25 Things about Me (Alex)

I woke up from an after-Church nap today a little groggy and immediately Kristine was reading her list of 25 things about her. At first, I was a little worried about the things she wrote and gave her a hard time. I hate that about myself. Now I realize that they are all true and part of why I love her.

Now Kristine is saying that I should write one and see how I come off to the world--then I'll see how hard it is. I'm already picking up on why I was wrong to give her a hard time. Anyway, here's my list of 25 random facts about me.

1. I still have a blanket that my mom made for me when I was about 10. It has airplanes all over it and it has worn out just right so that it is the most comfortable blanket we own. (No, I don't sleep with it always but I am always excited whenever it comes out of the linen closet.)

2. I am not a huge animal person even though my family has always had dogs. I'm the only one in the family that doesn't love dogs except for maybe my dad. My parents, picking-up on this fact, sent me a scarf covered in dog hair on my mission in a Ziploc bag. I still have never cleaned it.

3. My favorite place on Earth is our family cabin on Whidbey Island. I don't remember much from my childhood (probably because I'm not very sentimental) but I remember tons from the cabin. To give an example, I remember the transformer right to the front left of the cabin exploding one of the many 4th of July nights that we all huddled up in blankets because it was raining outside. I don't remember a single other thing that happened that year because I don't even remember how old I was. That's how much of an impression the place has left on me.

4. I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Republics of Armenia and Georgia. Consequently I speak 3 almost 4 languages and love Eastern Europe. I want to go back someday. I hope somehow they'll make it onto the travel list Kristine has going.

5. My little brother Austin has been bigger than me for almost my entire life. Most people think he's older when they first meet us together. Because he was bigger, my mom encouraged me to be nice to him (I have often tortured him throughout his life) and now he is one of my best friends.

6. My parents named me after my two great Grandpas. I got their middle names Alexander and Eastwood. It means a lot to be named after them because they were both good men. Both of them were also tinkerers and fiddlers. I got that fiddle gene and to this day am not permitted by my wife or family to touch or hold anything because I'll have it broken within minutes--sometimes even seconds.

7. I'm a geek. I love physics and science. I want to be a professor someday. I find secret pleasure in being able to talk shop (differential equations, matrices, quantum theory, etc.) with anyone who will listen. I know, I'm a lame-o.

8. We have a superstition in my family that anytime a bird flies into a house or my mother makes "funeral potatoes" someone is going to die. It has been true more times than not. (I can count on one hand the number of times it didn't work this way.) I don't know whether the superstition will carry through to Kristine and my family--I guess only time will tell.

9. I played the trumpet all through middle school and high school. My parents also had me take piano lessons for 10 years but I still can't play the hymns because I have never practiced enough. I always get overwhelmed and frustrated with all the keys.

10. I lived in Tokyo, Japan for five years when I was little. Most of my early childhood memories are from our Jubon apartment in downtown Tokyo.

11. My first real pet was a hamster named Andrew that I got for my 5th birthday in Tokyo. I say real because I think I had fish before that. I was a horrible master for both the fish and the hamster. I forgot about feeding both after a week or two of having them and so in their starvation, they went for blood. The fish ate each other and my hamster went for my hand every time I tried to do anything for him thereafter. When we moved, we let the hamster out in the park and I said "poor Andrew, he'll probably get eaten by a crow." My parents said, "We feel bad for any crow that tries to eat him." My mom had nightmares for awhile after that, that Tokyo would be overrun by hamsters and we would somehow get the blame.

12. I have been to Disneyland at least five times; once in Tokyo, and a bunch of times in California. Some of our best family friends, the Mattsons live in Cypress right next to Disneyland so we went there often as kids. Ironically, my favorite is still actually Knott's Berry Farm which is just down the street from Disneyland. The rides were cooler or something.

13. I was born in Amherst, New York. We lived there for three years after I was born and then moved back to the same general area after living in Tokyo. I still talk to some of my friends from back there and it's like I never left. I still sometimes say things with a funny New York accent and get made fun of by my wife.

14. I skate boarded for a short stint from 8th to 10th grade. I was pretty serious about it (although not good) and enjoyed it a lot. It helped me get through the transition from middle school to high school and from NY to WA. I still wear skating shirts--my favorite is one that says "Skateboarding is Beautiful."

15. When I lived in New York, one of my best friends (Greg Shaw) was obsessed with rockets and blowing things up. One day, we strapped some rocket engines to a Burger King Buzz Lightyear toy and with a "To infinity and beyond" lit the rockets. It was awesome even though he just flew around in circles instead of going up as planned.

16. I'm pretty good at starting projects but never finishing them. When I was 14, I wanted to start a t-shirt company and even drew out some designs but never did anything with them. A little later that year, I was sure I wanted a car to fix up so my parents bought me a 1979 BMW 320i. I never fixed it and it's parts hung around in our garage until we moved away a year later. Even now, I have all sorts of things I want to do like learn Japanese, swim everyday or figure out the amount of energy that changes forms in an oscillating dipole problem but I still haven't done any of these things. I have started them.

17. One of the coolest experiences I've had happened in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York. It was the time when I started to figure that there was a God and He loves me and others.

18. One of my favorite shows to this day is "Invader Zim." It's totally twisted and not funny to most but I love it. All who know it say it's weird but I guess it's my guilty pleasure show.

19. I want to be more humble. I've realized since getting married that I think the world revolves around me. I'm grateful that Kristine is so good at pointing it out to me even though fixing it is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

20. I eat very little sugar. Ever since I turned 20, sugar has made me depressed. Even now, if I eat too much I get cranky. (K can attest).

21. I am addicted to video games. We never had them growing up. Now we have them and I have to follow the same rules as elementary school where I can't play unless all my homework is done. Otherwise I'll zone out and play for hours. (Don't worry, the addiction is slowly fizzling out because I have homework all the time. I get to play them maybe once a week. I'm hoping it goes away with age.)

22. I've always been close with people older than myself. I don't know why but I've always liked running with the older crowd. (I was that kid that sat at the dinner table for hours after the rest of the kids went to play. I was always fascinated by the conversation and loved trying to get the jokes.)

23. I swim the breast stroke when I swim. I have tried many times to master the freestyle and can do it now for laps but once I get tired, I revert back. I think it's because I loved swimming under water once I learned to swim. Underwater, the breast stroke is the only one that works.

24. My family and wife always joke that I'm heartless because I never used to care about feelings. As I get older, I'm getting more tender. I find myself tearing-up when a little primary girl sings or when I go to movies like "Marley and Me." I pretty much get made fun of for it. It doesn't happen all the time thank goodness but it proves that my Grinch heart is growing.

25. As I was writing the last one, I wrote googness instead of goodness. We have always had weird sayings and gibberish words in my family that we pull out frequently for a laugh. Goog is a word that one of Austin's friends--Nathan Smith--made up. We still say it sometimes. Another one I remember from my early childhood is when my dad said, "Man Dies By Exploding Milk" as a consequence of a random breakfast conversation. One time my dad was way tired and he said, "atomic cilantro." None of us know why he said it including him.