Eight Random Facts

My blogging buddy Kacey tagged me to write a blog regarding eight random facts or habits of myself. I don’t think I’m that interesting, but I thought, “What the heck?” So . . .

1. I have collected video game tokens for at least 20 years. I have 165 currently, including tokens from arcades in the Wisconsin Dells, Aspen Colorado, the Mall of America, Knotts Berry Farm, Ohare Airport in Chicago and the 1982 Worlds Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.

2. My favorite place to travel to is Disneyworld in Orlando. I’ve been there seven times.

3. No habits worth mentioning but I am quirky. For example, I will not ever have a blog title longer than 25 characters because I do not want my blog titles to “wrap” to a second line in the sidebar here.

4. My favorite lunch going through the high school cafeteria line was a sloppy joe and two potatoes (two scoops of mashed potatoes). Mmmmmmmmmm. I'll bet I ordered that four days a week. Still brings back fond memories.

5. Over 30 years ago, I won a United Press International (UPI) Michigan Newspaper Award of excellence for covering a plane crash in upstate Michigan. I can still picture the twisted, mangled bodies from that wreckage three decades later. No wonder I haven’t flown in over 25 years.

6. I was “Google-bombed” once. Before I became a blogger, I was a frequent poster in various political and discussion forums. Once, I wrote a book review regarding a text on a controversial figure. Somebody wrote a reply, saying I was “dead wrong” and it somehow appeared on hundreds of websites, many having nothing to do with the subject. It was weird seeing that I was “dead wrong” on a site developed to push through the nomination of a particular Supreme Court justice.

7. Also in my previous internet life, one of the founders of the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia tried to track me down to find out who I was (I never post under my real full name, which really carries through to this blog when you think about it.) But though I may be Big Dave, I can still lie low. Lay low? Anyhow, I hid. He never found out who I was.

8. When I was a mere child in elementary school, I “married” my grade school sweetheart under the branches of an expansive Christmas tree in our front yard. Don’t know who performed the ceremony. Don’t remember what vows were spoken. In fact, I really don’t have much recollection of it at all. But my mother likes to tell the story.

I believe I was supposed to “tag” others to do this, but just about every blogger I know already has been tagged. I never was good at tag anyway (guess that makes it nine random facts now).