i'm it

i've been tagged by Granny P to give 7 weird things about myself....

weird (adjective)
1. odd - strange or unusual
2. supernatural - belonging to or suggesting the supernatural
3. of fate - relating to or influenced by fate

hmmmm....

actually, i'm having trouble narrowing it down to only 7.

1. my mum used to tell me i started singing before i could talk. as i was adopted, and there's not a single musical gene to be had in my entire adoptive family, that doesn't inhabit my body, this made me pretty weird amongst that crowd. so when the public school system began orchestra and band programs in my 10th year of driving them all crazy with it, my dear old gran cornered her first-born son, my dad, and told him, most adamantly, "you get that girl in music lessons!" what i really wanted was a flute, but, budgets being what they are, and there being 4 other kids to raise, they went with the cheapest instrument they could get. a fiddle. the rest, to borrow a cliche', is history.

2. i love liver. coated in cornflour and garlic powder, fried in butter with about a hundred pounds (45 1/2 kilos) of onions.

3. i've been married 3 times (metric equivalent is the same). they all ended badly. marriage doesn't appear to be something i'm good at, so i've given it up.

4. i once lived , pretty much off the land, for 6 years, in a log cabin on the banks of the Yukon River. ...well, actually, several log cabins, ranging from 3 miles (5 km) to 35 (58.3 km) miles upriver from Dawson City. always upriver, in case the motor on the boat gave out... i could always float to town for help. during the (excruciatingly long) winters i travelled by moccasin, x-country ski, snowmobile and dog sled. my lead dog was a brilliantly intelligent, gentle, gorgeous silver part-wolf husky named Sis. most of my time there my only company was 2 small children and the dog team. they say that kind of isolation leaves a person a bit weird.... that could explain some things.

5. i've eaten some strange flesh. (see #4) beaver, porcupine, various fowl and fish, squirrel, wild rabbit, lynx, moose, caribou, deer, elk, bear were all pretty standard on the menu at the time. many of them i had to kill before i could eat them. salmon was a mainstay, as the Yukon is a major route for King Salmon and Chum (dog salmon), on their way to spawn. it was what we fed the dogs, and ourselves. i never got tired of salmon - had tinned salmon for lunch today, in fact.

6. i rode in the Numb Bum the last year it ran in Fairview, Alberta. this is a 24 hour motorcyle marathon that was run by Fairview College's Harley Davidson training faculty each year. in February. on a frozen frog pond called George Lake. temperatures that year hovered in the -35C vicinity for the duration of the event. probably lower over night. i'd had a dirt bike as a teen, and a friend was looking for volunteers for a team, so i volunteered. we put duct tape on the bridges of our noses to keep them from freezing, and sheet metal screws in the knobby tires of the bikes to give traction on the ice. when it was all over, everyone wedged the front tire of their bike firmly in a snowbank at the edge of the track, and revved the engine this threw rooster tails of ground ice off the back tires as the sheet metal screws dug a trench. it was really quite spectacular to see.

7. i've tried a lot of lines of work.... waitress, barmaid, tire repair girl, bakery assistant, historic tour guide, camp cook, camera sales person, ran the emergency phones for the fire department, day home provider, dish washer, violin teacher, session musician, fashion designer, seamstress, house painter, writer, administrative assistant, accountant.

i'm supposed to tag 7 others, but i have a very small blog community, and i see most of you have already done something like this, so, i appologise, Penelope, for dropping the ball.