aka riptidef aka krossbow aka fred

I’ve been tagged by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Randy Rogers and Kevin Jarrett to contribute to this meme. The idea is that you share 7 things about yourself that would be unknown to your readers. Here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.

The 7 things you probably don’t know about me are:

1. I was a two time state champion of Michigan at hula-hooping when I was younger. Picked them back up again to hula hoop on the reduced gravity flight with NASA.
2. I worked my way up from busboy to ice cream scooper to waiter at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor and Restaurant in Ann Arbor, Mich. Many people will remember it as a place where they sang Happy Birthday and gave you a free clown sundae or made an embarrassing announcement for those who ate a Pig’s Trough (a double banana split). I remember that job as fun and enjoyable.
3. For the 366 Days of Music project I used an old piece of software called Microsoft Music Producer from 1996.It was never released past beta, but you can find parts of it in Photostory where you can create your own background music.
4. I love to cook. I learned at an early age. I quickly became the cook for my family. They always expected me to go to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) for school. Cooking led me to to start hoarding cookbooks. I now have several hundred. I find the best recipes in the old community or church cookbooks that you can find yard sales.
5. In the past I have been at varying degrees of a contest/sweepstakes junkie. Currently I have the addiction under control {wink, wink}. Prizes that I have won include a trip to Paris, several gift cards of varying amounts, a couple iPods, and many items that I would consider white elephants.
6. About 8 weeks before I received my undergraduate degree I was robbed by a gunman at the multiplex theater I was managing at the time. A few weeks after that I abandoned all plans to find a job in Michigan and accepted an invitation from a previous employer to fly to the Washington, D.C. area and consider working for him here. At the age of 26 it was my first trip in an airplane. I moved 2 weeks after graduating with a B.S. in Social Sciences and minor in Business (and enough credits for minors in Teaching of Math and Teaching of Science, but that’s a different story.) I never looked back.
7. Body modification count for past and present = 8

So now it’s my turn to tag 7 people. If you’ve read my 7 things, stay tuned to read the next 7 things from these people. Don’t forget to tweet them or visit their blogs and let them know they have been tagged. Also make sure you go back and read the 7 Things about Sheryl, Randy Rogers and Kevin too.

Tag you’re it:

Elaine Plybon

Heather Hurley

Melanie Ruiz

Craig Spraggins

Beth Knittle

Matt Monjan

Mark Dunk