The Family (Or most of them)

The Family (Or most of them)
The Family

July 5, 2007

Eight Things about Me Tag

GAUTAMI TRIPATHY, THE ILLUSTRIOUS POET/WRITER/TEACHER FROM DELHI, INDIA, HAS TAGGED ME.


I'm supposed to list eight things about myself...one of them, actually (this doesn't count!), is that I've been tagged several times before and possibly will be repeating myself.


I apologize in advance if I do. I'll try not to...


1. I've been to more than 20 countries in my life that I can recall at the moment (they're outlined in red in the map below thanks to this cool site I found):




They are:


The U.S., Brazil, Argentina, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Spain and Romania.


2. My uncle, Len Cariou, is a Winnipeg-born actor and singer who won a Tony Award in 1979 for his Broadway role in Sweeney Todd opposite Angela Lansbury, who played the lead role in the TV series Murder She Wrote.


He also earned Tony nominations for roles opposite Lauren Bacall (Applause) and Liz Taylor (A Little Night Music). He also had a relationship with Glenn Close, who got her big start with Robin Williams in The World According to Garp in 1982.


I spent the day with the two of them in New York City just before the release of that movie.


He's had other roles in movies like About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson, The Four Seasons with Alan Alda and A Little Night Music with Liz Taylor. His TV roles include The West Wing, Law & Order, Star Trek and Murder, She Wrote, among others.


3. I covered the game Oct. 15, 1989, in which Wayne Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's all-time National Hockey League scoring record.


I picked him as the first star of the game so my name, I believe, is on the official scoresheet, although I can't get a copy of it.

4. In my younger, dumber years, I passed out twice that I recall from consumption of alcohol or drugs: once in India in a field in Bangalore in the middle of the night and once on the middle of the highway in Leaf Rapids in northern Manitoba. Duh.


5. My thinning hair on my head is still brown, but when I grow a beard, it's grey. I've had the hair on my head my entire life and couldn't grow a beard until I was in my late teens. What sense does that make?





Me in 1992, full head of hair, no beard



Me in 2003 or so, receding brown hairline and grey beard


6. I've learned more about women in the past 6-7 years since my divorce than I did in the entire 18 or whatever years of my marriage and all during my teens and early 20s before that. Go figure.


7. I've visited every Canadian province except Prince Edward Island off our East Coast. My favourite is Newfoundland, where I hauled in cod bare-handed with an oldtimer fisherman named Paddy O'Dea and cooked and ate it on board his dory.



8. The most important role model in my life is and always will be my mom, followed in no particular order by her mom, my dad, a now ex-priest named Max and, in more of a lifelong friend/Jiminy Cricket sort of way, my buddy Homo Escapeons.

15 comments:

  1. I was totally sucked in until you blew it with #8 and HE's influence. :) Then I knew you were kidding. (As for me, I'm kidding, too -- but you knew that.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. what have you learned about women that you didn't know before?

    I'm not a fan of beards as a rule but you in fact don't look half bad with one.

    which means, I suppose, you must look half good :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrea:

    Ha! I threw in HE at the end just to give women another chance to swoon at his picture! (NOT!)

    Ziggi:

    (*Runs and hides*)

    What I've learned about women will have to be part of a future series of posts, I think ;-)

    Suffice to say I've come to understand and appreciate them a lot more...

    I'm on vacation now so I've been letting my beard start to grow despite the heat.

    Maybe I'll have to grow half a beard, then...and look either one-quarter bad or three-quarters good.

    Oh, never mind...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your mom is beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  5. She IS so. Thank you. I visited with her Friday. As usual, she warmed my heart and soothed my soul. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Laurie:

    Doh! If it wasn't obvious, that last comment was for you...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for indulging me by doing that tag!

    Compared to yours, most lists I have read pale into insignificance including mine.

    You can write a book on all that.

    Thanks for posting that swoonable photo of HE. Not that you are too bad..:D

    Of course you mom is the most beautiful lady in this world after my mom!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gautami:

    I will always indulge you! :-)

    But now will you indulge me by showing us your thigh-length hair? (*Runs away*)

    No one pales into insignificance, ever, most especially you. We're all in this together.

    And having fun, I hope.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow, love the new header. Very pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  10. where have the ostriches gone?!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Laurie:

    Why, thanks. That was my favorite pic from the trip because of the color contrast :-)

    Ziggi:

    The ostriches were getting sunburned and were squawking, so I figured they needed a rest.

    They had all put their heads in the sand. It was time for something new.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous4:39 p.m.

    So, you are a world traveler, cool. And I am glad you honor your mom by placing her on number 1, it's incredible what she all did (and I only know the bits you told about her, but that's enough to have a deep respect for her love and strength)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hildegarde:

    Thanks! You're very right about my mom. I went and saw her yesterday and it was more of the same.

    Enduring, empathetic, protective, wise, nurturing...

    I have loved that I've been able to travel to the places I've travelled to.

    Many of them were short trips related to my journalism career, not seeing much.

    And a lot of them, most, were from a 4 1/2-month trip I took by bus from England to India and back.

    There are so many places still to see...

    ReplyDelete
  14. These are all interesting things. Must say -that's one place I would like to visit -Prince Edward Island -due to the Anne Of Green Gables books I was reared on. You must go one time -and give a full report :).

    ReplyDelete
  15. Lee:

    I'd like to visit P.E.I. too, but it's a long way and a lot of dollars away. Maybe some day...

    ReplyDelete

If you choose to use anonymous to comment, it is only fair that I reserve the right to obliterate your comment from my blog.