Cathie challenged me to write down 25 random facts about myself.  Here they are:

1. I have always hated cooked green peas.  I think I always will.
2. I once spent 3 days on the tundra without seeing a single sign of human beings.
3. On the boys’ birthdays I always buy a newspaper and save it.
4. My beard comes in red, but not as red as my father’s; and gray, but not as gray as my father’s.
5. On my first day in Europe an old Turkish man shared his plum brandy with me and let me feel the hump on his back.
6. Except for a vaccination I have no scars more than a year or two old.
7. I met Monica at the employee Christmas party for the place where our significant others worked.
8. In 1995 I could write fieldnotes after 700 ml of vodka.
9. I’ve never gotten an A in a language class – not German, Russian, or Chinese.
10. I was robbed at gunpoint in Philadelphia after I’d broken up with my girlfriend at a Bob Dylan concert.
11. I will go to Paris for the first time in March.
12. While tending my grandmother’s store in the Poconos I read Nikos Kazantzakis’ 900 page epic poem, The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel.
13. My first buzz was from home made root beer at the family reunion when I was about 8 years old.
14. I sneeze whenever I walk into bright sunlight.
15. I prefer icy mountain lakes to warm Caribbean beaches.
16. I think consumerism will be the death of us all.
17. I celebrated my 21^st birthday in Munich, my 30^th in Almaty and my 40^th in Cork.
18. I wrote an unpublished science fiction novel.
19. I had my first wisdom tooth pulled out in Tijuana (stone cold sober).
20. The college application to Penn asked us to write an imaginary interview and I interviewed God.
21. I hitchhiked from Saginaw, Michigan, et cetera.
22. When I was a kid I thought that if the universe were infinite then the night sky should be white, because there'd be a star in every direction.
23. I’ve never been into a strip club or a karaoke bar.
24. Monica and I had our honeymoon canoeing in Algonquin Provincial Park.
    
25. I have drunk warm, fermented mare’s milk from a shepherd’s saddle flask in Kazakhstan.