Crazy Eights

I've been tagged by Fermi to list eight facts about myself. I don't remember if I'm supposed to list things you don't know or not, but here goes.

1. I have two fused cervical disks. Back in 2000, I started working for my present company after returning from San Francisco and figured I was young enough to go 3 months without health insurance. Ha ha!! I'm so funny. Not so much. Thankfully, my pain started w/in the first month when I could still sign up for the "pay for yourself mostly insurance." It's really cool to be in a new job when the pain starts because crying at your desk daily is a good way to meet people (not really). For a solid month I couldn't sleep from the pain, so crying at my desk was pretty reasonable, I think. I had my MRI the Wednesday before Labor Day weekend. I got the phone call from my doctor Thursday night around 9:00 saying "Your disk is almost touching your spinal cord. Call this doctor tomorrow for an appt." Needless to say, there were more tears. I cancelled my trip to MA for my friend Rick's wedding as the whole "disk touching your spinal cord" freaked me out. Got an appt. with a neurosurgeon for Tuesday whereupon I scheduled the surgery for the following Monday (aka Mom's b-day - I'm such a fabulous daughter, I moved to SF on her b-day and I scheduled a surgical diskectomy & fusion for her b-day). No wonder she prefers the YS, eh? My surgery was scheduled for 1:30 but didn't happen until 9:30 p.m. I woke up in recovery pain free after my most beloved neurosurgeon (if you need one, let me know, because I highly recommend him) fused C5 & C6 disks.

2. I'm fairly obsessive. The YS has said that it's a good thing I've never tried drugs because she thinks I'd be addicted. I don't agree because the few legal drugs I've tried have done nothing for me (i.e., vicodin, Tylenol 3s, Percoset). She thinks this because since I learned to knit, I knit fairly constantly. I don't think it's an obsessive thing, so much as an excuse to watch TV w/o feeling like a complete slacker. But if I become interested in something I do like to do a lot of research on it. Example: My love of Joy Divison has me reading every book I can find on them. I do the same thing with Mexican history, ancient Egyptian history, Champ Car, Hitchcock, music, mountain climbing, etc.

3. I hate seeing my cats stoned, so they very rarely get catnip. When I moved to SF, I gave Zapata a tranquilizer prescribed by the vet. Tikal couldn't have one because they discovered he had a heart murmur. Seeing Zapata all drugged up just broke my heart. She couldn't jump up on the bed or move well at all. She fell trying to jump on the bed. It was horrible. I have catnip, but Igor and Boris seem to get a little feisty on it and I hate to see them fighting, so although it's in the house, they don't get to indulge very often.

4. I'm a redhead, but not a stereotypical redhead in that I don't have a short fuse. I'm pretty hard to upset/piss off, but once I'm there, oh boy. Look out!

5. I have a B.A. in Economics and International Studies (Spanish, Finance and Latin American studies). I love Latin American history and the language of Spanish, itself, but can you really picture a Kathleen with red hair getting a job using Spanish? Yeah, not so much. For the record, I make an excellent secretary.

6. Speaking of being a secretary, although I'm not one now technically, I type over 90 wpm. I love typing. Probably because I generally like things at which I excel. Don't try me at computer type games, I suck.

7. I have a fairly impressive CD collection, but nothing compared to some people I know. I could count them for you, but have better things to do than that. I would say somewhere between 700 and 1000 CDs. I also have a decent DVD collection, although nothing close to my CD collection. We won't discuss my book collection which rivals the CD collection.

8. I'm the scarf-knitting queen. You want a scarf, you let me know because I knit like a fiend, but only things that are squares or rectangles. I have plans to knit a sweater, but I'm scared of messing it up. And then finishing the knitting part and then finding out that the back doesn't line up properly with then front when I go to "finish" it, i.e, sew it together.