Tagged! Meme time - lucky seven

I've been meme tagged, this time by a fellow SITSta, Barbara from over at Created by bd (and who has a blog design that has turned me green with envy - so cute!)...

Here goes!

The rules are:

1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

And my seven facts are:

1. Despite having majored in English, being a total word nerd and having an elephantine memory, there are a few words I can never, ever spell correctly. The biggest offender is the word exercise, which, I know - how ironic that I can't even spell the word, I sure don't do it enough... For exercise and a few other words for which I seem to have a permanent mental block, I just thank heavens for spell check!

2. Even though I am woefully out of shape (see #1 about how I can't even spell, much less do, the word exercise), and even though I'm aging rapidly too, I am crazy flexible. Back in school when we had to do the Presidential Physical Fitness test part where we had to sit with our legs straight and see how far past our toes we could reach (Googling tells me this is called the V-Sit Reach), I once reached over 13 inches. To this day, I can still stand on one step and place my palms flat on the step below the one I'm standing on - without bending my knees.

3. I once drank an entire six pack of Jolt Cola (marketing slogan: All the sugar and twice the caffeine!) and then was so wired that I didn't sleep for 60 hours. Then I crashed and slept for 13 hours straight. A similar thing happened to me the one time I tried NoDoz, though I only stayed awake for about 40 hours that time before crashing. Both of these highly caffeinated events took place while I was in college, and I've never, ever ingested that much caffeine at once since. I was shaking from it and I'm still amazed I didn't get more sick!

4. My go-to numbers for things like the lottery or roulette are 4, 7, 13, 14, 23 and 34. Please, nobody play them the next time the MegaMillions Jackpot gets over $100 million, since that's the only time I ever buy a lottery ticket and I'd hate to have to split the pot with you!

5. My middle sister and I once had a contest to see who could chew the most pieces of Bubble Yum bubble gum at the same time. I won (yes, I've always had a big mouth, hardy har har har) with two and a half packs in at once to my sister's one piece short of two packs. We had taken a case of Bubble Yum from the stash my parents kept hidden from us, as we weren't allowed to chew sugary gum. (A friend of my family's owned the company that owned Bubble Yum and Lifesavers and other delicious, forbidden treats at the time, and had sent us cases upon cases of Bubble Yum and Lifesavers products. All sorts of products - we even had Lifesavers "Five Flavor" tube socks and comforters for our beds. It was insane.) We snuck the case up into the hayloft of one of our barns to have our contest in secret, and when we were done we had no idea where to dispose of the evidence. We wound up climbing a tree down in the field, far away from the house, and sticking the gigantic wad of gum to the trunk, way up high in the tree. It was a softball-sized lump, and after sticking it to the tree, we carved our initials into the gum and climbed down. My parents never realized we'd swiped the gum (they only held onto it to give out to other kids for Halloween) and we thought we'd gotten away with it. Years later, a storm knocked some trees down on the property. One of them was the Gum Lump tree. My dad and grandfather were cutting up the downed trees and came upon one that had a weird bump with faintly carved initials in it. The tree had apparently managed to eventually grow bark right over the gum lump, covering it entirely. It was at this point, when my dad told us about his odd discovery, that I wound up confessing to our years-earlier misdeed.

6. The first presidential election I was old enough to vote in was 1992. I voted for Bill Clinton. Hubby (then Very New Boyfriend) and I went to vote together as part of our date that night - it was the day after Hubby's birthday and we were going out to dinner to celebrate.

7. My favorite poets are e e cummings, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda and Shel Silverstein.

Okay, now for the tagging. Hmmmm. I think I shall tag, in alphabetical order by blogger name:

Andy at Today's the day!
BITRCountryGirl at Just Another Day in Paradise
DebiP at My Boys.....Our Lives
EmmaP at Musings of the Mindless Banterer
Eudae-Mamia at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit...
Momof3 at Everything But the Kitchen Sink
Ronnica at Tale of a Kansas Girl

Have fun, ladies!