Ease Your Aching Head with 20 Nevets Tidbits

All---

There have been a lot of brain-bending posts on Nevets.QST the past week or so, so let's lighten the mood a little.  Fortunately, two of my favorite blog regulars, Golden Eagle xiaojie and Summer Ross, gave me the perfect distraction: blog awards!  I don't normally do these, but I thoroughly enjoy the active, lively participation G'Eagle and Summer always have here, and I find them both engaging and intelligent, so I very much appreciate their thinking of me.  Plus, I figured it would be a great opportunity to change up the pace a little.

So, thanks, G'Eagle and Summer for the Honest Scrap award!  In response to this award, I'm supposed to offer up 10 honest tidbits about myself.  Since I got the award twice, I'll do twenty.  Shazam!

In order that they pop into my head...

1. Loved the TV show M*A*S*H* so much growing up that I always wanted to be over there during the Korean war as a field medic.  Now I volunteer with the local EMS ambulance.
2. I love language, and would probably be proficient in several by now if I were disciplined enough to focus on learning one at a time.  I think my all time favorite language is Mandarin Chinese both to hear and to speak.
3. I play rudimentary guitar pretty soundly and when my asthma is in check I can sing okay-ish.  These skills are the foundation on which I've written 80 to 150 songs.
4. There is no overestimating my fascination with Asian martial arts.  I have taken some aikido and wish there was somewhere near here I could take more.
5. I have done archaeology in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Alaska, and Mexico.
6. When I did forensic anthropology, I was known for my willingness to get in the muck and dig in.  My picture is on the wall in my old lab, covered in mud and goo in the back of a formerly submerged car, retrieving remains.
7. I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for two years -- and I still don't know how to ski.  At all.
8. My wife's step-mom works at a ski resort in Northern Michigan -- and I still don't know how to ski.  At all.
9. I cook the same way I write: blind instinct and dumb luck.  It usually works out.  When it doesn't, I think I'm more depressed than when my writing fails.
10. Coffee.
11. I once created a The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe board game.
12. I also once created a Dark Crystal board game and a The Dirty Dozen role-playing game.
13. The book that inspired me to write my first novel when I was around twelve was Louis L'Amour's Jubal Sackett.  I remember being struck by the mixture of philosophy and adventure, of action and human interest, and of personality and rich setting.  That novel was Crow, a ~20 page single-space Western.
14. The most-played genres in my iTunes library are Bhangra, rap from 1988-1991, alt.folk, folk rock, emo, and progressive classic rock.
15. The first song that turned me onto the wonders of indie music was, "Do not Feed the Oyster" by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks."
16. Onions.
17. My favorite science fiction shows are Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
18. I can ski better than I can dance.
19. If I had my druthers, I would live in a tropical rainforest, the American or Canadian west, or a tropical island.
20. I miss the smell of the darkroom and the intimacy of talking to people on the radio.

And there you have me. :)

Since I don't really do the usual award scene, I don't feel comfortable handing it out back, but anyone who's commented on Nevets.QST should feel encouraged to post up 10 tibidts of their own.  Sometimes it's good to take a break from the headaches.

.Nevets.