"Introduce yourself!"

That phrase comes from one of my all time favorite SNL skits with Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri in the 90's, I think, where they were reject cheerleaders! ("My name is Craig. I give good hugs. I'm not your friend, if you do drugs!")

At any rate, I thought since I now have comments (Plural! Wow, thanks!) that I should divulge a little bit more about the girl in the hot pink shoes! (You can't tell from the picture, but they are faux snakeskin, too, and by far my most outrageous pair of shoes that I never wear because they are completely impractical!)

As for other fun facts, I'm taking a cue from all of those posts on Facebook lately. No, not the one about giving birth. One, for obvious reasons, and two, there is no need to share those kind of details with hundreds of your "friends" much less all of you nice (four) people!

So, you already know I have a pair of hot pink shoes that I never wear, but here are another 20 random facts about me. I think the ones on Facebook are "25 Random Things," but I can't think of anything else and this seems excessive enough as it is!

2. I am an only child. Sort of. I come from an "all-American" family. Not the 1950's kind, but rather the 1970's version where divorce was nearing the "1 out of every 2 households" statistic.

3. I have been contributing to the GNP since I was 15 and worked at an after-school day care program at the YMCA. I have had 16 jobs since then in my 31 years, including college and summer jobs. It's hard to think about "retiring" for a few years, but I'm excited to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Besides a mom, I guess I should say!

4. I am married to a spy. Okay, not really, but he's quite the linguist and has lived all over the world, so when we first stared dating, this was a constant joke. For the purpose of this blog, I will refer to him (usually!) as James Bond, or 007.

5. James Bond and I met on match.com. On our first date, we had wine and cheese (two of my favorite things), talked for 4 hours on a Wednesday night, and left holding hands. Our moms met 2 months later and I moved in "officially" (ahem) 6 months after we met.

6. I have an unhealthy appetite for parmigiano reggiano cheese. So much so, that when I found out that there is an entire TOWN in Italy (Parma, no less!) where it is produced, I promptly told Bond that we were going there for our 5 year wedding anniversary. Don't worry...Bond loves Parma ham, so he's on board, too.

7. I used to drink pickle juice from the jar. Actually, I still would but that's a lot of sodium and I'm puffy enough as it is these days!

8. I moved to the "big city" 7 years ago without a job. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

9. I am a trained speed reader. In 7th grade, my English teacher had a fancy projector that would highlight blurbs of sentences from a story and it would eliminate the "little words" like "and, the to, as, etc." It was timed and as we progressed the time each blurb was highlighted would get shorter and shorter, training you to read and comprehend more quickly. It definitely worked as I have been known to inhale books.

10. I can sleep most anywhere, but at night, I have to sleep with an eye patch and a white noise sound machine. I blame the eye patch on our neighbors' bathroom light that FLOODS our bedroom with light at night and wakes me up. The sound machine is also a byproduct of city living when I lived with my girlfriends in an adorable duplex, with nothing but plywood between the ceiling and the floor. For 3 years. I literally cried tears of bliss when the 3 college guys above us moved out.

11. In a previous life, I wanted to be a nurse. My background is in Exercise Physiology and my first job out of college was in cardiac rehab, with the plan that I'd always go back to school. That all changed when a nurse I worked with offered her veins for me to practice sticking her for a basic blood draw. I promptly passed out from seeing the blood.

12. I never met an argyle sweater I didn't love.

13. I paid off $25,000+ of credit card and car loan debt in 4 years while living in the city. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but I completely learned my lesson. I now have 1 credit card with a reasonable limit that I pay off every month.

14. My spice rack is organized alphabetically.

15. I have helped to deliver 2 babies and got to videotape a c-section! One of my aunts was a Labor and Delivery nurse and I job shadowed her one day (before the passing out incident.) It was by far one of the best days and though I have always wanted to be a mom and have kids, it was a great form of birth control at the time.

16. I used to secretly unwrap my presents before Christmas and very carefully re-wrap them. I still feel guilty about this and have vowed to never peek again!

17. When I first moved to the city and got a job, I had the biggest crush on my Greek co-worker. He was gorgeous and such a hard worker that he had 2 jobs! For his other job, he worked in a bar and stayed up all night, rarely sleeping before he would come to his day job, but somehow always wide awake! He was very successful and frequently would pay for our lunch, dinner or night on the town (with other co-workers, of course! Think group date!) with one of the many $100 bills he always had on him...in a roll with a rubber band. He also had really bad allergies and I would buy him allergy medicine because I felt so bad for him. But the meds must not have worked so well, because his nose would bleed all the time. It wasn't until his birthday party 2 months later that I saw him using what was really causing his nose bleeds. Did I mention that I grew up in the mid-west in a town that was recently named the "best county to raise your kids in?" What can I say, "love" really is blind and yes, I really was that naive. And he really was that hot!

18. I make really, really good rice krispie treats.

19. I got lost in Disney World. My half-sister and her husband took me and my nephew when I was about 12. We had a great day and when we were walking out en masse, I heard someone shout out my name behind me. I turned to look who was calling me and no sooner did I turn around, my sister was gone! A vendor took me to some assigned meeting place where kids go with "lost parents" and I was promptly found about 20 minutes later. I don't think my mom ever found out...until now! :)

20. I just got laid off today. I was going to quit in 2 weeks anyway, but never in my life did I think this would be happy news! With Bond traveling back and forth to Brasil 1-2 weeks at a time now, it will be much better that we can be together more and I can get ready for oh, you know, an international move...while pregnant! ;)

Okay, that was way harder than I thought as I started it over the weekend!