8 Things About Me (A Meme)

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

The Things:

1. My current car is the third one I have owned. My first car, a blue Corolla just younger than me, died in the summer holidays before the start of my third undergraduate year. It (and I) were in the middle of a three car pile up, when a 4WD crossed into an exit lane two cars in front of me at the last minute. The car directly in front of me breaked, I breaked, the car behind didn't - and my car ended up with one of those trailer attachment balls through its radiator. Replacing the engine was more than the car was worth. My second car, a white Corolla this time, was set on fire while I was over in New Zealand on a conference trip (the car was staying with my parents in Perth). My current car is a Ford Laser, and I still have to pause and think about what type of car it is.

2. I did half of Year 3 (primary school) by distance education (my family spent six months travelling around Australia in a caravan). I've always blamed this disruption in my education for the fact that I can't remember my times tables.

3. I name significant inanimate objects in my life. My laptop is Eurydice and the wireless keyboard is Orfeo. When I bought the laptop, I was doing a lot of reading on cultural memory, and some theorist who's name I can't remember (and can't look up because the information is on the other laptop) wrote beautifully about how mediated memories where two steps away from the event: unreachable, like Eurydice looking back at Orpheus as he turned to look at her.

4. My favourite Dockers player (yes, I do attend AFL matches) is Josh Carr. I really don't know why. 

5. One of my favourite bands is a folk/rock group from Newfoundland - Great Big Sea. Again, I don't really know why, though any song about clubbing baby seals that you can cheerfully sing along to has to be good.

6. I've had measles, but I haven't had chicken pox. I was the first of my siblings to get stitches. I've had a lumbar puncture, but I wasn't conscious at the time.

7. I read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo when I was 11. I can remember sitting on the porch of our house in the Wheatbelt town of Merredin, in the very late afternoon, and crying when Gavroche died on the barricades. I still cry when reading some books - even sometimes when rereading.

8.  I know how to spin (making thread from raw wool) using a hand spindle, but I can't knit.