There’s a meme floating around that I’m going to consider myself "tagged by Jen" to answer.

The idea is to post 6 unusual or little-known things about you. This is an interesting challenge because I have a pretty large number of real life friends and family members who read this blog. I may give myself an easy out and give 3 unusual and 3 little known things about me.

1. Both of my parents are currently elected officials. Both of them were public figures for most of my life.

   This can be really hard when you’re a kid, especially around the onset of puberty. There’s no way to be just like everyone else around you under those circumstances.

   On the other hand, I learned so much growing up — without knowing I was learning anything — that has helped me as an adult. I think my ability to connect with a lot of different kinds of people, the breadth of my general knowledge, my comfort in new situations and meeting new people, and my political skills are all the result of the environment in which I grew up. Maybe not exclusively the result of that, but that influenced them to a very significant extent.

2. I still know my oldest friend.

   Katie and I have known each other since I was born; she’s almost 4 months older than I am, and when we were born, our families lived in the same duplex. We attended attended the same schools for roughly a third our preschool-high school years, but no more than 2 years consecutively. (Ages 3, 5, 6, 9, 16, and 17.) We periodically lose and regain contact, but she reads this blog. Unfortunately for me, she lives abroad, and it may be that I haven’t seen her 13 or 14 years (I think). I did catch up with her sister when I was stuck in California after Sept 11, 2001.

3. I was stuck in southern California after September 11, 2001.

   At the time, I lived in DC, and was in California for work. By myself. For the first 3 days, I thought I was going to get a flight home "tomorrow" and when my Friday flight was canceled, I decided to drive home instead. Also by myself. Without a real map. (The people who decided to drive home earlier in the week bought all the maps. I had an 8.5×14" map of the US.)

   It was the best decision I ever made. I wound up being talked into picking up a friend of a friend who was stuck in Colorado, who became a very close friend and the person who introduced me to the love of my life.

4. I love water, and I miss it terribly.

   I’m more of a lake person than an ocean person, but what I really love are the Great Lakes. Basically, I like a body of water that you can’t see across, but that doesn’t taste horrible when it gets in your mouth when you’re swimming. But any kind of large body of water is nice.

   What I really love is being able to sit and stare out towards the horizon line, just being with the way the water moves. And floating in it, peacefully spacing out and moving around in the water.

   One day, I will have a house on a lake.

5. I believe that people can have anything they truly want.

   It’s hard to figure out how to say this without sounding like I blame people for their own unhappiness. That’s not what I’m trying to say.

   What I mean is that if a person is truly committed to having something happen in their life, they can usually make it happen, even if it isn’t "realistic." Sometimes it takes time, and usually it takes work, but if you really want it, and you acknowledge that you really want it, and you let other people and the universe know that you really want it, life often aligns with your dreams.

   For example, I spent many years refusing to admit that I wanted to be in a "happily ever after" relationship. In December 2001, I finally owned up to exactly what I wanted. I even declared that I wanted to be in love by June 1, 2002! In January 2002, I met Jill; in February we started dating, and on June 1, she proposed. Later that year, she told me that she had a dream of being a professional actor. We came up with a plan that let her quit working for a year, to really pursue that dream, and 11 months after that, she had her professional stage debut. I have more examples, but I’ll restrain myself.

6. I want to travel more.

   When I was a broke grad student and early in my career, somehow I managed to travel a ton, including internationally. But since that epic road trip after September 11, I’ve traveled a lot less, and almost exclusively to places that I know. I can’t even remember the last time I went camping.