Day Six - Write 30 interesting facts about yourself

This could be difficult as I'd probably find it hard to dredge up 30 facts, let alone interesting ones, beyond the obvious "well I'm female..." but I will try to make this as interesting as possible.

1) I have strange toes. Ben litterally just piped this up and we've just had a very interesting conversation about it. Anyhow, it appears he is quite freaked out by the shape of my little toe. He likens it to a dewclaw. This, I find, to be quite amusing and interesting.

2) Whilst I love my chocolate, I am in fact a fiend for savoury food. Salty, cheesy, meaty, yum yum.

3) That said, my tongue requires balance. If I have too much savoury, I have to balance it out with sweet. It is much easier, for me, to unbalance my flavours and eat too much sweet however, which is probably why I consider myself to prefer savoury flavours.

4) I'm not a geordie, and don't consider myself as such. I was born in County Durham and lived there for the first 18 years of my life. This is not in geordie territory. I have never lived in Newcastle. Still, people who don't know me and who aren't aquainted with the nuances of the north eastern accent do refer to me as a geordie, which doesn't annoy me much until I have to explain that I don't know such and such a place in Newcastle because I've actually only been a handful of times in my life, usually for very specific purposes.

5) I was a member of the RSPB's young ornithologists club as a child, as I was very much concerned with the welfare of our birdies. I loved them, still do. For my 8th birthday my Gran "bought me a goose". In other words she adopted a Nene goose from the Washington branch of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust on my behalf. I didn't get anything else, except this certificate saying I'd adopted a goose called Bonnie. I didn't understand what adopting was all about, and I considered her to be all mine. A couple of years later I recieved a letter saying that Bonnie had died. I cried and cried. It was quite traumatic...

6) My concern for our feathered friends grew into a wider reaching concern that we should probably stop shitting all over the world, and this involved me becoming a member of Greenpeace. Far from it being all shady and full of hard core activists, for me my campaigning with Greenpeace at various events and for various causes were some of the best times of my life. For various reasons this support eventually tailored off. Regaining a passion for this again, I have considered looking back in on them, but fear being dragged into campaigns that I wouldn't necissarily agree with.

7) I went for years unable to even smell pasta without feeling mildly nauseous. Thankfully, Ben's gentle coaxing has enabled me to stomach it to the point of actually relishing it now. Carbonara is one of my favourite meals these days :D

8) The same cannot be said about rice. Rice pudding I love but savoury, plain rice...the smell of it cooking makes me wretch. Ben has tried to tempt me into the world of rice much as he did with pasta, but to no avail. It makes me feel so ill. Even a grain or two in my mouth and...eugh...I'm gonna leave it there...

9) I play the flute. I still do, when no one is home. I'm much too embarrased to do it infront of everyone. When I stopped my lessons (because my teacher was being done for fraud and the replacement was sub par) everyone in our local musical community basically shunned me. Apparently you need to be actively partaking in lessons to be able to pick up a damned instrument and play it at all. It left me feeling pretty sub par myself, so I'm not really into playing infront of people. It's nice to still do it though

10) When I was a child, I drew maps of "pretendy" places with magical forests. I had piles and piles and piles of them stuffed into sketchpads and note books. They served no real purpose, I just liked to draw maps and imagine what kind of people would live in the different places.

11) I love maps, and aside from my pretendy maps I had maps of the world and of Britain and all kinds of places in my bedroom. Nowadays we have in my living room two maps of Middle Earth, another pretendy map that was drawn by Ben (for his writing, you understand) and a satellite image of Britain covered in ice from the cold snaps we had last year taken from a newspaper. I have a map of the world stored away somewhere, but I don't want it to ge ruined and curled so I'm waiting to have the money for a poster frame, and the space to hang it somewhere nice.

12) I don't see what all the big fuss with chinese food is. I mean yeah it's tasty, and I do enjoy it (without the rice lol) but I don't understand why people go so bonkers over it

13) Pancakes (English style, which I think people over in the America's would call French style Crepe, but anyway) are one of my favourite treats ever in the world, but thanks to my upbringing I actually feel really really guilty if I have them any other day of the year except Pancake Day (as it is known in England amongst the masses...it is known throughout the world, however, mainly to other Christians, as 'Shrove Tuesday'). As you may imagine, I am really really very much looking forward to this Tuesday coming :D

14) Being that Pancakes are a once a year treat and thus something quite special to be made a fuss of, I cannot for the life of me abide by people buying ready made pancake mix. I mean, seriously, how hard is it to make pancake mix? You mix up some flour with egg and milk and any seasoning you want and there you have it! Not exactly rocket science! This is one of the few things I'm actually really pompous and elitist about.

15) It really annoys me when I mention in passing that my first pet, a rabbit, was called Nibbler, and people go "aww just like on futurama". No. Not just like on futurama. I was 3. Futurama did not exist!

16) Four years ago I would have laughed you off if you suggested I would possibly ever watch something like Ugly Betty. Now I love it. I also love Desperate Housewives. Worse yet, I even started watching Eastenders. My 20 year old self would hate the me I have become. My current self, however, loves me :D

17) I used to be one of those teeny musical elitists, back in the day when I was in sixth form, though it pains me to admit it. If it wasn't on Kerrang, it didn't matter. These days, I can understand where my teenage self was coming from and I can tolerate it in younger folk, to a point. It bloody annoys me to find people my age who are still like that though, as if trying to prove a point about "the kinds of things they like". In a way I'm still a musical elitist. If you are over the age of 20 but your tastes are so narrow that you can't buy a CD that doesn't come from one specific aisle at the music store (which you naturally gravitate to each and every time you visit), I don't want to talk to you about music.

18) Truth be told it doesn't really matter anyway since I don't actually pay much attention to what other people think about music anyway these days, and I rarely talk about it other than "oh, I like them". Considering I used to be so passionate about it, it's quite a turn around for me, one that I don't know what to think of.

19) I like Twilight. Nay, I love it. I am waiting with baited breath for the next film. If you don't like it...that's cool...just let me be and move along, cheers...

20) I think one of the most important qualities anyone can have is to be able to take the piss out of themselves and what they hold dear. People take themselves way too seriously these days, and it causes a lot of stress and hurt. This doesn't give you a free license to rip it out of other people though, unless you have that kind of relationship of course.

21) My favourite feel good film of all time when I just need to watch something to cheer me up is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". I have watched it countless times. It just makes me feel happy and shiney and lovey.

22) Me and my best friend in Primary School (when we were about 5 or 6 years old) used to play "Tina Turner and Diana Ross". We used to fight about who got to be Diana Ross, because she had the prettiest voice. He usually won.

23) Speaking of said best friend, I was always really jealous because he had the prettiest and newest My Little Ponies. That really pissed me off.

24) I can fold the tip of my tongue into the shape of a clover. Kind of. I shall have to take a picture to show what I mean. Not right now though :p

25) I prefer women to men, but I can't deal with being in a relationship with women. For probably all the same bad stereotypes that men use against women...this makes me feel kind of traitorous, like I'm perpetuating all the bad stereotypes about my geneder, but thankfully I'm married so I don't have to worry about it!

26) I have the names picked out for 5 baby girls and 3 baby boys. If I have any more than this, I will be screwed! Of course, what Ben thinks is completely irrelevant :p

27) It used to take a long time to get me annoyed. These days it seems that if someone looks at me the wrong way I will explode. I hope to someday (soon) regain that inner tranquility...lol

28) I'm no good with land dwelling invertebrates. Euch. Noooo keep them away...cannot be dealing with them...Aquatic invertebrates, however, I find quite endearing...

29) My dad kind of looks like Patrick Stewart. Or at least, he did to the eyes of a little girl who watched Star Trek TNG with him every night. So I kinda get emotional when Cpt. Piccard gets shit for whatever reason. Yes, I know it's completely irrational. Just deal with it.

30) I like playing The Sims because I like to play God with their pathetic little lives. It's quite sad really...