1. i have a very overactive imagination. well past the time when it was age-appropriate, i still played dress up and would wander around my yard acting out scenarios. in fact i sometimes still entertain myself by inventing stories while driving in the car.

2. i am a voracious reader, but sometimes i read so fast that i miss the silent details and end up several chapters later going "wait, what?"

3. i consistently have very vivid dreams and tend to remember 2-3 each night.

4. when i take nyquil or have had a wee bit too much to drink before hitting the hay, i don't remember any of my dreams and it makes me feel really unsettled and uneasy the whole next day.

5. i had an out of body experience when i was 20 and it was the most terrifying thing to ever happen to me.

6. i am terrified of snakes (also known as ophidiophobia). when i see one i stop breathing and go into hypertension (my muscles all tense up and i can't move or speak). eels, tadpoles, and other things that kind of vaguely look like snakes also freak me out, but in a manageable kind of way. sometimes i wake up screaming because in my dream there were snakes in my bed.

7. i have long been incapable of listening to music without trying to figure out how it would sound acappella.

8. while i love to sing, and sincerely enjoy performing anything, i have a irrational fear of being put on the spot to perform something i have not rehearsed several (dozen, preferably) times before. i won't call it stage fright, but it consistently gives me a minor panic attack and makes me feel extremely stressed out and on edge. unfortunately, my family thinks its ridiculous and cajoles me to spontaneously perform at every possible function imaginable.

9. all you really need to know to grasp how big of a twentieth century european history nerd i am is that i have watched "the world at war" documentary on world war II 6 times all the way through. its 27 hours long. (i've watched some episodes waaaay more).

10. there is a pretty decently sized part of me that just wants to be a housewife and a stay at home mom with six kids and a mini van, but then again there is also a pretty decently sized part of me that is a twelve year old boy with a deep love of thats what she said jokes and slingshots, so we'll see how that internal battle turns out.

11. while we are the subject of children, i have already named my future progeny. my spouse can argue all he or she wants, but if i am going to be the pregnant one, they can just forget the possibility of compromise. in case of adoption or surrogacy, this will be up for debate, but i am not going down without a fight.

12. i am convinced i would have been a great soccer player had i not quit at age twelve because girls soccer was "for wimps" and taken up ballet instead.

13. ballet however, turned out to be a good choice, because there is nothing i enjoy more than dance, and nothing i am instinctively better at than choreography.

14. i am a compulsive liar. i don't so much choose to lie as it is that lies sometimes just come out of my mouth. they are never premeditated, never malicious, and almost always involves made up “friends” and stories that are based on real people/events, but which somehow become elaborate falsehoods. Some lies I have told are so convincing that now I can’t entirely remember whether or not they are true or false. i made a resolution to stop doing this and am meeting with mixed success.

15. i am unbelievably lucky to have been born into such an amazing and loving family and to have found such incredible and caring friends. i am profoundly devoted to my friends and family and consider them to be all the proof I need that God is present in my life, because I see Him everyday in the love they show me and the love they inspire in me.

16. I think that when we get to heaven, we are going to discover that its just like all the best parts of regular life compressed and heightened, but with considerably more dance parties.

17. hipster is the new hip-hop, and I confess that I feel a little conflicted about that.

18. I have only one biological brother (what up, Monkey Butt?) but I grew up like twins with my next-door neighbor Will, so in my heart, it feels like I have two brothers.

19. In addition to my “brother” Will, all the boys I have ever been in love with are named Will, my three best male friends in high school were either named Will or had William as their middle name, one of my best friends in college is named Willy, one of my super close cousins is named Will and is nicknamed Willy, and that’s not to mention all the other Wills I am friends with, have hooked up with, or just generally know. Is that confusing enough for you? All of this has me slightly convinced I am destined to marry someone named Will in some capacity, which makes me extremely wary every time I meet one.

20. I have never watched The Little Princess (1994), Apollo 13, or Big Fish and not cried. In the case of The Little Princess and Apollo 13 this is particularly impressive, because I have seen them both probably close to 100 and 50 times respectively.

21. Newsies is the greatest movie musical ever made. Sound of Music can take its Oscar for Best Picture and shove it (although to be fair, it ran a tight race, pulling into second alongside West Side Story, with Meet Me in St. Louis solidly in third place.). Julie Andrews, you can’t beat Christian Bale singing and dancing and lassoing a horse no matter how many times you spin around on that Austrian hillside.

22. the best band, EVER, in the history of mankind, is NAKED PASTA, and if you know what that means, you should count yourself lucky.

23. i have a love/hate relationship with the rihanna song "umbrella" but am positive that it has never sounded better and that i have never loved it more than when serenaded with it at "christimas in august" on the porch of 64.

24. there is no place on earth better than eagles mere, pa.

25. while i am good at choreography, singing, performing, dancing, reading, writing, remembering historical and important dates, and probably a lot of other things i can't even imagine yet...i think the thing i actually might be best at, as cheesy as it sounds, is love.