Facts in Figures

1. I didn't know how to spell my middle name until I was 13 (my parents still might not, because they didn't know then either). It's Kathryn, but spelled "Katherine" on my first library card.

2. I've been organizing M&Ms in rainbow order pretty much my whole life, and always ate the green ones last. Thus, for my first Valentine's day ever with a boyfriend, he got me two bags of exclusively green M&Ms.

3. I remember the dates of the first time I told JoeKat I liked him, my first kiss, the first time I told Dave I liked him, my first kiss with Dave, my last kiss with Dave, my first kiss with Jimmy, my last kiss with Jimmy, and my first kiss with Jeff.

4. A talent that may be semi-exclusive to me is my ability to carve little faces into apples and other fruits with my thumbnails. I've done elaborate stuff before, but it's tough to do detail work.

5. During my junior year of high school, our drumline's show was "Fear." In order to get into the mood, we had a Saturday circle time to share our biggest fears. I expressed that my biggest fear was that my brother would die an untimely death before me. The following Tuesday (January 20th), my brother got hit by a car and was in the hospital for several days.

6. I am extremely exclusive about what songs on my iPod get 5 stars, and I rate everything. Of the 1194 songs, 6 of them have 5 stars. They are: Hallelujah- Rufus Wainwright, Soco Amaretto Lime- Brand New, American Pie- Don McLean, Going to California- Led Zeppelin, You Can't Always Get What You Want- The Rolling Stones, and Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd. Additionally, I will never keep a 1 star song on my iPod.

7. The first riff I ever learned on guitar was the intro to Wish You Were Here. Matt taught it to me some Monday on a drumline when our parents were a little late in picking us up. That was when I still had my enormous crush on him. It made me think of him until the summer after, when Dave sent me a picture of a beach sunset saying he and his uncle had just dueted Wish You Were Here.

8. I have never broken a bone. Never had surgery. Never smoked a cigarette. Never been drunk. Never had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Never been out of the country or to any state that doesn't border the Atlantic.

9. Nearly every single school day since I was five, I ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Lucky Charms were the Saturday morning and special occasion cereal, though they eventually fell out of favor when I started sleeping in past 11. When I tried eating them again years later, I went to my fall-back strategy of eating all the wheat then gorging myself on marshmallows. I couldn't do it. It was then I knew I was no longer a child.

10. My dream job doesn't necessarily have perks or a good paycheck, but it would force me to interact with new information and learn all the time. My only passion is for learning new things, and that makes it hard to declare a major. I went through the list of every single course offered at Temple, leaving out no major, and made a list 10 pages long, 2 columns, in 10 pt. font of classes I want to take. *sigh*

11. For my first Christmas, my pop-pop got me a stuffed bear, who was subsequently named Bear, Mr. Bear, or "Bear Bear." For my first Easter, my nana got me the 1993 limited edition Crayola-Hallmark rabbit. He came to be named Bobbers. Those are my buddies that I've had forever. Bobbers I loved so hard that he had to be completely replaced by my aunt Jeanne, who sewed me a new rabbit. Bear is still in pretty good condition for all the lil' Chloe lovin' he got.

12. Of every talent and ability I've been blessed with, I still wish I could sing.

13. I love my little brother more than anyone on the planet. It makes me sad that my talents are really visible, socially admired, where he will never be very recognized for his ability to talk to people. He's part of my inspiration for becoming social.

14. Emily and Jeff are also part of my inspiration when I'm consciously trying to be approachable and sociable. It's working. Some of the things are becoming habit, now. It makes me feel warm all over.

15. Sometimes, I have a vague fear that my life is so unbelievably good right now that I will die young to make up for having an over-balance of satisfied living, or that I have a chemical imbalance that is the opposite of depression.

16. My cursive is absolutely gorgeous, if I don't say so myself.

17. One of the few things I am consciously proud of is the Villanova Trash Bowl where I took third place highest individual scorer. There weren't too many people at the competition, admittedly, but Garnet Valley was the only team that brought any freshmen, so I outdid all the other kids except Jeff and some stranger.

18. I am only consciously aware of my fears of cars and heights.

19. I love to climb trees.

20. I once accidentally coined the word "quilty" when attempted to type guilty. In my mind, it's a very good feeling, like a moment where every good part of your life and personality and those of your friends has been stitched together to tell your story.

21. Fiction is usually hard for me to read. For whatever reason, three years ago saw me enter a trend of almost exclusively reading non-fiction and classics that have stood the test of time. Even in Sci-Fi, my fiction love, I tend to stick to the masters.

22. My mom is a Dutch immigrant. The only Dutch I know is a Christmas song and the word "stoop." That's right bitches. Best verb in Philadelphia has the same heritage I do.

23. New York City has a few of my favorite memories, including singing "Bitches Ain't Shit" in the business district. Softly.

24. My dorm currently contains a contraband microwave, candle, and screwed in accessories.

25. I went to Baptist school from kindergarten to 5th grade. I was a regular ol' fashioned hateful, bigoted Christian, to the point of trying to convert my Jewish cousins and "not believing" in atheists.

26. I have 5 voicemails saved on my phone that carried over from my old phone. The first is my dad singing happy birthday to alert me to the fact I finally had a cell phone. One is all my friends calling from Hawaii to wish me Happy Birthday during the band trip. I doubt I speak to any of them anymore. The other three are drunk dials from Schade and Jeremy.

27. There is a mural on the back of my door back home that contains almost all of my favorite quotes, and a few little smidges of artwork. It's not finished yet.

28. My favorite smells include bonfire, the day after a grass cutting, honeysuckles, boy smell, laundry smell, vanilla, and the ocean. It makes me sad there are not many descriptive terms available to describe smells except by comparison to smells that already exist.

29. When I was first introduced to xkcd and A Softer World, I read every single comic of theirs available at the time within one week of first discovery.

30. I love who I am and the process of becoming the best me possible.

Making

The fear of ending up alone has never been mine, though I don't expect any sort of happy ending. Cynic that I am, I assume that I will settle with someone I will eventually come to disdain. Or, less terrible, I wind up with someone I utterly adore but live with the constant fear they will leave, because I am not good enough.

Tuesdays do not generally hold any particularly exciting event, but for some undetermined reason, I was especially productive today in my creative endeavors. Throughout the day, I wrote three letters and a postcard. I drafted and illustrated two "letter-books" which will be mailed out following the close of this weekend. With the paper scraps left over from composing those books, I fashioned "A RATHER BITTY BOOK." It is the text describing my college experience until this point. Currently, it is only text, but I have grand aspirations to fill in with blobby sketches. Even my comic book saw a slight revival today. In the midst of all this creation, I even remembered to print out my absentee ballot form and look up this horrific instrument. I suspect it is evil.

"Teapotahedron"

Last night heralded my second extensive wiki-linking spree of college. One of my "Mosaic" assignments was to create a "Freudian videogame," so I looked into the process of game development, something which holds personal interest for me as well. Within the very inclusive "Game development" article, I linked out to roughly 5 articles. From there, an adventure ensued. I learned that the original model that became the standard graphics test figure, the Utah teapot, physically exists in a museum. In 1983, there was a North American Video Game Crash. Who knew?

Some weeks back, Temple hosted a student groups gathering at the Bell Tower. I collected some literature. Signed up on some listservs. Good times. However, I didn't get around to reading the history of Palestine provided by "Students for Justice in Palestine" group. Off the bat, I support human rights. Also, I don't support propaganda. While I'm definitely learning a lot by looking up key players in the conflict, bias abounds.

At the party Saturday night, the friend from my floor I brought tried drinking for the first time. She kept to the limit agreement, and only got giggly and loud. Also from our floor and my trumpet friend, Katy, was also loud and giggly. Together, all three of us sat on a couch devising schemes to talk to boys. During all of this, a guy I'd met earlier in the night, who was somewhat drunk at this point, came over and attempted to put a charm bracelet on my wrist. He told me it meant a lot to somebody, but he didn't know who, but probably someone named Zack because that's what it said on the heart. His name was Adam. I put the bracelet in my memory box.