Five Things (It’s Memetastic!)

    I’ve been tagged into the five things meme by Doug Belshaw.  In a better attempt for you, dear reader, to get to know me better, I’m to "reveal" five things about myself that you otherwise wouldn’t know from reading this blog.  Here goes:

1. I have a twin sister who teaches Kindergarten in the same school district where I work.  In our first year of teaching, five years ago, we had a buddy program where, once a week, my students traveled to her classroom to read and write together.  (And no, we’re certainly NOT identical.)
2. I am a pop trivia, um, freak.  My students and colleagues know this, and, so whenever there’s an essential question involving who played in what movie or sang on what film soundtrack or what the name of that one character’s sister’s dentist was, I get interrupted in class.  I don’t mind, and I actually enjoy being able to come up with an answer, most of the time, on the spot.  One teacher has dubbed this frequent questioning "Stump Bud."  She sometimes keeps score.  Sometimes, students challenge me to tell them whether or not some bit of TV trivia is true.  I was stumped when one student told me recently that MacGyver once fought Sasquatch.  Turns out that’s true. 
3. I dabble in music sometimes, and was the frontman of a band called Clockworked in the late ’90s.  If you need a song to add to your Christmas collection, try this one (iTunes link —   All others click here).  I’m singing lead vocals.  (I don’t receive any money from the purchase of that song or album — it goes to the label and to a local charity.)  I also wrote and recorded the song that my wife and I shared our first dance to.  She was pleasantly surprised.
4. I’m not the handiest guy I know.  But I like the idea of being handy.  I have a love/hate relationship with Home Depot/Lowes-type stores.  I go in amazed by opportunity and potential — and leave empty handed, frustrated by my limited manual dexterity.  It’s entirely possible that I just spent several hours destroying the flat rear tire (and possibly wheel) of my snowblower.  I have the same love/hate relationship with cooking shows, particularly Alton Brown‘s Good Eats.
5. I think that This American Life is perhaps the best regular attempt at storytelling on the radio right now.  (Here’s a link to their podcast, in case you aren’t already a listener.)  I’d love to tell stories like this, but I can’t.  Yet.  I love great storytellers like Ira Glass.  I put him on a short list of favorites, people like Garrison Keillor, Charles Kuralt, and Walter Kronkite.  I’d put newspaper columnists Bill Johnson and Lewis Grizzard on that list, too.  I’d love to tell a story as well as these guys do or did.  They tell real stories about real people in amazing and entertaining ways. 

And now, it’s my turn to tag some others.  How about Karl, Cindy, Donna, Josh, and Tom?