The Cassandra Complex

There's been a lot of these tags going around at deviantART recently, so I was familiar with the concept when I got tagged here by Mikey.

Twenty random facts about myself? Gotta try and think of something I haven't already said here... Hmm.

1) My very first celebrity crush was John Farnham. My second was Jason Donovan. Yes, this was in the days of the "Especially For You" duet with Kylie. I still remember most of the words, too - I had it on record. Ah, records... It actually wasn't till I finished uni that I realised that commercial stations and their mass produced wares aren't worth my time.

2) I have a three bedroom house (I am mortgage-bound) and one of the bedrooms has floor to ceiling bookshelves in it. There are five of them (the room's not that big). My books are in alphabetical order by surname of the author. Most of them are fantasy but there's a smattering of horror and sci-fi too.

3) I dislike people who say they are writing a novel. This is partly because it sounds so pretentious, but also partly (quietly) because I don't believe I'll ever write a novel myself, and I'd really like to. My preferred sort would be set in the real world with a supernatural twist, like the Anita Blake books ... but with less sex. But I have yet to think of an idea that I feel is sufficiently original that I wouldn't have huge amounts of guilt if I wrote it.

4) I am a very emotional person. I cry easily, I get angry easily, I laugh easily (I am a typical Aries, actually). I tend to drive those I love mad with it. As a flip side to this, I hate confrontation. If someone starts yelling at me or if I have to think fast to outwit them in a social situation, I freeze up. This is bad in both LARPing and real life.

5) My favourite childhood book is "The Stone Cage" by Nicholas Stuart Gray. It's an old book which is a re-telling of the Rapunzel story where the main characters are the witch's cat and owl. I read it in primary school and then again in year eleven as part of my children's literature studies (I went looking for it because I remembered how much I enjoyed it). A few years ago I got myself an Amazon UK logon so I could buy it from the UK. On 18 January 2003 during the Canberra bushfires, when I was throwing together the things I wanted to take with me in case I had to evacuate, I threw in that book but forgot the degree hanging on the wall.

6) Even though I am not Christian, I love stories with demons and angels in them. I think it's because of the sense of tremendous backstory and weight that they have. For the record, my religion is probably closest to a non-practicing Wiccan.

7) When I was a teenager it struck me that I was the daisy of the plant world - I'd never be a rose like some of the girls I admired and hated so much. Daisies, on the other hand, are common and considered a weed, but they're also hardy ... and I like yellow. To this day a smattering of daisies all over someone's nice even lawn brings a smile to my face, and I consider them my favourite flower.

8) I am almost blind in one eye. When I was born it was turned, and even though they operated to correct it (more or less), my brain never really learned how to see properly out of it.

9) I have the dubious privilege of being the youngest person that my doctor has ever put on cholesterol tablets. It seems I have genetic high cholesterol. The doc said that if we didn't reduce it I'd have a heart attack by the time I was forty. Yay.

10) I am a moderator at the Elijah Wood Fan Network website, in the forums. I joined there in January 2004 after seeing Return of the King and developing a mild celebrity crush. I got over it pretty fast, but still go to the boards about once a week to catch up with people.

11) I used to use a ouija board a lot when I was in my late teens and early 20s. For some reason I could never do it on my own but when I was touching the glass and others were there, it worked beautifully. I didn't even have to be looking at it for it to work. We stopped doing it after one time when we had a series of very freaky experiences (dogs barking, doors banging, the glass going crazy and "something" threatening to kill people). It turned out that one of the people at the party had brougth a Satanic Bible with him - seriously.

12) I had my first kiss at the age of 16. I was drunk at a party, which was the only reason I was brave enough to even talk to the guy. I'd never met him before; his name was Simon. I found out the next day that he had a girlfriend, and felt very shitty about it.

13) Thirteen is my favourite number. I consider it lucky.

14) In college (that's year 11 and 12 of high school for those of you that think "college" means university) I got four As and one B every single semester. In the first three semesters, the B was in drama. In the fourth I tried so hard at drama that I got a B in computing instead. D'oh!

15) I am terrified of turning 30 next April. I always thought I'd have done a lot more by the time I was 30 - getting married, having kids, etc - and facing the fact that I haven't is going to be hard.

16) My favourite punctuation mark is the semi-colon. I even wrote a poem about it once.

17) I like filling out surveys and quizzes. That is probably why I am responding to this tagged thing at all, and why I thought the census was fun last time they did it. It's presumably the part of my brain that likes to compartment things taking over.

18) I am left handed. I know that they say that this means a person is meant to be more artistic or whatever. But I have a vague suspicion that it doesn't apply to me even if it is true and not an old wives tale - I broke my right arm when I was in kindergarten and therefore learned to write with my left hand. But I tend to do some other things with my right hand. It's not that I am ambidextrous - more that I use specific hands for specific things.

19) I am underambitious. I know this to be true because a psychologist test (a real one, not a dodgy internet one) told me so. Also because every single job I've had I've pretty much fallen into, from the nightfiller job I got in year 11 (I applied because all my friends were) to the one I have now (I applied for a different job because it sounded like fun, got it, and then got offered a change of duties). My boss (who is a senior executive in the public service) told me a month or two ago that if I wanted to I could be a senior executive in a few years. I told her I was underambitious. Was that a mistake? O_o

20) I hate the sound of a nail file being used. It makes my hair stand on end and my teeth ache. This dates back to reading an article about a pacific island tribe that filed its teeth to points. Consequently, I use nail clippers rather than a file.