three quarters and a map

[harborshore]

Tagged by halflinen:

- List 7 habits/quirks/facts.
- Tag 7 people to do the same.
- Don't tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag 'whoever wants to do it'.



1. I can't sit on a desk chair like a normal person. I'm always curling up weirdly, sitting on one of my feet, kneeling on the seat, or tilting oddly. And I switch positions really, really often.

2. I read ridiculously fast. When I was a kid, other kids would think I was lying about reading as fast as I did, and so they'd make me read a page and tell them what it said. This is less about aptitude and more about diligent practice (or at least it's equal parts of both)--I was very bored in class in elementary school, so I'd leave a book open in my desk and tilt it open so I could read during class.

3. I own between 32 and 37 scarves. The uncertainty about the exact numbers is because I keep giving them away AND buying new ones. I also own about ten pairs of colorful/interestingly patterned/boringly monochrome knee socks. I have a scarves-and-socks problem.

4. When I have to go through painful medical/dental procedures, I recite "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" and other super-long Dylan songs in my head.

5. A strand of my hair can hold 56 grams of weight. This is unusually strong, they told me at the Children's Museum (I believe I was 11 at the time). So I have Good Hair? Or something? (On the other hand, I have Troublesome Teeth.)

6. I'm bilingual. (I know, you're all shocked now.) It's even more apparent at the moment, because I get to do my coursework in English this semester, so the spoken patterns are coming back as well (they always recede a little the longer I'm in Sweden). ETA: I should clarify--this makes my bilingualism messier, not neater. It's harder to keep the languages separate when I'm using them in, uh, close proximity to one another.

7. I had a hearing problem until I was twelve, when I somehow grew in a way that tilted my skull differently and allowed the channels (?) in my ear to become more open. Or that's how it was explained to me, at least.



Oh, I'm supposed to tag people, am I? Um, very randomly (and only do it if you want to!): novembersmith, blindmouse, erraticonstilts, fleurdeliser, torakowalski, lordessrenegade and jubella.

Comments

[kickingrad.livejournal.com]

Me too, on the reading thing! People still test me now, it drives my flatmate mad. He refuses to believe that I can read that fast.

Also, sitting like a normal person is for normal people.

*high-five!* ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Hee! Once at college, this boy named Rudy came over and said, in a very serious tone, "Vee, when I came to breakfast, you were starting that book. What page are you on?"

OBVIOUSLY. *beams at you* ♥

[blindmouse.livejournal.com]

1. I can't sit on a desk chair like a normal person.

Ahaha, I actually make dress decisions in the morning based on whether I can get away with curling my knee up on the keyboard at work if I'm wearing a skirt.

"Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" and other super-long Dylan songs in my head.

I'm not sure I knew that was a Dylan song? I have a Joan Baez version somewhere - possibly on cassette - that was obsessed with for a little while as a teenager.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I've always known you to be my kind of lady. *grins* It used to trouble my aunt when I worked for her, because she thought it was bad for my back (um, it's possible she was right).

Oh, I love that version! But yes, it's a Dylan song, and god, I love it lots. I love all the ones that are like stories (and a lot of the other ones as well).

PS. Hie thee to miggy's journal, she's holding a Disney song deathmatch. IT IS SO MUCH FUN. SO MUCH MUSIC I'D FORGOTTEN ABOUT.

[desfinado.livejournal.com]

Me to with #1!! When I was a student I don't think anyone noticed me constantly tucking one leg under or propping my feet up or sitting cross-legged, but then when I was a TA I kind of felt OCD because everyone is watching your every move! I also got told to stop doing it during a conference presentation, oops. But it is so hard to sit straiiiiiiiight! Do you do yoga? I always felt that was why I kept wanting to bend joints and stretch while sitting...

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I do pilates (have done some form of it since I was fourteen), so you may very well be right about that! Some kind of sense of how unnatural the desk-sitting position is...it's TOTALLY hard to sit straight. No pun intended or anything. *grins*

[desfinado.livejournal.com]

Hahah yes! Yoga! How you infiltrate our lives! I do this one class where we lie on our backs with our legs open but bent, and rub our thighs, and we are supposed to exhale and make noise but when I do it anywhere else it looks INCREDIBLY OBSCENE HAHAHA

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Ha! I've done that pose, for sure. Not with making noise, but the rest of it. And yeah, that would garner you some stares, probably. :D

[impertinence.livejournal.com]

you should pp of your scarves. o_o

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

*grins, points downthread*

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

*tweaks your nose* Voila!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I feel like I might be lying by omission--you can't quite tell how many there are. *hides*

[impertinence.livejournal.com]

:D! Pretty!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Truthfully, it doesn't quite do the craziness justice, but they're hard to capture. Like, there are quite a lot of them. And about eight of them (the really warm winter ones) are downstairs. RIDICULOUS.

[languisity.livejournal.com]

i'm fidgety, too. usually i'll curl up in a chair with my knees to my chest if i can get away with it. if i can't do that, though, i just can't sit still at all.

i read insanely *slowly*, but that's also because i have a daydreaming problem. like, i'll drift off and think i'm still reading? but i'm not. yeah, i don't even know how that works.

also? socks *___*

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Yes! I love those big round chairs, you know the ones you can tilt? Failing that, old and oversized armchairs will do, because then I can sprawl as I like.

Sounds fairly sensible to me, man. Something very like it happened a lot when I was doing my philosophy reading.

SOOOOOOOCKS. And tights! I have purple tights and I love them lots.

[halflinen.livejournal.com]

7. Oh, weird medical things you grow out of. I had epilepsy till I was 13, when I just "grew out of it". \o/ for us both dodging bullets!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Isn't it odd? I mean, it's also awesome, but so weird.

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

1) I do have to think about it, when I'm eating, to sit like an actual grown-up and not with one leg tucked up, or kneeling on a chair. On my sofa, I had to move the cushion at the back because this way, it's more comfortable to curl up on and I can tuck my legs all the way on the seat without having to jostle birdsflying or move the pile of stuff next to me.

7) My little brother was the same. He was pretty deaf especially in one ear, and now it's not really noticeable at all.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

1) It's so great to hear I'm not alone in this. *grins* I've been frowned at by many an old lady/coworker/my mom for it.

7) Oh man, awesome! I thoroughly bewildered my doctors while taking my yearly hearing test, enough so that I had to do it twice, after which they said, "You don't need your hearing aids anymore." It was right before Christmas, too.

PS. Did you read the latest Red Robin? *__*

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

Re 1. I'm exactly the same! Sitting upright with both feet on the floor feels really weird and uncomfortable. My desk at work is too low (or, rather, my chair is too high because I'm short) for me to be able to curl my legs under myself while sitting at the computer and I get so fidgety because my legs are in the wrong places!

(Also, you tagged me! *beams* No one ever tags me!)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

It really is unnatural! Stupid uncomfortable desk chairs.

(♥! Dude, it was a most random process, but I like hearing you talk about random things. So.)

[wethepainted.livejournal.com]

Sitting normally is for boring people!

Re #6: The ETA part rings true. I'm bilingual too, and at times it feels like the languages are so mixed in my head I can't communicate with either! And when you add to that the two other languages I'm studying, it gets truly frustrating.

(I just friended you because you seem very awesome and so I thought I should come say hi. Hi!)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes it is.

I think eventually they become unbundled, but it's an immensely complicated process, the untangling of all the things that go into languages. And I also feel like a different person in English, which is confusing too.

(Hi! *beams* I love new people. Please feel free to hang out and comment and stuff--I don't friend back right away because I post unfiltered private content sometimes, but I do generally friend back once I know someone better. ♥

[nokomis305.livejournal.com]

Scarves! They are so fun. I always end up just wearing them around the house in winter, though, because I don't want to take them off.

Also I am right there with you on sitting weird in chairs. I'm always fidgeting and folding my legs in weird ways, just because it drives me insane to sit normally in a chair.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Scarves are the greatest, truefax. I think my favorite thing about them is that it's like getting a favorite color/pattern/etc. in a contained format.

I think it's my spine. Maybe you also have a contrary spine.

[x_dark_siren_x]

My friend does that. She always sits weird in certain types of chairs - and when I say weird, I mean, imitative of L in Death Note. It's rather creepy how she manages it. :/ Me, I just like tucking my legs up under me, and can sit like that for hours. I feel so unspectactular now. /o\

Same friend is also an incredibly fast reader. I just to be, but I think I've slowed sown now. She's always telling me, "you read slooooow." But then, I read Harry Potter five in under twenty-four hours and even knowing me as the kid with her nose in a book - until it got ripped away from me, anyway (I used to do that thing with leaving the book on the table too - but the teachers would yell at me if it was open, because they knew I'd be reading it and not paying attention >.<) - no one believed me. I kept saying, but it's not even that long!

And I thought I had a lot of scarves. O.o I'm jealous.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

HP5! Oh yes, that, um, three hours, I think? It's not even that long, you're right, and she's a fast read, Rowling.

That is nothing to be jealous of, believe me. *sighs* They take up space and they get wrinkled and I forget that I have a certain one and end up buying a very similar one...SIGH.

Random medical facts you don't care about for $1000, Alex.

[bayleaf.livejournal.com]

re: #7, from the (pretty spot-on) description, it sounds like a eustachian tube problem. There's three sections of the ear (outer, middle, and inner), and each has a slightly different function in the hearing process. The part of the ear you can see on the side of your head = the pinna, and it and your ear canal are to collect and funnel sound to your eardrum. The eardrum marks the start of the middle ear, which is an air-filled space w/ a series of 3 bones that act like a bridge across the gap. The purpose of the middle ear is impedance matching, which is to say overcome the difference in the way sound carries in air versus water. One side of the bony bridge (called the ossicular chain) is connected to the ear drum, the other to the oval window, which is the start of the inner ear. The inner ear is filled w/ fluid, and when a soundwave hits your eardrum and causes the ossicular chain to jiggle, it sets up a series of water waves in your inner ear. These waves make the ear send a signal to your brain saying you heard something.

If anything goes wrong in any of the three sections of the ear, you can have a hearing loss. These hearing losses fall into one of two categories: problems in the outer or middle ear mean sound isn't moved from one place to another like it's supposed to be; that's called conductive hearing loss. Problems in the inner ear result in an inability to detect sound and/or send a message to the brain when a sound is detected. That's called a sensory/neural or sensorineural hearing loss.

The middle ear is connected to the outside only by the Eustachian Tube. It's function is to equalize air pressure (which is why you hear a little 'pop' when you're driving up a mountain or in an airplane. The tube opened up and air rushed in or out to try to make the pressure behind your eardrum equal the pressure in front of it.) If, for whatever reason, the tube can't open, there is a pressure differential and the eardrum can't move efficiently, which can cause a hearing loss.

Although that kind of loss is generally mild, ET problems can also cause fluid to build up behind the eardrums, which causes a much more significant hearing loss. If the tube function improves, however, the problem goes away.

Er. Which is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than you ever wanted to know about that. Um. Nice scarves?

Re: Random medical facts you don't care about for $1000, Alex.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Dude, this was awesome! It also sounds a lot like how they explained it, except this time I understand (and your explanation was more thorough) because, you know, I'm not twelve anymore. It also explains why I got ear infections so easily (it took a lot less for stuff to build up). Thank you!