A tag--7 facts about me

To aid Kirsty's self confidence, I'm participating in my first and perhaps only blog tag. The rules, which I will break, are:

1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

My response:

1) Done!

2) Facts. About me. Hmmn. 

- I was conceived in Irvine, California, but born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I went back to Irvine for the first time about a year ago, just for the day.

- My sister used to call me Panthernetic, Pantherfart, many other names with "fart" in them, and Woes Kumale (long story... it had to do with her thinking I was always in a bad mood). Also Foo-foo or Foof, which is what she still calls me.

- A word I remember learning about as a kid: "lethargic." I learned it because my horse riding teacher, Nathalie, referred to my horse, Wally, as "lethargic." I didn't know what it meant, so I went home and looked up in a dictionary. My sister told on me the next time we went to the stables (in that she told Nathalie that I had to look that word up). Nathalie was right--Wally was lethargic. Once, an American came to visit us (in South Africa, where I was living) and since she was a horse rider, I let her ride Wally. She made him look so good! He wasn't acting lethargic at all. Even though I rode horses for years after that, I never did learn to make a lazy horse move more energetically. 

- I don't ride horses any more. Riding horses takes a lot of time and a lot of money. But I don't think a day goes by when I don't imagine myself riding a horse (and riding the horse much better than I do in real life). When I'm in a car, I imagine I'm galloping down the road on a very big horse and jumping the road signs. When I'm in a "slow" seminar at work, I sometimes imagine an emergency when someone comes running into the room with a saddled horse and yells "who knows how to ride?" and they need me to go galloping off on the horse to help someone in trouble. Which I do, and then everyone I work with is all impressed, since they don't know I know how to ride horses. I kid you not--I really do have that daydream. Laugh all you want. I think it's funny too. I don't always imagine the horse I'm riding jumping or galloping, by the way... I imagine doing dressage (horse "ballet"... a discipline that requires horse and rider to be highly trained and that demonstrates control and communication between horse and rider) at times too. 

- I've been a vegetarian (ovo-lacto) for 20 years.  The reasons I don't think I will ever be a vegan (though in theory I'd like to be one): butter, sour cream and marscapone. And grilled cheese sandwiches. I do try to limit my dairy (other than items on the above list) and egg usage and one day maybe I'll write about how I manage to bake some things without eggs.

- I'm listening to Silversun Pickups while I write this. My colleague and friend Carl is letting me give the album a whirl, since he plays them at work sometimes and I always say "who's this again?" I'm enjoying it. I wasn't sure at first.

- My favorite musicians of all time are Neil Finn (as singer of Crowded House, or all on his own) and A-ha. For all of you (meaning the 2-3 people who read my blog) who remember A-ha only as the singers of the 1980's hit "Take on me," I'll have you know they still put out CD's and I like their new music as much as I like their old music. 

That was a lot less painful than I thought! I can even think of other things I could've written about.

3) and 4). I'm breaking these rules. There are only three people who I know read my blog: my sister, my mother and Kirsty. But hey, if there is someone else out there reading this, feel free to nominate yourself for this tag.