7 Things You May or May Not Know About Me

Thanks to friend, Lyell Petersen aka @93octane, for tagging me in the most recent meme floating around the blogosphere and by "thanks" I really mean "thanks for nothing." ;) But seriously, this should be fun so I don't mind participating. Without further adieu, here are the seven things you may or may not have known about me...

1. I've been to all but nine states in the U.S. Rather than list the states I've visited, I'll mention the ones I haven't: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Now that I've moved (or am in the process of moving) to Texas, I will likely eliminate Nebraska and Oklahoma from this list soon.
2. I have a tattoo of a thunderbird on my right hip. I went to get it with my good friend, Joe Maher (I've known Joe since I was seven years old). When we got the tattoos, we had to go to New Hampshire because it was still illegal to get them in Massachusetts at the time. That was back in 1992.
3. When I was four, I spent a month in Oslo, Norway with my mother and father. While I was there, I cut my mouth on a glass that I bit into, was bitten by a horse and fell into a freezing cold river with my dad where we were lucky not to drown. I also had one of the worst earaches of my life. In spite of that, it was one of the most exciting times of my life.
4. Blue Velvet (not to be confused with International Velvet) Good Will Hunting, The Matrix, Trading Places, Stripes, Beverly Hill Cops and Shawshank Redemption are my favorite movies of all time. The Office is the funniest show I've ever seen (shame on me for not realizing that prior to this year).
5. My friend Scott Lareau who I served on the board of BIMA with is the reason I have an 18 month old daughter. Short version of the story is that my wife and I had two children already and at least I thought we were done. Following a chance meeting of Scott on a trip out to Jackson Hole, WY, Scott was telling me that he and his wife had just had their third child and that it was a mere speed bump in comparison to the other two. Coincidentally, his children were the same age (7 and 5) and sex (girl/boy) as our first two. I came home after that ski trip and said, "honey, I'm ready to have a third child." Twelve months later, our third child, Audrey, was born.
6. My musical tastes range from Nora Jones, Adele, Pink, Miles Davis and Jamiroquai to Beck, Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Seether. Yup, I pretty much like everything other than country.
7. I've been to Russia AND the Soviet Union. For those of you not well schooled in geography/world history, Russia was in fact part of the Soviet Union prior to its fall in 1991 (that's the Soviet Union's fall, not Russia's). First go around, I went to a city called Leningrad and spent two and a half glorious summer months learning about Soviet culture and furthering my Russian language skills. Second go around, I ended up in a city called St. Petersburgh that looked strangely similar to Leningrad only there were a lot fewer hammer and sickle flags and not as many statues of Lenin.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Now the big question is who will the lucky recipients of my meme tag be? I know not to choose friend and former colleague, Jim Storer, 'cause I've tried that before and he doesn't play nice in the sandbox on things like this (oops, did I just call you out Jimbo?). Same is true about Jennifer Leggio whom I also love dearly. ;)

NOTE: As of 3:30 PM ET, I've dealt Jennifer in.

NOTE 2: On 12/26/08, my friend Ken Burbary brought the love back to me. Since I've written my post already, I'm noting this here.

How about:

• @scottmonty | Scott Monty
• @twalk | Tim Walker
• @paulmay | Paul May
• @kyleflaherty | Kyle Flaherty
• @chrisbrogan | Chris Brogan (why not, this guy blogs 50 times/day so in essence, I'm doing him a favor)
• @pistachio | Ms. Laura Fitton
• @mukund | Mukund Mohan
• @mediaphyter | Jennifer Leggio

In the words of the honorable @93octane, here are the rules:

* Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged