Sevens Again

Well! I've never actually been tagged with a meme that I recall, so I guess I'll do Sevens again. My taking on the challenge is no guarantee that I'll always accept tagging, however....

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Seven (More) (Possibly) Interesting Things about Me

1.I still own the teddy bear I had as an infant. He normally sits on my dresser in the bedroom.

2. On a recent visit to Mississippi for my younger brother's fortieth birthday, I went to a park to watch my youngest brother's sons play. I'm about seven years older than that brother. He's athletic, a regular jogger, and of a somewhat competitive bent. I walk quite a bit, but I am otherwise sedentary.

He watched some eleven-year-old-girl navigate a row of monkey rings, and then decided to try it himself. He -- and then his wife -- dropped like flies. After observing this from the picnic table where I was sitting, I got up, walked over to the monkey rings and unceremoniously showed 'em how it's done. Mom was there, too, and got a good laugh out of that. She emailed me a picture of it later.

Disclaimer: Being of slight build and stronger than I look helps.

3. My current default beer rotates among Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, St. Arnold's Elissa IPA, and Shiner Bock. Two thirds of that will change when I finally move to Boston since the last two are Texan beers, neither distributing to the Northeast

4. About once a year, I get the urge to smoke. Usually, it's a cigar, but sometimes, it's a cigarette. Invariably, my mouth tastes so foul the next morning that I'm repulsed from doing so again for about another year. I have never smoked out of habit.

5. I got to get up even earlier than everyone else when I was enrolled in Naval Officer Candidate School. For remedial swimming lessons. In Rhode Island. In the %*&^ f-f-f-f-fall! I needed the lessons in part because I am negatively buoyant.

6. Of course, my swimming might have been better had my childhood swimming "instructors" not mindlessly enforced the requirement that I be able to do the "belly float". Yeah. Let's kick out the guy who arguably needs to learn how to swim more than anyone else in the class!

Dogpaddling came before the belly float and I figured out for myself easily enough how to swim underwater.

7. Like Abe Lincoln, I wear a beard pursuant to advice from the fair sex. (But no, not the same kind of beard!)

In my case, I sought the advice. Making my comeback after a divorce during grad school, I asked for advice from a classmate. She had seen a picture of me with the goatee that I'd grown on deployment while in the submarine force, remembered it, and told me I looked better with the beard. Now, my wife -- a good friend of my advisor, by the way -- will never let me shave it off! Hmmm.

And yes, I did stroke my beard when I said that.

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And I guess while I'm breaking tradition, I'll tag any Bostonian who happens by and reads this. If you have a blog, do the sevens there. If not, leave a comment.

For those of you who like memes, feel free to consider yourselves Bostonians for a day!

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 5:00 A.M. on March 16, 2009.

Updates

3-17-09: LB and SB answer the call! As SB actually did, I almost stopped at six, except that just as I was about to publish, I noticed that I'd skipped a number and coughed up a seventh.