  All the other bloggers are doing it. I'm just following the herd. 1. I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 2. Aside from college (University of Iowa, 30 miles away) and four summer jobs during college, I lived there until I moved to Chicago at the age of 32.
3. My parents are still married (to each other) and I have a younger sister who’s married with two amazing kids. 4. I’ve had one long-term relationship (3 1/2 years) and one short-term relationship (9 months). Both ended extremely amicably. 5.
I love pets, but I’m more a cat person than a dog person. 6. Mostly because cats are self-pooping and self-cleaning. 7. I’ve had three cats: Patches (who lived to be 19), Ester and Emma. 8.
I am currently catless. 9. I first started noticing other boys early on in grade school. 10. I thought those weird feelings I had inside were just jealousy from thinking the other boys were cuter than I was. 11.
When I finally hit puberty, I realized what those feelings REALLY were. 12. I’ve never slept with a woman, and I don’t think I even could. 13. Not that I’d ever want to. 14.
I’ve always been attracted to guys my own age. 15. I came out to my family July 5, 1984. I had just finished my sophomore year of high school. 16. Things were NOT good in our little Republican household for quite a while after that.
17. But my family is pretty awesome and quickly unlearned all the stupid prejudices they had been taught by the Christian hate industry. 18. I’m mostly Norwegian with a bit of German and Swedish and probably some other Northern European muttness thrown in. 19. My family celebrates only the Norwegian part of our heritage.
20. I grew up Lutheran, but I knew early on that my true religion was None of the Above. 21. I absolutely do not understand why people think they need mythology—especially a divisive, solipsistic, life-destroying mythology—to live happy, moral, altruistic lives. 22. I find so many inherent flaws in the idea of religion that I have a hard time respecting people who embrace it with unbridled enthusiasm or who talk about it like it’s something real.
23. I feel the same way about astrology. 24. My family is still religious, but we don’t talk about it. It’s practically the only disagreement—spoken or unspoken—we have. 25.
I don’t consider myself an atheist, because atheism is too obsessed with the existence of a god. I simply don’t believe and I totally don’t care. 26. In 1988, I lost five friends in two plane crashes and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. 27. One of those friends was murdered by the December 21 terrorist bomb that blew Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.
28. I’d never really had an opinion on the death penalty until then. Now I’m a huge fan. 29. I studied the piano from second grade until I was in college. 30.
I’ve taken tons of dance classes, and I’m a damn good tapper. 31. I’ve studied voice off and on since high school. 32. My voice is trained more for show tunes and opera than for pop music. 33.
Actually, I suck as a pop singer. 34. I’m a HUGE and unrepentant show-tune queen. 35. I sang and danced and played the piano in theme park shows all four summers I was in college. 36.
I still kinda wish I’d pursued a career on the stage. 37. But then I look at my actor friends who are still living job-to-job in their 30s and 40s and I’m glad I found a more stable career. 38. I have a degree in literature of the Northern European Renaissance and most of a minor in Spanish. 39.
I got a job as an advertising copywriter when I got out of college just to pay the bills until I could figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. 40. I’m still here. And I neither love nor hate it. 41. But I must be good at it because my stuff keeps winning awards.
And I've survived 10 rounds of layoffs in my career. 42. I was a skinny, 160-lb scarecrow all through high school and college. 43. Tired of being ignored by the guys I liked, I joined a gym soon after I graduated, and I’ve been lifting weights 5 days a week since then. 44.
I peaked at 200 lbs when I lived in Iowa and had a highly motivated lifting partner and nothing better to do than work out. 45. Now that I live in Chicago and have a ton of stuff to distract me, I’m holding my weight at 190 lbs. 46. I’ll never be as muscular as I want to be—and I don't think I'm very hot—but guys DO hit on me a lot. Hot guys.
Usually when they're rip-roarin' drunk. 47. People compliment me the most on my arms, legs, cheekbones and (curiously) my nose. Which is pretty honkin’ big. 48. Women always tell me I have beautiful skin, and guys always tell me they're jealous of my thick head of hair.
49. Since I turned 30, I’ve developed stubborn little love handles that in my mind are HUGE. 50. I haven’t ruled out lipo. 51. But I’d never get any other kind of plastic surgery.
Not even on my nose. 52. My skin burns easily, so I use self-tanner and cover myself with SPF 45 when I go out in the sun. 53. I started running kinda seriously in 1994 and entered a few small races (5K or 8K) each year. 54.
I started running more seriously when I moved to Chicago and now I do bigger races (10K, half marathon, maybe a full marathon). 55. I run for the same reason I work out: So guys will notice me. 56. The health benefits are nice too. 57.
I rarely get sick, and when I do it’s never very bad. 58. I’ve probably taken 5 sick days my entire adult life—and they were either for migraines or what we’ll euphemistically call digestion troubles. 59. I haven’t thrown up since I got food poisoning on my 23rd birthday. 60.
I was born with my tongue connected to the bottom of my mouth and behind my bottom teeth, and I had to have surgery at birth and again in junior high school to correct it. 61. Just talking about it still makes the end of my tongue tingle. In a bad way. 62. I broke my arm roughhousing with my cousin when I was in about 5th grade, but I’ve never had a broken bone since.
63. I had my tonsils out when I was in about 1st grade, my wisdom teeth out when I was in high school and LASIK surgery in January 2004. 64. Other than that I’ve never been operated on or hospitalized. 65. All my life I’ve gotten sweaty, panicky and physically ill in crowded social settings like bars or parties.
66. After seeing a therapist a couple of times in 2003 and getting diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder, I’ve pretty much talked myself into making it go away. 67. I still have tiny panic attacks once in a while, but I consider myself cured. 68. And I did it without prescription drugs.
69. I don’t drink or smoke or take party drugs, and I never have. 70. People who find out I don’t drink either see it as profoundly admirable or they get these immediate paranoid delusions that I’m passing judgment over every sip they take and they stay away from me. 71. I honestly don’t care whether other people drink or not.
It’s just not something I want to do. And I never tell people they shouldn't drink. 72. But I will never understand why people need to get wasted or be in a drug-induced fog to have a good time. Life is already amazing without the help of chemicals. 73.
Once in a while I’ll have a sip of alcohol, just to see what it tastes like. 74. I have a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on my left ankle. 75. I want to get another tattoo—either around my left arm or somewhere near my naughty bits. 76.
I got my nipples pierced kind of on a dare on May 1, 1999. 77. One of the piercings urlLink fell out on January 20, 2004. When I couldn’t get it back in, I decided it was time to take them both out and return my nipples to their natural state. 78. I’ve been skydiving seven times.
79. I’d do it again, but now that I’m an uncle, dangerous things like skydiving have lost their appeal. 80. In fact, becoming an uncle is the most profoundly life-changing thing that’s ever happened to me. 81. It’s also made me more emotional.
I’ve suddenly started tearing up over the most benign things. Like sentimental commercials. Or the National Anthem. 82. I’ve always been a sucker for patriotic stuff, though. 83.
One of my biggest pet peeves is people who don't look where they're going. I've been known to get in their way so they bump into me and then say things to them to make them feel bad for being so stupid. I look at this as a public service. 84. I also hate partisan politics. My opinions do NOT fall neatly within approved Democratic or Republican platforms, and I find it hard to believe anybody else's do, either.
85. My favorite color is blue. 86. Aside from my mortgage, I have no debt. 87. I won’t buy something until I have the cash to pay for it.
88. I clip coupons for groceries and I organize them in the order of the aisles at the grocery store. 89. I rarely buy things (from salad dressing to clothes to furniture) that aren’t on sale. 90. I don’t mind stopping back and “visiting” things until they go on sale, either.
It’s like a game to me. 91. But I don’t have any problem splurging on things like a Mediterranean cruise or a big-screen TV. 92. I would have a hard time dating someone with lots of credit card debt. 93.
I would also have a hard time dating someone addicted to religion—and I absolutely would not date someone addicted to drugs or alcohol. 94. Other than that, I consider myself to be extremely open-minded, non-judgmental and easy to get along with. 95. I admit to having snobby attitudes about pop music (seven words and two chords do NOT equal a song, Britney), iceberg lettuce (no explanation needed) and spelling (I cringe when guys send me emails that say things like “your hot”). 96.
I also don’t consider myself to be a picky eater, but other people probably think I am. 97. I don’t like seafood, nuts, coconut, coffee, pickles, canned peas, melon or dark chocolate. 98. But I like tuna salad with pickle relish in it. 99.
I have a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich for lunch almost every day. 100. Creamy peanut butter. Wheat bread. No cheap jelly. 
