Top Five Things You Don’t Know About Me

• I went to Japan when I was 13 as part of an exchange program. Sapporo is Portland’s sister city, and they were holding an international art festival. I got an application from an art class I was taking at the time, and before I knew what was happening, I was on a plane with several other teenagers from the Portland area. We went to the festival, did a home-stay and generally just bummed around Sapporo, and managed to avoid experiencing any real Japanese culture or learning much of anything about the country. Still, it’s a fun pin to have on my map.
• I don’t have my driver’s license. Growing up in Portland meant access to one of the best public transportation programs in the nation, and I never had any difficulty getting around. Of course, it’s one of those things where the longer you wait, the harder it is to do, because there are less opportunities, and it’s embarrassing. I’m currently taking lessons from a friend, and plan on taking the test in the next month or so - much to the relief of my family, who have all been horrified about it since Annie got pregnant.
• I high school I was on the cross-country team. I did this when I found out that I sucked at the shorter races in track, but I sucked marginally less at distance running. I only weighed 130 pounds at the time, and I remember being concerned with how scrawny I looked in the tiny shorts and tank tops our team wore.
• In the late 90’s I ran KillingMachines.org, a small community blogging site which really was only popular among a group of high school students from Omaha, Nebraska. I also helped out from time to time with the creation and maintenance of hatelife.org, a much more popular site, “where teen angst, sad things and bad poetry come together to suck.”
• In 2000, while Annie was going to college at CWU in Ellensburg, I was a DJ for the college radio station, The ‘Burg. The station had virtually no listeners and a broadcast radius of about 10 feet, which sucked for the school, but worked out great for me, since most college stations will only allow students to be DJs. My radio name was Obeso the Pirate, a reference to a horrible story some friends wrote in high school.

Andrew tagged me with this meme, and now I’m passing it along to Sean, Urn, Pat, Mike, and Sig.