The "Who are you?" meme

[erikred]

Thanks to alfvaen:

This is the problem with LJ, we all think we are so close, and we know nothing about each other. I'm going to rectify it. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me, something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

The premise is a little shaky-- as much as I enjoy reading all of your journals, I can't pretend that I'm all that close to all of you. Heck, some of you are strangers who stalked me first. :) Anyway, ask, and I'll post. I'm crazy egotistical that way.

Comments

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

How did you and Yoko meet, get all lovey-dovey, and get married?

[erikred.livejournal.com]

It was a dark and storm night....

Well, not quite. Let's see, it was mid-April. I'd been teaching in Kochi since the end of July, so Kochi was rapidly becoming my home. I met my friend Chris (nicknamed Kiwi, after his land of origin) at a bar called Fish (as in, Drink Like a). We were on our third beers when in came our compatriot Jennifer, her boyfriend Scott, and two of his students, one of whom was Yoko. Yoko had only recently returned to Kochi after finishing her Bachelor's in English at Kansai Gaidai University, and she was working, strangely enough, in the same building where I worked. She was beautiful, charming, funny, and intelligent; unfortunately, she had a boyfriend, so despite our adventures that night (including drinking, dancing, keeping a friend out of a fight with a bar-owner, eating at an all-night ramen stand, and riding here and there on bicycles, drunk, in the rain) nothing beyond friendly camraderie happened.

Three weeks later, while drunk and swimming across a treacherous river at midnight in a rural town far to the west, Jennifer, who happened to be on my back since she was a terrible swimmer, told me that Yoko had broken up with her boyfriend. As soon as I got back to Kochi, I began extending friendly offers her way: come on over and watch videos with a group of us; coome out drinking with a bunch of us; let's do as a group. Eventually, I summoned up the courage to ask her out to a movie on her own. She agreed-- provided she could bring her friends. Sigh. So we had a very romantic date, just the, um, five of us. After proving myself trustworthy on a couple of occasions, I talked her into a less crowded date, and well, the rest is pretty much history.

We started "going out," so to speak, somewhere around May 25, 1994; we got married on July 22, 1996. Yay, us!

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

It's not stalking! Much. Anymore.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're practically family. :)

[alfvaen]

What I'm curious about is--how did you meet ronebofh? I know him from talk.bizarre--did you also?

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, no. I was in college with tinymammoth, but I graduated before her. She met amywithani there, and amywithani met and fell in love with palecur who happens to be ronebofh's brother. It turns out that lots of my old Berkeley friends also became friends with people I later worked with or e-corresponded with. It is truly a small world.

I've actually only met ronebofh in person twice now, and both times have been a blast.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You're using up all of my C4, you punk.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

No need for that, 'cos I'm Dy-no-mite.

[mkb-cbr.livejournal.com]

What is wrong with your heart? Do we need to worry?

(Sorry to get all serious.)

[erikred.livejournal.com]

As it turns out, my heart issues are more of a legacy issue than a real threat. When I was 14 (and unusually tall for my age), my mother wanted to have me checked out for any height-related health concerns. We visited a cardiologist who, when she saw my echocardiogram, freaked and said I might have Marfan Syndrome. When we got back to the States, I started seeing a cardiologist who was similarly convinced.

The major life impacts of Marfan Syndrome are 1) no strenuous activity, 2) no lifting over 10lbs., and 3) daily doses of a Beta Blocker. The purpose of all this is to prevent aortic dilation and possible aortic dissection.

In January or so of this year, about twenty years after my initial diagnosis, genetic testing revealed that I do not, in fact, have Marfan Syndrome, and my last two echocardiograms suggest that I may just have an unusually large heart-- pretty much what you might expect from someone of my size. I may still have some sort of connective tissue disorder, but it's not Marfan Syndrome, and my heart is fine. I'm still on Tenormin, but at this point it just makes me calmer under pressure.

Yay, genetic testing!

[boegle.livejournal.com]

Do you believe in (a or some) "God(s)"?

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Yes. No. I don't know.

Mostly what I believe in is people. I think that, all things being equal, human beings can be a pretty decent bunch, and we have the power to change the world for the better. I think we get lost pretty easily, though, and we have a tendency to let our sense of fairness become a little too focused (as in, why do they get more than I do? That's not fair!).

I do believe in luck, and I pray to the great unknown when I have nothing else at my disposal. The latter's a habit from my Roman Catholic days, and it's pretty hard to break, so I've channeled it into a way of getting clarity when I become lost. Tends to work like a charm.