The Odd and Interesting Kate

So my friend in the SEO world, Brent Payne from the Tribune and Big Watah fame, got tagged a few days ago with something sort of like a chain email, or MySpace bulletin. Don’t pretend that you haven’t seen them on MySpace, I know you have an account even if it’s blank. 🙂

He filled it out with some amazing stories and so I guess I’ll do the same (just not as amazing). It makes for a great blog post and you might learn something. Here’s hoping you’re still a reader when this is all over with.

The deal is to tell 7 things about yourself that are interesting or different, so here goes.

1. The #1 thing people usually don’t know about me that is unique outside of the military community is I spent my developmental years in Germany. A small US base right around Kaiserslaughtern in the south west area near the French border. This was fantastic for many reasons. One being the traveling, I had been to Paris twice before the age of 10, Amsterdam, Holland, all sorts of places. Also got to experience another culture at a young age. This helped me build social skills and understanding that I may not have gotten in Texas (where I spent the bulk of my life). There were drawbacks of course, I continually have a blank stare when people my age talk about the “cool” things in elementary school. Yeah, I didn’t get any of that. 🙁

2. The next thing I reserve for ice breaker sessions is the fact that my four upper front teeth are porcelain. I was a premature baby and got something from my mom at birth. The doctors used an antibiotic called Tetracycline that permanently stained my teeth. So upon entering high school, after braces and some temporary bonding that lasted about 5 years, my parents paid for bleaching and porcelain veneers. So yes, I have a million dollar smile. Okay, not that much, but it did cost a pretty penny.

3. I have always said I am a dork, and the pinnacle of my dorkness is in my knowledge of the Lord of the Rings. The long and short of it is that I didn’t know who Tolkien was until college (military moving around). Once I had read it, I learned of a class at the University of Texas called “The Linguistics of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.” I needed electives and the professor was hot 🙂 so I took it. So if you ask me if I can speak Elvish, I can technically say yes, kinda.

4. My senior year of high school the AP English class puts on a “Victorian Tea” in which student’s play the English royalty and literary characters at the time. I played Queen Victoria. There is video of it somewhere, but I will kill anyone that makes it public. It was fun, but one of those moments in life that you’d wish someone had stopped you leaving the house and said “go back and do it again.” My entire HS years were like that.

5. For the longest time I had never seen an ocean. I lived in Germany, saw so many things in Europe, but the ocean was always from an airplane window. Right after college I attended a tradeshow in San Diego and stood in the Pacific Ocean for the first time at the age of 22. Within 3 months, I visited family in Delaware and Rehoboth Beach, and stood in the Atlantic Ocean.

6. I am the tallest woman in my family. At the age of about 13 I was about 5′ 6″ and my mother said I had stopped growing. At almost 5’9″ now, I giggle at her and it’s a family joke now. We blame it on some Dutch in my family history.

7. Probably the most interesting story I have to tell is that when I was in 8th grade, a “friend” threatened to kill me because I wouldn’t join her gang. You laugh, I know, it sounds funny. But growing up in Killeen and seeing how psychopathic she was, it was worrisome. My parents had just bought a house and we were moving into another school area. So I changed middle schools after spending about a month being watched like a hawk by school administrators.

Later in HS I learned that this person had spread the rumor that I had stabbed someone (not true, I have an issue killing bugs, soo …) and people believed them! Needless to say HS didn’t start out well for me. You could not PAY me enough money to go back to that.