My Seven Things

So there is a meme going around the PHP community, and although I normally never participate in these things, I was tagged by two three people (enygma, vidyut and brandon savage) I would never have expected to have participated, so I decided not to be a fuddyduddy and play along. (Did I really just write the word “fuddyduddy”?)

Seven Things

1. I am deathly allergic to bees, and almost died from a yellowjacket attack when I was 7. I was walking along the railroad ties that lined my driveway, and my foot sank through into a yellowjacket nest.
2. I have had some pretty unusual jobs, before settling into web development. I have been a bartender at a strip joint, a bartender in a dive bar, a makeup artist for an erotic photographer/pornographer, leather carver, sculptor, illustrator, a broker on Wall Street and a club dancer, though not in that order. My first graphic design job was for one of those free home listing magazines, where I had to photo-correct, retouch and place photos of homes for sale into the magazine layout using Corel. The hard drive was so small on my machine that every few days, we had to dump everything because it would fill up. I offered to make the company owner a website for free as practice and to build my portfolio, and he declined, saying “the internet is a fad.”
3. I was in People Magazine in 2004.
4. I was epileptic growing up (petit mal), but have mostly grown out of it, although I do sometimes risk seizures if I don’t sleep for several days.
5. I worked with tigers for about a year and a half in Riverside, California. I was part of a team that took care of 56 big cats, including tigers, eleven leopards, one cougar and two lions. I miss them every day, and often find myself tempted to leave everything behind and go to Africa to work. Jane Goodall is my hero.
6. I am a blacksmith and a PADI certified advanced scuba diver, both of which I learned in Arizona. (Who gets scuba certified in Arizona??) I also used to be a bodybuilder, and would go to the gym twice a day.
7. When I worked on Wall Street, I used to have to dress up for work. One day, I went to the bathroom and didn’t realize that my skirt was tucked up into the back of my pantyhose, and walked through the entire boardroom with my ass exposed for the word to see. I didn’t notice until I was sitting down at my desk. So if you ever manage to catch me in a skirt and it looks like I touch the back of my skirt a lot, it’s not because I like my butt, its because I’m paranoid.

People I’m Tagging

• YatPundit – because I find him interesting and funny
• brlittle – because I will take any opportunity I can find to annoy him
• hipsterplease – because he’s awesome and hooks me up when I can’t find the nerdcore tracks I want
• sparkyfirepants – because I’ve only just met him and he seems interesting
• lotusberry – again, its an opportunity to annoy him
• johnnymags – because he’s fucking funny
• lomifeh – because I’ve known him forever

And here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.