Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Seven Interesting Things

JenClair over at Bayou Quilts tagged me for the 7 interesting things about me meme. Ihave to say, this process was really hard for me. I am so totally normal. I am a suburban wife and mother. I am the typical soccer mom, down to the blue Ford Explorer with the soccer ball and school magnets on the back. And I have my yellow ribbon one, too. However, here is what I came up with...

1. I grew up in a planned community. Columbia, Maryland was planned by Jim Rouse in the 1960's. All the streets, shopping centers, schools, etc. were planned at the same time before the land was even bought. It was a wonderful place to grow up. People camped out overnight to be able to buy townhouses in the city. We had great schools. The population was very diverse. There are no church buildings in the city limits. The churches meet in "Interfaith Centers". These buildings have large rooms for church services, small chapels, classrooms for Sunday and Hebrew Schools, and offices for the church staffs. The one where my church met had a baptismal fount (is that the right word?) for the churches who did the full dunking for baptisms. We often had ecumenical services on religious holidays. Anyway, it was a cool place in which to grow up, and I miss it. Oh, and legend has it that Mr. Rouse, who attended my church, coined the term Mall in America. So the mall where I grew up is simply The Mall. By the way, Mr. Rouse designed the renovation of Faneuil Hall in Boston, the waterfront in Virginia Beach, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and other places, too. The Rouse Company built the Nordstrom at Perimeter Mall in Atlanta. My husband says you can literally watch the stress leave my body when I enter Nordstrom. I am transported back home.

2. I skipped class a few times in high school. (Anyone who knew me in high school who happened upon my blog is now saying, "WHAT??") My friend Norre (who now has an MD from Stanford) and I walked out after second period one day. When we were stopped by the assistant principal, we told him, as student government president and board of ed liaison, we were on our way to a meeting at the Board of Education. He actually got in his car and followed us. Luckily, once we turned into the parking lot, he went back to school, and we went on to the Mall. Emily, who graduated from Williams and is running charity operations in Georgia (of the former Soviet Union), and I walked out of calculus one day. We told the sub we were going to the library, but went and hung out on the pole vault mats for the rest of the day. I don't know why we weren't caught. That was the same day as the Howard County Scholars of Excellence (or some other such craziness) Night where we were both honored. I remember word getting around that Runyan and Reese had cut class that day. It was hysterical. It even made the senior edition of the school paper, The Bear Press. Reese and Runyan, Class Cutters Extraordinaire.

3. My favorite food is French Fries. There is nothing better than Boardwalk Fries. I have been trying to come up with excuses to go to Maryland to have fries since my parents moved a year and a half ago. I am not kidding you.

4. I got my first case of poison ivy three weeks ago. I have never had a reaction to the stuff before in my entire life. I know I have walked through it before. I spent a week clearing some area in our backyard for our new playground and got a little case of the stuff on my legs. It is nasty. I have since worked on getting the plants out of our yard. I will definitely be more careful in the future.

5. My best friends in all the world are my sisters. Though they don't live anywhere near me, I talk to at least one of them every day. I email with my younger sister at least 5 times a day. We vacation together almost every year. I am so glad that I have them.

6. My husband asked me to marry him three years to the day before our first son was born. There was a snow storm in Blacksburg the night before. He asked me to marry him on a playground. The night our son was born, there was no snow storm, and he was born in a hospital. I just think it is funny that the day was the same.

7. My husband and I have the same anniversary as my parents. Of course, they were married 28 years before us. But same day and same time.

Ok, that is it.

7 comments:

Debra Dixon said...

Some pretty interesting stuff there!

In HS I was on the yearbook staff and we met during 6th period. Practically the entire first semester everyone "had to" sell ads for the yearbook but that really meant we roamed around town. The year I was the editor the staff was divided between the actual "business" students and the "layout" students, which severely cut down on all the yearbook students skipping 6th period. It also cut down on the number of students who wanted to be on the yearbook staff!

jenclair said...

I love the idea of communities designed for people instead of growing up along highways in neighborhoods without centers.

I'm a recent initiate in the poison ivy club myself. :(

Thanks for playing, Jules!

Rian said...

I have never had poison ivy either. It doesn't affect me. Watch. Because I said that, now I'll get it.

Jo Raines said...

Love the seven random things. I've been away from blogging for so long due to trying to get samples done and life in general, it feels like a reunion of sorts for me. Maybe I'll get tagged though I'm not that interesting! You're lucky to have sisters.

Jo Raines said...

Oh and on the poision ivy front, I was never allergic until I was pregnant with Ben and helping Jerry put up fence posts. Now I can look at it and break out all over. I've had to go for shots before and prednisone. Yuck. And you don't build an immunity to it--every time you are affected it's like it gets worse. sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Granny Fran said...

I remember studying Rouse and Columbia in my graduate studies in Urban Planning at CU. I never got to visit it but I did enjoy seeing what he did with the Faneuil Hall redevelopment in Boston. What interesting things we find out about each other in this funny memes.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. I too grew up in a planned community (Oak Ridge), although it was ugly Army housing built in the space of months. Nothing pretty about it but the terrain. But it was a magical place to grow up, very egalitarian. I knew people of all faiths and cultures, and higher education was the main religion. We had community churches that served all faiths, until peacetime when specific denominations established themselves. (BTW, the dipping pool is a baptistry, and the font is for sprinkling.) It's nice to have good feelings about where you grew up.