I don’t usually do these meme blog posts, but I’ve been tagged by Sally, and when my favorite elected official comes calling, I shall answer.

  1. I grew up just outside of Boston and lived in Massachusetts my entire life, until my PhD program. When I moved away I always just assumed that I’d move back to Boston after I completed my PhD. Seriously, I just couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, or wanting to. After a year in Syracuse I realized that the cost of living really didn’t have to be so high. And other places actually existed.
  2. I haven’t been back to Boston in nearly 3 years now.
  3. I was turned on to LIS by a college friend who is now a middle school librarian. (I leave it to my students whether they want to thank him or send him a letter bomb.) This is especially ironic as I went to college at UMass Amherst, which was then and is now home to one of the best-known living researchers in IR.
  4. I was captain of the intervarsity croquet team in college. Yes, I’m serious. Yes, it was really intervarsity. We were pretty good too. We played at Smith College because they were chi-chi enough to have a croquet lawn (next to the women’s lacrosse field, amusingly), but at UMass we were too plebeian to have such frippery. We played in tournaments against such other schools as Smith, Harvard, even the Naval Academy. (Did you know that the Naval Academy has special uniforms for its croquet team? They look like milkmen.) One of my proudest moments was when my team kicked Harvard’s ass.
  5. I was on the 4.5-year plan in college. I finished up my courses in the Fall semester of my 5th year and took the Spring semester off. During that Spring semester I hitchhiked and took buses around New Zealand for two months.
  6. I read National Geographic magazine cover to cover every month. In order. And have for about the past 25 years.
  7. Because we’re total geeks, we gave Charlotte the middle name Ada, after Ada Lovelace. We considered other famous women, but Grace seemed to religious, Eleanor and Florence seemed too old-fashioned-sounding. Abigail was a possibility for a while.
  8. I have the shell of a Macintosh Plus sitting in my office. Eventually I plan to turn it into a Macquarium.

Now, as I understand it, I’m supposed to tag eight other people. I barely have that many others on my blogroll. So there will probably be some overlap with others who have already been tagged. But here goes… I tag: Scott, Lili, ae, Jason, Fred, Jason, Lydia, Marco. Well, there you are, that’s basically everyone who I think might read my blog even occasionally.