(no subject)

purpledice tagged me with the eight random things meme. I don't generally do memes, but this one has been entertaining to read in other people's journals.

1.
There's a family of house finches nesting in our front porch's eaves. It's not a good thing for the porch. I don't have an official position on house finches--on the one hand, they're living creatures, while on the other hand, they're a species not native to North America--but I like their song, I like their plumage, and I like how happy our cat is to watch them through the window.

2.
I'm descended from a pope--an unremarkable, undistinguished pope, with one of the shortest reigns on record (913-914 CE).

3.
The items on this list aren't really random, of course. There are some things I don't talk about in public lj posts, and a few things I don't talk about on lj at all.

4.
I had one year of Ancient Greek at college. The first day, we learned a Sappho fragment about the evening star. Fifteen years later, whenever I see the evening star, I still greet it with those two lines of Sappho.

5.
My living room is not childproofed.

6.
I like Brandywines better than any other variety of tomatoes, but they're a pain in the ass to grow.

7.
The average American has three phobias, so I don't feel too bad about mine: heights, needles, eye injuries.

8.
After learning city driving in Seoul--where, at least in the 1980s, no traffic regulation had the force of law and the locals could get licenses without ever having to take a road test--I'm just not that impressed with the bad drivers in any US city. Not even Boston.