mememememeh!

Okay, I promised myself I'd go to bed early today (spent 3 days at puerto galera getting tanned and drunk) because I have a heavy schedule tomorrow, but what the hey. Joy tagged me, and I shall answer her summons. 

Okay, the rules for this meme: 

Each player of this game starts with 6 weird things about himself or herself. People who get tagged need to write a blog entry of their own as well as state the rule clearly. In the end, you need to tag 6 people as well and list their names. Don’t forget to let them know they’ve been tagged!

So, shall we?

1. I can spend hours on the internet doing nothing constructive. Most recently (last Wednesday, to be exact) I spent five hours (!) reading ONLY about dog and cat breeds. So I can tell you about one of the rarest terrier breeds (the Selky from Scotland). Extremely useful information, don't you think?

2. I talk to myself a lot. Maybe this is not exactly too weird nowadays when everyone seems to have a neurosis, but anyway. It dates back to growing up as an only child and carrying conversations with imaginary friends (whose responses I also supplied!) and being encouraged to do so. Another form that my "talking to myself" takes is running commentary–often, when I'm absolutely alone, I give myself running commentary and/or narration as a do something. This happens a lot when I'm cooking or baking, and I make as though I were a presenter on a cooking show. (I think it's a sign: I've definitely been watching too many cooking shows.)

3. I can be extremely lazy about taking baths on weekends. I guess this is both embarrassing and weird, especially since Filipinos have a tendency to be obsessed with personal hygiene (what other languages have such extensive terms for body dirt?), not to mention how rabid a cleanliness-freak my mother is (very borderline O.C. that woman, and I mean that seriously). I guess on weekends I'm caught up doing more relaxing, enjoyable things that make me loathe to move my butt: reading, watching TV, surfing the internet…

Because of that, Kapi says that I should have been a hippy.

Not to worry, though–when I bake, I always make sure that I've taken a bath and I constantly wash my hands with anti-bacterial hand soap. 

4. Okay, a lot of my friends know this already, but now I'm ready to admit it to the whole world: I find guilty pleasure in reading historical romance novels set in Regency England. Please take note of the word historical, as I cannot stomach reading romance novels (even by the same author who writes a historical novel) set in the present. Take note as well of Regency England: I can't even stomach romance novels set in other historical eras. (The Wild West? So politically incorrect, not to mention unsettling. Medieval times? So implausible, not to mention gross-out inducing–sex with months-unwashed medieval knights is not a good image.)

What attracts me to the Regency romance novel is its brainlessness (so easy to read that I can finish in an afternoon or less) which, at the same time, requires some degree of research. I don't like reading regency novels that get their terms or time lines wrong (for example, ladies' evening bags were called "ridicules" for a couple of years, before being artificially "Frenchified" into a "reticule." some awful writers of historical romance use "reticule" in a story set in a year that the bags were still called "ridicules"). They're a pretty good escape as well into a period of English history that was incredibly interesting: Napoleon was both a conqueror and a prisoner during the regency (on the continent); women in England still had a limited role in society but had an increasingly important role in the private sphere; and so on. Not to mention that it's also the period that one classic writer, Jane Austen, immortalized in her books.

5. I had (still have!) the biggest crush on Spock/Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek.

6. Whenever I'm in the bathroom, I make faces at myself in the mirror over the sink, and practice my smile. When I was a child, I was once told I had the fakest-looking smile in photos (even when I was genuinely happy) and to this day, I practice smiling in the bathroom after I brush my teeth. I have no idea if my smile looks a great deal more natural than it had been then, but at least I did try to do something to change it.

Agh. I'm so darn sleepy. Can I just tag people for this meme tomorrow? 

Live long and prosper!

Edit: Darn it. I don't know who to tag, aside from Kapi. Den, do you feel like doing this meme?