Our income came from his pension and Social Security. A lot of my clothes at that age were hand-me-downs from my cousins living in Texas. The rest were discounted items from Sears, flea markets, and other discount stores. I was in a special program that meant I had the same classmates in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade and we were isolated from the other classes, so I never got away from these kids who lived to torture me. Things got better in middle and high school, but I never really got over friends turning on me and being the only girl not invited to classmates' parties -and one of my early classmates came back in my life to knock me out of my social circle for a while in high school. I still don't have many close friends and I tend to be reserved with new people, so I don't talk much in groups and don't come off well. I'm terribly afraid of that childhood rejection still, so I don't put myself out there much. I am, as a note, a huge fan of school uniforms for all kids in all schools.

4) I have worked as an art teacher's assistant, a computer class assistant, a babysitter, an assistant gymnastics coach, a lifeguard, a birthday party hostess, a swimming instructor, and an office assistant/orderly in the student health center, roughly in that order before moving to exclusively computer related jobs.

5) My extracurriculars in no way resembled what I would end up doing as an adult. I did gymnastics (never competitvely) for about 8 years. I was a cheerleader in high school for one year, but didn't go back because I didn't like my teammates (typical spoiled obnoxious LI girls). I was annoyed when they all quit, too, because I liked cheering. I ran track for two years, but I was awful. Eventually, I landed on music as my passion and threw myself into it. I took private voice lessons, studying classical voice with the occasional show tune for fun, for six years. I was All-County in voice three times by the 9th grade (just missed it every year afterwards by one or two points). I won the chorus award at 8th grade graduation. I won the National School Choral Award for my high school senior year. I took music theory instead of AP Bio and wanted to major in music education with a minor in theater ( I acted in a couple of shows, but I was a huge technical theater person, directing and stage managing in my senior year). My parents pushed me into going to Ithaca College because they offered me the most aid and within two months I had decided to drop music and transfer out. When I started at the University of Delaware in spring '97, I was a computer science major, because I had really enjoyed my discrete math class at Ithaca and done really well at it. I continued to do well, so it stuck.

Whew. A lot of stuff about me growing up. Makes sense, I guess, since people who know me now weren't around me then. I hope it wasn't too boring!

I would tag someone, but everyone I know with a blog has already been tagged.

Posted by Janice Ryan at 3:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 19, 2006

Do something nice for the enviroment

The form letter I received after signing an electronic petition asking that the environment be a priority for the new Congress in January -

Subject: Help Al Gore Send a Message to Congress

Hi,

Al Gore is ready to build on the success of "An Inconvenient Truth" and start organizing to solve the climate crisis. He's working to get hundreds of thousands of messages to Congress demanding real action to stop global warming. And he's asking for our help.

Can you help out by signing the petition at the link below? If you do, Al Gore will personally deliver our comments to Congress. I just did it myself and it only takes a second.

http://pol.moveon.org/climatecrisis/

Thanks!

Form letters aside, we do need the government to step in and demand higher environmental standards. Did you know that polar bears are dying because the arctic ice cap is melting and they can't find ice to hold them when they're too tired to swim? That the mean temperature of the Earth has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past 100 years and many places are the hottest they've ever been since 900 A.D.?

So sign the petition!

Posted by Janice Ryan at 7:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack