I am never tagged for these things.  I just end up doing them.   Peterson just did one (Facebook only) …and since he began his with a photo of his much younger self, I will too.  The boy is father to the man and all that…

Twenty-Five Things About Me

1. I stopped wearing a wrist watch for decades.  Then I found the mechanical wrist watch I wore in high school in a box of old memorabilia and had it repaired and restored.  Took me months to find a wide leather watchband like the ones I used to wear back then…but eventually I found a place that made them online.  Winding it every night before bed gives me a connection with the boy I once was.
2. Speaking of which…I keep boxes of…stuff…saved over the course of my life just to have it for memory’s sake.  I think of them as History boxes.  They contain old toys, notebooks, report cards, draft cards, letters, everyday knick-knacks…the random artifacts of life that at one time or another almost got thrown out, and that I decided at the last minute to keep instead and toss them in a "history box" for memory’s sake.  I’ve done this since I was a kid.
3. I am almost always wearing blue jeans and sneakers and a light shirt of some sort.  I hate long sleeves, and often roll up the sleeves on a long sleeved shirt if I have to wear one.
4. One of my childhood hobbies was model building.  By the time I was 16 I’d made tons of models and had shelves in my bedroom full of them.  Model cars, model airplanes, model submarines…  Later, when in my 30s, I managed to get paid for it when I became an architectural model maker.  
5. I visited a Disney theme park for the first time in my life last November…Disney World in Orlando.
6. Sandwiches make up 2/3rds of my diet.  Ice Tea 90 percent of my fluid intake.  I brew my own of course.
7. I smoke the occasional cigar.  For the nicotine.  When I’m stressed.  Which is usually.  Never cigarettes.  I was never able to get tobacco smoke into my lungs.  But I like the taste and smell of cigar smoke, believe it or not.  Dad smoked them, so maybe there is a link there somewhere…either in the genes or the memory of him.  I have to cut back though…my body is starting to complain. 
8. I developed extremely crooked front teeth in my childhood, and my folks never had the money to get them straightened.  So I hardly ever smiled openly when I was a kid.  Just…grinned.  Or put my hand up to my mouth when I smiled or laughed.  It probably seriously impacted my dating abilities when I was a young man.  Eventually I got them capped when I was in my late thirties, and for the first time since I was 5 or 6 I could smile openly.  (Thank you forever Stuart!)
9. I love road trips.  My favorite form of vacation is to just toss my bags and cameras in the car and just drive down some roads I’ve never been down before, and see landscapes and towns and roadside this and that I’ve never seen before.
10. The first not-a-children’s-book I ever read was Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.  In fourth grade.  After I was told I was too young to be looking at the books on that side of the school library.  Later that year, I read Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling.  My English teacher at the time accused me of letting my mom write my book report on it for me…a thing I still get angry to remember.
11. I had a little stack of Tiger Beat and "16" Magazines stashed under my bed when I was in my early teens.  I kept telling myself I just wanted to read about my favorite bands while I gwaked at the pictures of all the beautiful guys.
12. I still have my collection of 45 rpm records from back in the day.  Most of them are very worn out though, and sound pretty scratchy.
13. I still have many of the comic books I read when I was a kid…the ones grandma didn’t throw out anyway.  And my old Mad Magazines.  And a big stack of Undergrounds from the early 70s.
14. I still have my first camera…a Kodak Brownie Fiesta mom gave me for my ninth birthday.  Shutter doesn’t work right anymore though.  And…I don’t think they even Make 127 roll film anymore.
15. I still have nightmares about my junior high school years.
16. But then…I have nightmares on a pretty regular basis anyway.  They say it comes with the territory for us creative types.  They don’t really scare me much anymore.
17. I love to paint in oils on canvas.  However, I haven’t done an oil painting in years.
18. For the life of me, I simply cannot draw on a digitizer pad.  I need a pencil or pen and paper.  I can touch up just fine on a digitizer pad.  But do the original art?  No.  It’s not just the disconnect between hand and eye…it’s the tactile feel of it.  I don’t do big bold sweeping strokes of the pen…I do these nit-picky little lines and I need to feel them in my hand as well as see them on the paper.
19. I do most of my preliminary drawings entirely in my head.  I compose most of what I write entirely in my head too.  Then I just type it all out.
20. To relax, I take these once-or-twice-a-day walks in a big circle around whatever neighborhood I happen to be living in.  A couple miles usually.  I’ve done this ever since I was a kid.
21. When I am concentrating on what someone is saying to me, I have a bad habit of staring off into space, usually in a downward direction.  It must seem like I’m not paying attention or getting bored but actually it’s total attention.  I’m just tuning out the visual stuff and focusing on what I’m being told.
22. And…is it just me or does everyone else know they have more then one thing going on in their heads at any given moment?  I have lots going on in my head.  Constantly.
23. I was born in California.  I often wish I’d grown up there too.
24. The walls of my basement art room are covered with random photos, artwork, and images clipped from various sources.  They’re like a giant collage of random…stuff.  Much like the thoughts in my head at any given moment.  I did this to my bedroom walls when I was a kid too. 
25. A few of the things decorating my office desk/hutch:  Flaming Carrot action figure; Gigantor and Jimmy Sparks action figures; Stuffed Opus; Crazy Harry action figure; can of Wash Away Your Sins bubble bath; Original Slinky toy (that a co-worker can’t keep his hands away from whenever he comes over to my desk); small cast metal Supercar, sans Mike Mercury; Navajo Long Hair carving by artist Nelson Yazzie; Borg cube Christmas tree orniment; Walt Disney World Monorail replica; stuffed Maryland Crab toy with Blue Meany rider.

I hereby tag the first five people to read this.