Acronym

If you haven’t heard of memes (or you’ve seen the word used and don’t know exactly what it’s referring to), they’re sort of like internet chain letters. Someone will start a meme on his or her blog—for instance, answer a series of questions, or list the first 10 songs that show up in her iPod on “shuffle” mode. Then he or she will “tag” a series of other people, asking them to do the same thing on their own blogs. (I’ve also seen this done via e-mail.)

A lot of memes are fun, get-to-know-you activities. Sometimes they’re more serious, like raising a difficult question and asking others to blog about it.

A meme has been making the rounds in the association blogging community recently, with bloggers sharing eight things about themselves that their readers might not know. Participants so far have included Cindy Butts, Kevin Holland, Matt Baehr, and Maddie Grant. Maddie “tagged” Scott Briscoe and I, asking us to share our eight things. While Acronym doesn’t usually include more personal posts from our bloggers, we thought this could be a fun exception.

That said, here are my eight things:

1. Two of my uncles played in a band with Bruce Springsteen when they were teenagers (I believe they practiced, at least sometimes, in my grandparents’ garage).

2. My father stood my mother up on their first date. He had to come up with really good concert tickets to get a second date.

3. My brother Alex was born on my third birthday. Apparently I was not gracious about sharing my day with him at the time—but now it’s a lot of fun to be able to call him on our birthday.

4. I have two children: Gray is seven and Meredith is almost two. Gray wants to be a member of IGDA when he grows up; Meredith remains undecided.

5. I’ve been a vegetarian for more than 10 years now. If it is ever revealed to me that Diet Coke is not vegetarian, I would have a very difficult decision to make.

6. As Scott will tell you, I am many different kinds of geek. It was imprinted on me early. Some of my first memories are of watching Star Trek with my father (original series, episodes “Shore Leave” and “The Squire of Gothos,” for those who are curious) and some of the first books I can specifically remember reading are The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

7. I’m always reading. One of my favorite things as a child was to spend the day wandering the aisles at the Virginia Beach Central Library, reading any book I wanted for as long as I wanted.

8. We recently lost our wonderful German Shepherd, Cassie. We still have three cats; Christopher, the oldest, is 21, and we’re fairly sure he’s planning to outlive us all.