Tagged!

Cragar tagged me. Thanks, Cragar!

Here are the rules:

* We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

* At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

* Don’t forget to leave them each a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.


1. I am the youngest of three girls. I am a typical youngest child in many ways (attention seeking, entertainer, adventurous), but I also confound the stereotype in others (I hold more academic degrees than a person needs, and can be super competitive at times).

2. I am addicted to Carolyn Hax columns, the Washington Post advice columnist. No matter where I am in the world, if it’s a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday, and I’m online, I will look her up.

3. I have four nephews and a niece and I love being an aunt. I’m a damn good aunt, too, or so I keep telling them. We make up games like Tickle Monster and the Pillow Game. I melt whenever I hold my 1-year old niece and she puts her head on my shoulder, body completely relaxed, and sighs. Next best thing to being a parent, I imagine. Though actually, it’s quite possibly better because I still get a full night’s sleep, and when they’re grouchy I give ‘em back to Mom & Dad.

4. I am on my second passport – I love to travel! I am still proud of going on a solo backpacking trip in France and Italy when I was a mere 22-year old college graduate. I have visited about 25 countries so far.

5. I am opinionated and can be stubborn, just like my dad. At the end of the day, even if I ask others for advice or input on some decision I need to make, I will make the decision for me and nobody else. (Which works out just fine for now, since I don’t have a husband or kids to take into consideration.)

6. I live close enough to my job that I can walk, bike, or take the bus. A long commute to work would kill me.

7. On a related note, I hate suburbs. I have degrees in architecture and urban planning, and I have serious issues with our car-centric approach to sprawl-style development in the United States. It is dehumanizing, isolating, damaging to the environment, and, quite simply, depressing (I believe I have also called it “soul sucking”). Gated communities make my blood boil; in our built environment, we keep separating ourselves more and more from others who are not like us, both reflecting and exacerbating our irrational fears about the “other”.

8. I am an idealist and often long for what “ought” to be. But I can also flip a switch and be a pragmatic realist. I think this latter tendency may have prompted the faith questions that are now tumbling out, one after another. Quite simply, the empirical, real-life “data” as it relates to God doesn’t match up to the ideals about God that I have believed most of my life.

I’m new enough to the blogging world that I don’t have people to tag yet, or they have already been tagged by cragar or others...