Okay, I've resisted temptation up until now, but like Oscar, "I can resist anything but temptation." So my list of ten things most others might not have done:
1. Won first prize in an annual James Joyce writing competition for a poem composed in a composite language modeled on Finnegan's Wake
2. Named a species of fossil after my wife. (It was a compliment not any implication about the spouse.)
3. Had dinner and a knock-down drag-out fight with Stephen Jay Gould over the theory of contingency and whether it properly understood was science or not. (Okay, I admit it, that's an exaggeration. Let us say an animated and lengthy discussion complete with table napkin drawings and other paraphenalia.)
4. Went to a poetry reading (and read) in a State Penitentiary
5. Demonstrated origami for International Children's Days on the National Mall.
6. Assisted in digs on Mount Vernon Grounds and Williamsburg.
7. Helped excavate a mammoth, a dog-faced bear, and a peccary the size of a horse.
8. Went on a field trip to San Salvador, Bahamas to study modern carbonate depositional environments and joined the islanders in an iguana and conch feast.
9. Sat on Sophia Loren's lap in a helicopter shuttle for Kennedy Airport to La Guardia.
10. Presented a paper in a National Geological Convention on the periodicity of Mass extinctions and was congratulated and assisted by no less than David Raup and Jack Sepkoski themselves.
Excellent list Steven; I'm amazed at how much other bloggers have done. Number 9 begs to be fleshed out though.
I'd love to see you do a long post reproducing that conversation with Gould.
And I trust you were a child when you sat on Sophia's lap, i.e., not yet old enough to wish the situation reversed.
Dear TSO and Mr. Luse,
Mr. Luse correctly divined the event--about six.
shalom,
Steven
Desperately envious here. Okay, not desperately, but experiencing significant feelings of "dangit, I need to get out more."
Wow!
Perfect example of why I don't do the list.
I can't keep up.