SPLASH!

Welcome to my blog.  Here are twenty-five random things about me (recycled from Facebook, so please bear with me if you've already read this).  To help us get to know each other, please leave me a comment and tell me something random about you!

1) Someone once described me as “a mellow extrovert.” I think that’s my favorite description of me that I’ve heard.

2) I have always had good friends of many ages. Seriously, like 3 to 100. When I was 29 years old, I flew from NY to California with a great 15 year old friend and then drove him back across the country in an antique car. 

3) I got lost on a bicycle in Kunming, China when I was 17. I used a business card from my hotel to find my way back, just showing it to people and riding in the direction that they first pointed until I found a familiar landmark. It was scary.

4) A famous movie star once saw me on television and invited me out for drinks at the Plaza Hotel, where she and her boyfriend asked me if I would photograph their wedding.

5) I always wanted to try traveling alone, but whenever I tried it, I found that within 24 hours I would always find someone to travel with me. I once rented a car with a woman with whom I could barely communicate, just a few hours after meeting her in a hostel in Scotland. We had a great time driving around for a couple of days.

6) I once worked as a geologist for the USGS. I spent a summer in an office on Cape Cod making a geological map of the floor of Southern Lake Michigaaaaaannnnnnnn……. Sorry, I fell asleep just thinking about it.

7) I am totally 100% crazy in love with my husband.

8) Although I really only speak English, I am under the impression that I am “good at languages.”

9) I plan to write a young adult novel some day. I read about 100 of them a year, and I like to think of it as “research.”

10) I shook hands with Bill Clinton before he became president. His hands were remarkably soft.

11) I didn’t go to 11th or 12th grade in high school.

12) In Ullapool, Scotland, I watched a man heat up a piece of cold pizza by deep frying it in a fish & chips fryer. I slipped out before it was my turn to order.

13) From a moving taxi, I once saw Uma Thurman going into a building on the Upper West Side in New York. A few days later, I was sitting in a restaurant in Hollywood with a friend when she walked in and sat a couple of tables away. Ever since, I have wondered how often that happens with less conspicuous people without me noticing.

14) I played varsity ice hockey in college. I was a goalie.

15) When a friend of my parents who I barely knew offered to take me to Greece for a month to stay with his family if I could be ready to go in less than 12 hours, I went.

16) It was at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists in Austin, Texas, during an overheated 30 minute presentation about the diet evidenced by the canine tooth wear of the Tyrannosaurus, that I first began to question my career choice in paleontology.

17) I’ve never understood why people object to swearing, but I try not to do it around people who I don’t know just in case it bugs them.

18) I have had three fast home births.

19) I made the world’s first children’s book that was illustrated with Photoshop.

20) I’ve never been in a fight, but have always thought I’d seriously kick ass if I really had to throw down.

21) I was in my apartment less than 30 blocks away from the twin towers when they came down. A surprising number of the friends I have made in LA were only a few blocks away from me at the time.

22) I am skeptical, overconfident and optimistic and I have theories and opinions about almost everything.

23) I always looked forward to being a mother, but I am blown away by how much I love my kids.

24) Some more travel highlights (is this cheating if I list this as only one thing?): I’ve been in all of the lower 48 states. I drank tea in a yurt in Inner Mongolia, watched the sunrise from a smoking volcano in Java, walked on the Great Wall, visited the homes of weavers in Guatemala, got chased by a bull on my 20th birthday in Rosebud, Montana, saw the private family photos of Frida & Diego in Juan Rivera’s home in Mexico, ate & drank & drank with a troupe of circus performers in France, studied geology all over the American Southwest, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota, wandered around the Minoan ruins of Crete with one brother, and Stonehenge with another, went to Kung-Fu retreats in France, Indonesia, Germany and California, snorkeled in Bali and Venezuela, ate the best dinner of my life in Tokyo, watched Shamans faith-healing in Chiapas, and hitch-hiked all over New Zealand.

25) I saw crows in all of those places.