Five Things You Didn’t Know About Meredith

I got tagged by both Nicole and David, so I guess it’s my turn to share some stuff about me you may not already have known. I’m pretty open on my blog, so there isn’t a lot that I haven’t shared with you that I’d be willing to share in a public space. Here goes:

1. I have weird problems with my depth perception that lead me to often misjudge the distance between my body and stationary objects. This means that I bang into doors, door frames, coffee tables, desks, etc. (I get a lot of bruises). So if you ever see me at a conference taking the stairs very slowly, it’s only because I don’t trust that my feet are actually where I think they are.
2. I am a serious Bruce Springsteen fan and have been one since I was eight and my mom got me the Born in the USA album. I love his music (I think he’s the Walt Whitman of our time), I love his energy at concerts, and the man still looks good in a pair of jeans at 57, which is pretty hot. I even flew from Florida to Charlotte, NC to see him in concert once. Choosing to go to a job interview rather than see Bruce Springsteen in concert in Chicagoland was the toughest decision I ever made (and I regret it because that interview was awful!).
3. When I was a kid, I used to sing in talent shows. I remember winning trophies for singing “The Rainbow Connection” and the theme song from Flashdance (why I was singing anything from a movie about an exotic dancer/welder at age 7 is beyond me). I loved to sing. I still do, but more in the belting it out in the car sort of way. I have a photographic (phonographic? audiographic???) memory for music lyrics, so I can sing almost anything I’ve listened to a few times. I particularly love singing old standards by the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Harold Arlen. I love classic rock and lots of the folk/garage punk/alt-country stuff currently out there, but music was just so much prettier back when Ella, Billie, Bing and Frank were singing it.
4. I originally went to college at Wesleyan wanting to major in neuroscience. I then was invited to observe brain surgery by a neurosurgeon I met in the job I had my senior year of high school. As I stood in the OR, watching him remove a brain tumor from a man’s head, I suddenly got weak in the knees and my vision blurred. I wasn’t consciously disgusted or squeamish, but I had this weird visceral reaction to the whole thing that convinced me that I would not make a good doctor. The B-minuses I got in both biology and chemistry my Freshman year also helped. Since I was already taking a ton of History classes for fun, I thought it might make sense to major in a subject I actually liked and was good at. I always want to conquer the things that I struggle with, like science, math, public speaking, and coding. I hate to think that there are things I just can’t do. However, I can definitely accept that Medicine (especially neurosurgery!) was not the field for me.
5. I am a talented hula hooper. I won every hula hooping contest when I was 13 and had like a million bar mitzvahs to go to. When I was a kid, I could go for over an hour, and I can still go a really long time without dropping the hula hoop. I think it’s because I have good rhythm. I heard on NPR that hula hooping is becoming a hip thing to do somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s hoping that trend makes it to Vermont! 😉

I think just about everyone on my blogroll has taken part in this meme, so I’m not going to tag anyone in particular. If you haven’t already been tagged, consider yourself tagged now.

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. I am in the middle of cleaning out my fridge (fun!) so I’d better get back to it. A vacation at our house is always about doing the things we’ve neglected to do over the past few months. It’s not that much fun, but I feel so much better after it’s done.