25 little known and seldom sought facts about me

I'm usually not into these meme things or being tagged, but since I've had some writer's block, I thought this might be a good exercise to get me moving on this blog again. Here are 25 things about me.

1. I am a morning person and do my best work in the AM. I get drowsy in the afternoon and can fall asleep very quickly. I’ve recently fallen asleep at a stoplight, only to be wakened by a honking horn. That’s a scary feeling.

2. I take out and put in my right contact lens first, then the left, always, every time.

3. My default lunch is an apple, a chunk of blue cheese, pepperoni and crackers.

4. Disorder makes me uptight. When I sense chaos in the kitchen at work, one of my first reactions is to stop and get the workspace organized. Clutter is unsettling to me.

5. I love to travel. My first big trip was to Bermuda at age 10. Since then I’ve had the chance to spend enough time to taste the food and culture in Mexico City, Nairobi, Kampala, London, Glasgow, Leeds, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Beijing, Xi’an, and Bangkok.

6. I am obsessively creative, which makes it very hard to lie around and watch movies or TV or participate in activities with no outcome. I prefer going to the cinema over watching DVD’s at home because there are less distractions there.

7. I will throw out or give away perfectly good items because I don’t like having to create a place for them. I do this with clothing regularly. As you can guess, I have a small closet space.

8. I can make food that people enjoy and are willing to pay for. I dream of making music that is playable in front of a paying audience.

9. I’ve learned how to listen before I speak. I am secure enough in what I believe to let you have your say. I listen to Rush Limbaugh and NPR because I find them interesting.

10. If I could have three channels on cable, I would subscribe to The Food Network, The Travel Channel and that one that has the show on how things are made.

11. I feed wild birds. I hang bird feeders outside my front window and watch the colorful birds stop by. My favorites are the yellow finches, which turn bright yellow in the winter. I have a reason for doing this that I won’t put here.

12. I am a persistent person and don’t give up very easily. This enabled me to endure the long, long process of opening an original restaurant, and watch it become successful.

13. I collect friends. To do so, I stay in touch with people. Before facebook and email, I did this by letter writing. I kept stationary and note cards in my desk, along with stamps, so I could jot a quick note. I wrote several per week in college.

14. I miss my dad, who passed away about 3 ½ yrs ago. My first thought of grief when I learned that he died, was that he will never see bread&cup, that he would never get to sit at my bar so I could serve him a pint, and hear him say how proud he was of me.

15. I don’t like politics, not because I don’t find it interesting, but because I hate the polarizing effect that it has on people involved in it. I can’t watch cable news shows because they wear me out. Occasionally I tune into the BBC news. At least that guy doesn’t seem angry about everything.

16. I am fascinated by process, of how things are made or created. I recently went out to a farm to watch a steer slaughtered, from the kill, to drawing and quartering, all because I want to know more about where your food originates.

17. I brew my own beer. Again, this has as much to do with process as it does with a mighty fine finished product that I can be proud of.

18. I’ve run three marathons so far, and will probably do one again eventually. I haven’t committed to one lately because I don’t like to start what I can’t finish. This is the whole reason I started running as a sophomore in college. I would never need a gym, or weights or a team of people to pull together. A decent pair of shoes and motivation would be the essentials, and I figured I could probably come up with both of those, even if I was poor.

19. I love playing craps and blackjack, and have a system I rarely deviate from when at the table. I never reach back in the pocket for more money if I lost what I started, which was literally in the first 15 minutes of a session with some friends in Vegas. I spent the next three hours in the coffee shop reading the paper while they kept winning. That day sucked.

20. The reason I finally gave in to the hair loss and shaved my head, was as a result of seeing Andre Agassi playing tennis years ago, who went from long hair to no hair. I thought if he could do it, so could I.

21. My closest brush with fame was sitting two rows behind Bono, The Edge and Larry at church in San Francisco one Sunday morning in 1988.

22. Too many choices wear me out, which is why I don’t like restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, where the menu resembles a Rand McNally road atlas. Give me two or three options about anything, and I’m OK with it.

23. I think I figured out why I listen to jazz so much. It’s because when I hear it, I imagine what it might feel like to be a player in the band. See #8.

24. I don’t pretend to understand the grief process, but I have learned that when I come across a friend sitting alone in the ashes, the best thing to do is just sit down with him and keep my mouth shut.

25. I consider myself a learner and hope to spend the rest of my life educating myself.