Meme'd

So I've been tagged again by Crave, this time to share seven random and/or weird facts about myself.  I've given this a bit of thought - I mean, just how weird should I get?  More importantly, how much should I share?  I think I'll keep it reasonable and more on the random side.  Might trip off a few post ideas too.

So.  Into it:

1. I will dance like a monkey for a packet of Haig's dark chocolate peppermint frogs.  I have a weakness for good quality dark chocolate with a hint of mint.  In fact I'm one of those nerds who has a particular cocoa solid percentage preference in dark chocolate.  Combine it with a winter's evening and a glass of Islay's finest and I'm terribly content. 
2. I was around 4 months old when Cyclone Tracy blew our house in Darwin away.  Mum and dad recall seeing the roof lift off and thinking it would be a good time to go to the safer and much more secure bathroom.  Apparently I slept through the whole thing, waking only in the eye while everyone was hightailing it to the army barracks.  As a consequence I continue to maintain that I sleep like the dead when it's raining and stormy.  I also still have a toy I received for that first christmas that my parents found in the wreckage.  Hoping it becomes a family heirloom of sorts.
3. Speaking of christmas, I've played Santa Claus once and someday, inevitably, I will do so again.  My version of Santa Claus is heavily influenced by the memory of my grandfather dressing up and, in lilting and stilted english, handing out presents on xmas eve.  I could never get the accent quite right, probably because I'm too close to it.  And as friends would know, K and I have a running verbal battle over Santa's Finnishness, maintained solely for comedic value.  There's definitely another post in this.
4. For a while I went to the same high school as Mercedes Corby, sister of Schappelle, sharing art class with her in the first semester of grade 9.  Totally had a crush on her best friend, Melissa, for a while there.  And heck yeah Schappelle's guilty.     
5. Daniel Jones of Savage Garden was a year above me in high school (a different one this time) and once busted me wagging class by spotting me, bolting into the scrub, from the window of the music block and loudly bringing it to the attention of the teacher.  Blaggard.   
6. In the late 1990's I trained in a particular style of kung-fu for around two or three years, becoming proficient enough to teach it to new students.  When teaching I made a big point of spending a lot of time going over observational and communication skills that I'd picked up from work (where I dealt with difficult situations) and then placing the techniques in the context of "avoid it if you can, if you can't, then do enough to be able to run away".  The thing is that even though I've never actually had to use it, damn, I still think about it (the techniques, the forms, the structures) every single day.  Every day.  It's just really stuck with me.
7. Smoking.  I also think about smoking, every, single, day.  I don't smoke anymore, at least not regularly and addictively, but it's never quite left me.  It's completely irrational and it's probably one of the dumbest things in the world, but there's a part of me that enjoys sitting down and having a quiet smoke, either with a drink or without, and just letting the world go by, with this stupid, poisonous burning thing cupped between staining fingers.  My latest trick is to write down a bunch of reasons why I don't want to smoke on the back of an old business card and keep it tucked away with the coffee cards in my wallet.  The Boy, naturally, is reason number one.  I'd like to think that when he's older the idea of smoking just won't be on his radar, or the radar of his peers, but there's also a part of me that wonders how much addiction, and/or addictive behaviours, are passed on to children from parents.  I'm sort of hoping that if this is the case that K and I cancel each other out completely.

So that's seven.  There are a few things there I should expand upon another time, but not now.