Six random things

Thalia (new blog!) and Terri have both tagged me for this meme. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

I've organized mine by (random) theme.

1) Dancing. When I was not quite three, I insisted to my mom that I had to take ballet lessons. No one knows where I got the idea. I think she had been putting me off for a bit, because, you know, I was a toddler, so one summer day I told her I was going to go sit on the back step and wait for her to make the phone call to the ballet teacher. Bless her, she did find a school that offered a dance-and-tumbling program for toddlers, and she found the money to give me lessons. I studied dance into my college years: ballet, tap, jazz, modern, and musical theater. I was never more than a devoted amateur. My top two female baby names are those of favorite dancers from my youth. (And I can tell you one, because Adonis has vetoed it: Isadora. The other is currently our top choice for a girl. Stay tuned.)

2) Sex. I started having sex when I was 16. Since then, in 22 years, I've never gone more than six months without a sexual partner. I've had sex with women and men both, with friends and people I've been in love with, but never with a stranger. Sex is one of my favorite things in life (along with dancing), and my partner, Adonis, is the best lover I've ever had. We've been together for nearly 13 years.

3) Handwriting. I have beautiful handwriting. I'm proud of it, and I always get compliments on it. However, my grandmother, who was a teacher for nearly 50 years, was frustrated because I never learned to hold a pen correctly. Apparently, there is a correct way to hold a pen. (Don't ask me what it is; I can't do it.) Also, I don't know how to type correctly, though I'm fast; that has never bothered anyone but me.

4) Food. I was a vegetarian for 11 years because of a philosophy book I read, Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. That was not healthy for my body. I resumed eating meat about seven years ago, largely because of arguments in a philosophy book I read, Animal, Vegetable, or Woman? A Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism by Kathryn Paxton George.

5) Illness. I'm the only member of my immediate family not to have a life-threatening illness.

6) Travel. I visited the Soviet Union once, in July of 1989, months before the end of communism. (For the record: we never saw it coming. I remember vividly the day my mother woke me with the news.) I've never been to Russia. But I did visit Poland both during (1989) and after (1994-95) communism. I lived in central Europe after college, and then I traveled to most of the former Soviet bloc countries.

Consider yourself tagged: Sonja, Deborah, Diana, Morninghawk, Patrick, and Sabrina.