1. Tomatoes
I like that this reminds Alma of me, given that it's a well-known fact that I hate tomatoes. Well, to be clear, I hate unadorned tomatoes - I can't abide by the taste, and I find the skin and seeds pretty gross. In general I'm rarely a huge fan of things that try to mix sweet and savory, and the basic taste of a tomato steps too far into "sweet" territory without going far enough to just be a fruit. And the basic taste frankly makes me ill. Now, you puree the crap out of it, throw in some spices and pour it over pasta (or onto a pizza, or whatever), and I'm there. But pull it off the vine and I'm walking in the other direction.
2. New Jersey
Earlier in our relationship, Alma caught me "woo"-ing a few times when New Jersey was mentioned on television, and started prodding me to do so whenever it came up and I didn't say anything. I always viewed Chicago as a home away from home when I was growing up and certainly rushed back here when I got the chance, but I'm missing New Jersey more than I probably expected I would. It's made worse by the fact that I have no reason to go back anymore, given that I no longer have family there, and so that mild longing has been allowed to fester; I haven't set foot in the state since 2004. It's to the point where I've been strongly considering going to my 10th high school reunion - which I'm assuming will be sometime next year - just to give me a reason to have some Toro Loco salsa and a Millburn Deli sandwich, and drive down Scotland Road again.
3. Geography
It's kinda my thing. I don't really have much explanation for this one - for whatever reason, I was fascinated by globes and maps as a kid, reading the world atlas and various Hagstrom street maps of local New Jersey counties compulsively. (I have such fond memories of those Hagstrom street atlases of the late 80s that a few years ago I found some on eBay and considered going after them until I realized that would be completely insane.) I still know all the world capitals even though I haven't studied in years. (For that matter, I really never studied - at some point in grade school I just realized I had absorbed them by sheer osmosis, and then I periodically tested myself, looking up any I couldn't recall. I still recall the woman at my Irish homestay eyeing me suspiciously when she "caught" us in her library - because I wanted to find an encyclopedia to look up the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which I had realized I couldn't remember at the time. Kingstown, btw. I think that's the last time I even forgot one, and that was the summer of 1996.) I can be distracted by a book of maps for hours at a time. I like thinking about traveling to new places almost as much as actually being in those places, because the on-paper aspect of geography is so enticing to me. I realized on my walk yesterday that I even love just seeing street signs at intersections, because I like making the connections in my head. Yes, it's weird. On the other hand, Alma has to love this, because she is not good with directions and now she never has to worry about it.
4. Lift
AKA the greatest soda in existence. My obsession began in New Zealand in the summer of 2000; I'm a huge lemonade fan, but I don't think I'd ever had a sparkling lemon soda at that point, or at least not a mass-market one. (San Pellegrino Limonata - which I probably hadn't had at that point anyway - is good but frankly a little too strong for regular consumption.) I drank a lot of it on that trip (and its Pepsi counterpart Solo), but back in the US... nothing. For years it was my holy grail. Sunkist Lemonade was the only thing that came close and it only seemed to be sold in Minnesota for three months a year. Alma once got me a couple cans of Lift via a friend of hers who knew of an Australian import store near her hometown in Arkansas, and that was a big thrill, but getting them regularly was impossible. Jewel for a while had Club Lemon in a British import section, but that seems to have gone by the wayside and it's not the same as Lift anyway. Suddenly, around six months ago, I wandered into a Jewel in Lincoln Square and... Sunkist Lemonade. All of a sudden it's gone national, or at least it's fully penetrated the Chicago area. But it's not quite the same - Sunkist has caffeine and so isn't an all-hours drink, and anyway I'm not 17 anymore and trying to drink little to no pop. But the legend of Lift lives on, and if I ever get back to New Zealand like I want to, I'm sure I'll have a few cans for old times' sake.
5. Neuropsychology
As of right now, I'm thinking this is my future career. I hadn't necessarily conceived it from the start, but one of my reasons for getting into psychology in the first place was my interest in knowing why people think and behave how they do, and it's only a short step from there to the root cause (or at least a primary root cause): activity in the brain. Many of the deficits are frankly just immensely compelling, although it's not like all neuro patients are going to have aphasia or anterograde amnesia or Capgras delusion. But the connections in the brain are mysterious and fascinating - it's said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor, but we might know more about either of those than we do concretely about how the brain works, thanks to plasticity, tangled cortical networks, and hundreds of millions of neurons that don't behave identically for any two people. It's not a puzzle any one person can solve in a lifetime, but I'm willing to take the tiniest crack at trying.
So that's me, or a few things anyway. If you want five nouns that remind me of you, post in the comments. Alternately, don't.
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