six weird things meme

people on blogs i read are doing this one, and now i feel like trying it out. so, six weird things about me.

1) i read novels on the toilet. all the time. i can't go to the bathroom without a book to read, even if it's just a page before i have to get up again. it's just so BORING otherwise. if i find myself in a bathroom without a book or magazine or anything, i will actually pick up a bottle of anything that happens to be nearby, like soap or Glade or toothpaste or 409, and read the back of it, every single word, including ingredients like "methylchloroisothiazolinone" (look it up, you will see i have even spelled it correctly). i don't remember how this all started, but one of my brother's favorite embarrassing things to tell people about me is that i once read all of stephen king's "christine" on the toilet. in one sitting. (in all fairness, i do read pretty fast... novels at least). and anyway, i can always retort that he read much of his collection of "encyclopedia brittanica" on the toilet. which is much more embarrassing than "christine". oh, if only he were in the blogosphere too...
oh, as an aside to this one, since i probably can't use it as a separate weirdity, some of my bathroom books i have used for that purpose for YEARS, reading them over and over again. (dont' worry, i keep them clean). these include "little women", which i have practically memorized because of it, and most of the harry potter books.

2) i also have to read recipes while i'm eating. this can be either in my own cookbooks, or online - two sites i visit every day are deliaonline.com, and allrecipes.com. at work i would have lunch at my desk every day and visit these sites. hubby says he has never met anyone so concerned with all aspects of food. i do love cooking, and the benefit is i try out lots of new recipes on him. but i just have to have recipes to read while i'm eating! it makes the eating so much more satisfying. i don't know why. it used to be that i had to either read (books) while i was eating (which my mom would get mad at me for) or have someone to eat with. but now, even when we sit down to dinner at home, i'll usually have a cookbook open.

3) in movies, when a character is trying to do something they shouldn't be, like sneaking around in someone's house in their absence, or cheating on a spouse, or .. whenever there is a chance that any moment somebody might get CAUGHT... i can't watch. i will actually turn away or hide my face in my hands and peek through my fingers. i can't stand that kind of suspense.

4) i once had a passing interest in wicca. before i get the chorus of astaghfirullahs, i didn't know at the time that it was a religion of its own and sort of required you to renounce your "old beliefs." i just thought the idea of magic was really cool, especially with all the old celtic, woman-centric connotations, as well as the fact that there were actually people who "practiced" it. i knew one at school who loaned me a book about it, in which i discovered that it was really not the sort of thing a muslim could be interested in. oh well.

5) i have a method of eating meals that a friend of mine once described very well as "a constant search for the perfect bite." generally this can also be described as "save the best bite for last." for example, how i eat a reese's: all around the edge first, and then finally savor the yummy bit in the middle with all the peanut butter. i eat sandwiches the same way, waffles, etc. crust first, then the middle. as for plates with rice and saalan, i will usually taste each kind of food in my plate, then in each bite i'll mix them up in different ways and proportions, always searching for the combination that tastes best. it's unconscious... i can talk to someone and read recipes while doing this, no problem. like, right now i am eating this leftover cheesecake from the CC factory, and every bite i am trying to get the best mix of the crust, the cheesecake part, the topping and the whipped cream. (it's a new one, by the way, mixed berry custard almond crunch cheesecake. if that doesn't make your mouth water, you are just not worthy).

6) i skipped three grades out of the 12, not including kindergarten which i also skipped, and repeated one, with the end result that i graduated three months after i turned 15. that was, however, the end of my illustrious whiz kid career, as my grades plummeted once i started college (and got a taste of having a social life, however pathetic it was). the grade i repeated was fourth, and that was only because we were moving from public school to this one, a private quaker school in durham, nc, and the Grownups deemed it was best for me to enter this school in what was the equivalent of the grade i had just completed.

that's it! here's a pic from a recent visit by by nephew, issa, with musa having decided he is finished with this conversation, but issa still excited to see him. i love these kiddies so much!!!