Pondering the ten things ... let's see if I can come up with ten. (Updated)

[unixronin]

Not that most of these things are that unique, in the right circles.  But I suspect they're rare among my circle of friends and readers.

Not necessarily in chronological order:

1. Qualified as RAF Marksman at age 17.
2. Better still, I got my picture on the front page of my town newspaper when I was eight or nine years old, shortly before the first Apollo moon landing, by predicting -- correctly -- what the astronauts would find there when they landed.
3. Served as defence consultant to a significant political party, and helped write its defence policy.
4. Ridden the Laguna Seca racetrack on my VFR750F3.  Whooo, the corkscrew and the Andretti Hairpin.  (OK, it was only a parade lap, but....)
5. Worked at Microsoft, at a company that became part of got borged by Novell, and a company that became part of got borged by Red Hat.  How's that for hitting opposites in the industry....
6. Wrestled and wrangled sealions and elephant seals for six hours every Friday night for, oh, a year and a half or so.
7. Been told "My god, you look studly!" by the CEO and President of the company I was working for.
8. Kayaked the length of Lake Windermere, a significant part of it by kayak-surfing the bow-wave of the Windermere Ferry.
9. Free-soloed the Don Quixote route at Minnehaha Rocks, Spokane, Washington (ranked a 5.11 route) in combat boots.
10. Within three years of my family being told I'd probably never walk again:
    • Learned to walk again (in two or three months);
    • Returned to motorcycle riding (in just over a year);
    • and even managed to run a little bit, albeit rather unevenly (within three years).

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11. Survived a major fire at 18 months age.
12. Bent my ribcage hitting a galvanized steel scaffolding pole on my bicycle one foggy morning, when some bastard practical joker propped it across the road at chest height (it was almost invisible in the fog).
13. Wrote a cookbook.  (Well, I'd still call it a work in progress, but...)
14. Swordmaker (well, that's probably overstating it a little.  It was a joint project.)
15. "One tremendous random effect spell" -- well, actually, a whole 200-page-or-so sourcebook of AD&D stuff, including complete new systems for combat (d100-based) and magic (mana-based).  First edition, all probably obsolete now, and never marketed; three copies exist in the world, including my own leather-bound copy.
16. Became a fully accredited custom sadler
17. Named two daughters without their mom objecting (uh, I'd name them something over your objections...?)
18. Had Centauri Emperor Londo Mollari at a loss for words (at a PEERS event...  I'm not sure "a loss for words" quite covers it, actually).
19. The Drunken Dancing Samurai.  (You had to be there.  Trust me.)
20. Got the deal of a lifetime on an authentic 14th-century Mino-school katana (originally a tachi, shortened probably sometime around 1680).

Only took me, oh, three days to come up with these ....
(I'm still working on improving the running.  Need more run, less stagger.)

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Update:  As noted, it took me three days to come up with the first ten items.  cymrullewes came up with the remaining ten in, uh, ten minutes or so.

Comments

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

17. Named two daughters without their mom objecting (uh, I'd name them something over your objections...?)

Perhaps it would be better to say that I agreed with the names you came up with first time and we didn't need to get in to discussions/compromises about it.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I could have furnished a few of those remaining ones, in about the same time, too. And who was it who *found* that katana, hmm? ;-)

BTW, different country/organization, but I qualified as NRA Marksman 1st Class at 15.

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

is there a scan of that ruleboook by chance? i am always looking for more useful stuff for my games

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Sorry, while there is a partial softcopy somewhere I don't at this moment have access to it, and if mamory serves it's partway through being converted from an ancient version of MS Word, with most of the formatting lost.