Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Stories of the street

My new friend Bernard has tagged me for this Seven Things You May Not Know business, and I am not one to take such tagging lightly. Heigh-ho, then, away we go!

Seven Things You May Not Know About Me*

#1: The name on my birth certificate is not Emma. I changed it at age 22 (much to the chagrin of many people). I'm very happy with this decision!

#2: When I was diagnosed with diabetes (it was my mom who did it - she's a nurse and she brought home blood sugar testing supplies), I cried and cried. Then I asked my mom if I was going to die, just knowing the answer was yes. When she told me no, I stopped crying. Oh... I remember saying. What was the big deal, then?

#3: I grew up speaking both English and Spanish - learned them simultaneously - but until I was about eleven I felt vaguely uneasy in both languages. I spoke Spanish at home and English everywhere else, and missed out on colloquialisms across the board. By about the sixth grade English had the edge and my love affair with that language was sealed.

#4: I love airports. Deeply. As a child I spent a lot of time in them, and for whatever reason the excitement has never worn off. Each time I'm in an airport I'm ten years old, traveling by myself to see relatives in San Francisco, cocksure as all get out, reading a magazine in the waiting area, chatting to the people around me, thrilled to be out exploring the world on my own. You could plant me in any airport in the world and I'd have it mapped out, complete with friends, in a very short while. I even find the hideous smell of jet fuel sort of charming.

#5: For most of my life I thought I had a terrible singing voice. At eighteen I got cast in a play, which became a musical about two weeks into production. I wanted to die - mind you, the only singing I had to do was as part of a large group. But it turned out that my voice wasn't so bad. And now I sing on purpose, and write songs and record them and stuff. Life is strange.

#6: I love typography and everything about it. Perhaps excessively. Fonts are so beautiful and expressive and -- noble, somehow. Fonts are my friends.

#7: My favorite words in Spanish are ferrocarríl (railroad car) and plomo (steel, or the color of steel).

I hesitate to tag anybody, as I know not everyone finds it as exciting as I do. So (even though I'm breaking the rules, below), I'll just say this: if you feel like it, give it a go and leave me a note about it!


The Rules
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

*Unless I know you from the Digs days, in which case, er, I'm sorry.

2 comments:

AmyT said...

Hi Emma,

Hi Emma,

Nice meme. Nice blog :)

Visit me some time over at www.diabetesmine.com? Would you also kindly consider adding me to your blogroll?

Happy Thanksgiving,

AmyT

Emma said...

Hi, Amy --

For some reason I never got notified about this comment! So sorry for not having responded sooner (and you'll probably never see this note!)! You and I actually met at a luncheon for women with diabetes, held in October in San Diego.

Thanks for stopping by,
Emma