My Next List of 101 Things

I've been inspired by 2 muses, so I'm compelled to do another 101 things about me and my life.

1. My 2 cats are named after characters in an obscure British comedy from the 80s.
2. Out of their entire litter, there are only 3 surviving of the 6. The mother is long dead too. My sister has the other surviving cat.
3. 'Sex Caffeine' was 15 emails away from becoming the "#1 most-referred-to" in my work email before I left.
4. The #1 person ended up being a woman I worked with off-and-on since 1998. She was laid off temporarily back in the spring of 2000 and we corresponded quite frequently as I was relaying "news" to her while she was away. We'd had 584 messages relayed between 1998 and 2004.
5. Sex Caffeine and I had 569 messages in just over 2 years.
   
6. Twice weekly, during the summer, I head over to a place called Grab-A-Java and get a mocha milkshake. If I just want a regular coffee and the owner's there --it's free. We've known each other through a network of people for over 10 years.
7. Every July 1st (Canada Day), I go out early in the morning and pick strawberries from our garden. Wash 'em up, slice them and put a maple leaf design on the breakfast pancakes for the family.
8. Apparently, I wasn't the only one called into face the music last week. 'Drama Queen' got hers too. Sweet. Only 2 people are shocked by this, though. My old boss and DQ herself.
9. For the new job opening in that department, my boss sent DQ to pick up the resumes. She read through them on the way back and talked to the various people who had applied. Dumber than I thought!
10. My favorite artist is a man named George Perez. He's an extremely talented comic book artist and has been drawing for major publishers since the mid-70s.
    
11. I have a hardcover book about his artwork and it's one of only 15 in existence.
12. I started my own 'tribe' on www.tribe.net called "Hairyhoser's Lonely Party."
13. There's only one member.
14. I once tried to get my friends to vote for me as the Greatest Canadian, but forgot to send the message. So, I'm the greatest slightly-inept Canadian, eh?
15. The wedding gift from my parents was a jumbo-sized can of Ravioli.
16. Actually, they splurged for the honeymoon, but they thought the Ravioli was good for a laugh at the gift opening.
17. The honeymoon consisted of a 10-day trip to England to visit Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and London.
18. We went to Oxford to visit Magdalene (pronounced "maud-lin") College where C.S. Lewis taught. We ate dinner that night at the same table at the Eagle and Child where Lewis would sit with J.R.R. Tolkien and others and discuss their stories. I had pizza and beer.
19. In Stratford, we saw a couple of Shakespeare plays (of course) and did a little shopping.
20. In London, we stayed at a hotel on Baker Street (of Sherlock Holmes fame) and went on daily shopping trips along Oxford street.
21. One of our last days there, the Underground was shut down on strike and the city was chaotic with traffic. My wife & I had our first big fight.
    
22. I've only been fall-down drunk twice in my life and one of those times was in England in 1994.
23. I'd just finished climbing the cathedral spire in Salisbury, the highest spire in England (maybe Europe, I can't remember).
24. I'm afraid of heights. Get it?
25. I'm also a little claustrophobic. I don't like pressing crowdsof people.
26. Although 13 is my lucky number.
27. It's the number I have on my hockey jersey.
28. My favorite hockey player of all time is Mike Gartner. He scored over 700 goals in his career and never won the Stanley Cup. I think he was the oldest player to win the All-Star MVP award, though.
29. He's Christian.
30. 'Hairyhoser' actually is 2 nicknames of mine combined. I used to be called 'Hairy' in high school and 'Dreama' started calling me 'Hoser' when I called her 'Brat.'
31. I once taught Sunday School for a year and pretty much hated it.
32. I've never smoked pot.
33. I have inhaled, though.
34. It was at a Pink Floyd concert in 1986. Yep, I was 13 and at a Pink Floyd concert.
35. Prince Charles once stepped on my sister's foot.
36. It was on her 15th birthday and the same day my father was in a TV commercial.
37. The last concert I went to was Swollen Members. There was almost a riot. I was backstage and the head of security gave me a hat form his company for helping out.
38. I watched one of the gates while the guards went to hold the fence together.
39. When I was 25 years old, I bought my first house.
40. It has 5 bedrooms and a kitchen area that can seat 10.
41. My wife and I were all alone in that house for the first 2 years.
42. When I was 26, I owned my own business.
43. I was 27 when I shut it down.
44. I owed over $2000 in rent and had less than $50 a day coming in.
45. The tax breaks were phenomenal.
46. The first pirated movie I owned was Lord of the Rings.
47. Or maybe it was Monster's Inc.
48. I once vowed never to own a dishwasher after my wife insisted anything going in the dishwasher needed to be washed off first (huh?).
49. After the year we lived in the condo, sans dishwasher, I changed my mind.
50. The entire year we lived in the condo, our street was under construction, first being widened, then being repaved.
51. The day we moved into our first home in a different city, they dug up the main street.
52. When I went to get pizza for dinner that night, it had been repaved already.
53. My very first kiss was with a girl in my grade 5 class.
54. My coldest day of school was my first day of school in Dawson Creek (no relation to the show --trust me) in January 1982. It was -44C outside (or -47.2F).
55. There was barely anyone in class as the schoolbuses were frozen solid.
56. Being the complicated guy I am, the #1 choice of anywhere to live would be in some warm, but remote (read: quiet) place. Kind of like when my family lived in the Okanagan.
57. Barring that, I'd rather live in a condo in downtown Vancouver. Go figure, eh?
58. My favorite cartoon while growing up was Starblazers.
59. My second favorite was Scooby Doo.
    
60. Until Scrappy came along.
61. A college friend & I once went on a mad hunt for Koogle. We didn't realize it had been nearly 20 years since it had been discontinued.
62. We also had an acquaintance in college who used to cry during exams and once flushed a paper down the toilet because the prof had failed him and it was "obviously shit!"
63. This guy once told my friend during a fire drill that he hoped he'd burn in Hell.
64. We used to tell stories to anyone who'd listen when we worked together at the tourist site.
65. We went on a hunt for him once too. I'd run into him (almost literally) while walking with my wife in Victoria. I took his picture (he was wearing a sandwich board for an Italian restaurant) and sent it to our favorite profs in college.
66. I once had a crush on Olivia Newton John around the time she & John Travolta starred in 'Two of a Kind.'
67. I always thought that a very cool super power would be time manipulation, much like one of the characters in... Two of a Kind. (like that transition?)
68. Olivia Newton John wore a very, very short pink housecoat in that movie.
69. This is from memory. I think I last saw that movie in 1986.
70. In high school, I was in honours French and honours English.
71. My English teacher once scored me 'x out of 20' on a short story. It was "too good" to give it a mark.
72. He eventually decided to "weigh it" to give me 100% if I ever did poorly on any other paper.
73. It didn't happen. Even during the public speaking portion of class I got more than 100%. We received a bonus if we volunteered to speak first.
74. The next year my teacher accused me of plagiarism for a children's story we were assigned to write. She didn't think any child would like a story with knights, dragons and a wizard explaining that the knight would die if he killed the last dragon.
    
75. I wanted to be an artist or cartoonist, but my parents spent years convincing me it was a bad idea and I should do something more productive with my life,
76. One of my close friends in high school ended up going on to animation school.
77. Not he's done much with his career.
78. Fortunately, that 'bad idea' of mine only brings home about $120K a year, but who needs money?
79. Or a job?
80. My wife has more cousins than she can count and some of them married other cousins without realizing they were related.
81. Her dad has 5 siblings.
82. Her mom has 5 as well.
83. Most had 3 or more kids, so do the math....
84. I have one aunt and uncle and 3 cousins.
    
85. All the boys in my extended family were named after Westerns... my cousins are Brett (as in Maverick) and Landon (as in Michael).
    
86. My grandparents have all passed away.
87. My wife's grandmother organized her 98th birthday party last year.
<>My grandfather on my mother's side died exactly 4 years after his wife. We figured he'd realized he'd lived long enough to see his first great-grandchild born and that was officially enough to say he'd lived a full life.
88. Originally, we were a little miffed that all we got in the will was the family pictures and family Bible.
    
<>My aunt took the car and brand new stereo. The stereo's obsolete. The car's toast as well.
89. I have pictures of family I never knew I had.
90. My mother once fainted in a bookstore.
    
91. She'd opened up a 'Country Living' magazine and there was a contest winning picture of "cottage life." It was her father and grandfather with a fish they'd just caught.
92. I have a copy of the magazine somewhere.
93. I have 2 pictures left of "My First Love." I don't know where the rest are.
94. I'm assuming they're hidden along with all the other pictures of my ex-girlfriends...
95. I was once on a bowling team where every single kid had the same first name.
<>I was the youngest bowler there and they put me on an older team just so I could play.We were the best team and I had the lowest average at 166.
96. My next best sport as a child was tennis. My tennis partner in high school went on to play women's basketball and lost her leg below the knee in a bizarre in-game accident. She returned to play with a prosthetic leg the very next season.
97. I claim my ease of spelling and writing came from endlessly reading comic books when I was a kid. 'Prosthetic' was a word I could both spell and define when I was 7 years old.
98. In the second grade, I officially mispelled one word all year. It was during the spelling bee, so I came in second.
99. I used to shoplift all the time when I was 12 years old. My best friend got jealous that I got away with it so often that he tried stealing some rubber mice.
    
100. He got caught. It was the only time my parents said I was a bad influence on someone else.
101. I was once grounded from riding my bicycle for 4 months because I'd gone riding for about 9 hours without telling my parents where I was going. I've never ridden a bike since.