Virtual Cocktail Party

Ok, so I went over to Vexed in the City this morning and got tagged with this Virtual Cocktail Party meme. I'm supposed to find five (bloggable) things that you might not know about little ole me. And, as usual, consider yourself tagged in kind if you are reading this!

1. This may come as no great surprise if you know me at all, but you may not be privy to the fact that I have never, ever smoked a single cigarette. Not even a puff. I was once tempted to try one at a party when I was living in Denmark, but I didn't follow through.

2. Something that may or may not be common knowledge for most of you (Rick doesn't count because there is not much, if anything, that he doesn't know about me!) - beer and chocolate don't mix for me. I don't like the taste of them together, obviously, but if I eat/drink them in the same time frame (of probably a few hours) I puke my guts out.

3. I am a published translator. A few years out of college I translated two short stories from Danish to English for a collection of short stories. I have a few copies stored away in a box somewhere... The author of one of the short stories liked my translation so much she sent me a book she wrote in the hopes that I would enjoy it and translate it. I never got around to reading it and now it would be very hard given my decreased Danish language skills! Anyway, my short stories appeared in the March 1995 issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction (under my maiden name Griffin).

....ummmmmm more later. I've come back to this post a few times and still can't think of anything to say...

Ok, I thought of a couple more while I was getting my upper body workout done for today...

4. I once auditioned for "Community Auditions" (Talent Show on Channel 56? in Boston). I was, I think, in 8th grade, and it was a actually with my friend Katie - we played a HORRIBLE flute duet. Why we ever thought we could get on the show is beyond me but I remember it being a long day of waiting in line with butterflies in my stomach. Such fun! ;-)

"Star of the Day
Who will it be?
Your vote may hold the key!
It's up to you!
So tell us who!
Will be...Star of the Day!"

5. I have come close to failing only one class ever in my life. My freshman year I took Microeconomics in the hopes of eventually becoming a business major (don't laugh). It was in a classroom dubbed "the cave" by many students - a huge 500-seat lecture hall (but many of the seats were broken so I think the classes held there were on the order of 250-300 students) with poor acoustics and even worse lighting. It was easy to fall asleep during that lecture and I had a foreign teaching assistant who was impossible to understand and who seemed to understand our questions even less. I can recall sitting in the lecture hall during the midterm and later the final and sweating profusely with tears in my eyes because I felt like I was trying to decipher a foreign language. I honestly had NO idea what the hell the questions were asking me to do. It was a scary moment for me - I thought about how disappointed my dad would be (he encouraged the business major thing and I was all for it at that point because I had this fantasy of living in Denmark and doing some kind of job in international business....didn't I just tell you not to laugh!?...of course dad had hopes that I would come back home and work for the family business...) and the thought of actually FAILING a class was unfathomable! I was not exactly an "A" student throughout high school but I got by just fine with mostly Bs, a few As and, if I recall, a couple of Cs thrown in for good measure. I remember being home over January break and being very moody and cross and having my mom ask me what was wrong and I broke down in tears and screamed that I "FUCKING FAILED MICROECONOMICS!" Yep...I think that was the first time my mom heard me swear! Turns out I did better than at least a few of the other students in the class because by some miracle I got my report card in the mail and I was blessed with a CD. Still not a grade to be proud of, but I did not lose all credit for the class. I did, however, change my status from "business major wanna-be" to simply "undeclared" and it was not until late in my sophomore year that I decided to major in Linguistics with a concentration in Anthropology.

Ok, so some of you probably already knew some of this stuff, but it was the best I could come up with!