While I’m making all sorts of lists, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and put together a 100 Things About Me list, too. So, here goes . . .

1. Until I went to college, most of my friends and family referred to me as Jenny or Jen — short for Jenaffer.
2. I made the deliberate effort to switch to Jena in college.
3. I am 30 years old.
4. For most of my 29th year, I really thought that I was 28. Not sure how that happened.
5. I even wrote the wrong age on my marriage license and didn’t realize it until the last minute before we turned it in. Had to scribble it out and put in 29.
6. I’ve been married to a wonderful man named Kate since August 2003. (Yup, the boy’s name is Kate. Isn’t that cool?)
7. We own a cute (a.k.a. small) 1938 bungalow in Indianapolis.
8. I prefer old “fixer-upper” houses to new construction.
9. We have 3 cats with very distinct personalities: Sadie (lover), Nisqually (fighter), and Bridget (troublemaker).
10. I like dogs, but I wouldn’t want to be responsible for one.
11. No kids yet, but I hope we’ll have one or two eventually.
12. I’m the oldest of 5 siblings.
13. I have a brother in the Army, scheduled to be deployed to the middle east this fall.
14. My favorite color is red.
15. Both cars that I have purchased entirely on my own have been red.
16. Unlike the stereotypical red car driver, I am annoyingly nervous behind the wheel (and even more so as a passenger, I’m sorry to admit).
17. I don’t trust other drivers on the road. And all of those horrible filmstrips about car crashes that we watched in driver’s ed totally freaked me out.
18. I don’t get too excited about cake, so I’ve always requested a birthday pie (or sometimes angel food cake).
19. I drink coffee and Diet Coke, one or the other — ususally both — every day.
20. I was an R.A. (dorm resident advisor) and campus tour guide in college.
21. I graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1996.
22. I have a B.A. in English.
23. I enjoy English grammar — especially diagramming sentences. But I don’t always feel like being grammatical when I write.
24. I was certified to teach high school, but I never got a teaching job.
25. While student teaching, the apathy of students, the prospect of grading endless essays, and the politics of the education system scared me away.
26. Nevertheless, I think about going back to it sometimes.
27. I work for a publishing company.
28. I won’t say which one, but most of the book covers in my office are yellow and black.
29. I used to be an editor, but these days I work on maintaining the content on the company’s websites.
30. I still don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up.
31. I taught myself to knit from a Readers Digest knitting kit in January 2004.
32. The kit was a Christmas gift from my husband. Thanks, honey!
33. I also enjoy sewing.
34. I bought my first sewing machine in 2001.
35. Fortunately, my mom is a sewing whiz so she has been teaching me a lot.
36. I love the concept of scrapbooking, but I have a hard time sticking with it.
37. I would love to go to graduate school, but I’m not sure what I want to study.
38. I just really like being a student.
39. On a whim, I took a battery of tests and met with a career counselor a few years ago. He says I should get a social work degree and be a counselor.
40. My husband predicted that would be the result, but it’s honestly not a career that I’d ever considered. Hmm. I don’t know what to think about that.
41. I love Christmas decorating, and I own enough ornaments to probably decorate at least three trees.
42. My parents have given each of us kids one ornament every year so that we would have a collection to take with us when we moved out.
43. We each had our own box to store them in and kept a big list describing what each one looked like and who it belonged to.
44. I’m a protestant Christian mutt (no allegience to any particular denomination).
45. I feel out of touch with a lot of other midwestern “evangelicals.”
46. I don’t like to get too obsessed with politics, but I do try to be an informed voter and I generally vote Democrat (although not always).
47. I find the concept of (passionate) patriotism to be at best, baffling. At worst, disturbing.
48. I also don’t get excited about professional sports. Again, why exactly are we rooting for these people (and not certain other ones)? I just don’t get it.
49. I love novels and movies.
50. I especially love comparing novels that have been adapted into movies.
51. It frustrates me that I don’t always remember well the details of the books I’ve read.
52. I have collected just about every Shakespeare movie adaptation from the past 20 years.
53. My favorite of those is Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.
54. Some of my other favorite movies include Magnolia, When Harry Met Sally, and Moulin Rouge.
55. My favorite TV shows (lately) are Alias, Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Joan of Arcadia.
56. I change my mind about which movies and books are my favorites all the time.
57. I love, love, love reading aloud.
58. I think the Harry Potter series is great — but what really blew me away was the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman.
59. I love everything I’ve ever read by Madeleine L’Engle. Especially her “adult” novels.
60. One of my life goals is to write a novel.
61. Storylines, in general, really fascinate me. I definitely interpret the world in terms of characters and plots.
62. I like suspenseful stories.
63. I’d like to travel to Australia someday.
64. I’d like to live in the pacific northwest someday . . . although I’ve never been there.
65. A stranger once stopped Kate and I in a Chicago coffee shop and asked if we were from Seattle. For some reason, I took that as a huge compliment.
66. My grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Norway, and my family still maintains a lot of Norwegian traditions. Especially around the holidays.
67. I just learned how to make Norwegian lefse (soft flat bread made from potatoes) with my mom this Thanksgiving.
68. On my wedding day, I wore a traditional silver Norwegian bridal crown called a Brudakrone.
69. At first, I felt self-conscious and obligated about the implications of wearing a crown. But then I loved it so much, I didn’t want to take it off.
70. At one time or another (mostly as an adult), I’ve taken classes in ballet, jazz, tap, and Irish step dancing. Also line dancing and swing dancing.
71. I don’t actually like much country music, but I do like the concept of line dancing. You don’t need a partner to participate, the steps are universal, and it’s fun!
72. I like to play games — cards, board games, trivia games, you name it.
73. I’m not terribly competitive, but I always play to win.
74. I’m a huge stickler about following a game’s official rules. (In Monopoly, you’re not really supposed to get money for landing on Free Parking, you know.)
75. I think all social gatherings should include some kind of group game or activity.
76. I tend to be rather shy at social gatherings when you’re expected to just mix and mingle.
77. I’m a people-pleaser by nature and very non-confrontational.
78. I dislike talking on the phone (generally).
79. However, I love written correspondence, and I wish that people exchanged written letters more often.
80. One of the best jobs I’ve ever had was being a summer camp counselor.
81. I was born in Aurora, Illinois.
82. I played percussion in high school and college.
83. I’ve never really considered myself a “drummer” — I most enjoyed playing orchestral percussion like the timpani and marimba. (And it was fun to be, usually, the only girl in the section.)
84. I’m also a casual piano player.
85. I mostly sight-read music. I can’t play anything by ear, and I’m terrible at memorizing music.
86. I was in drama club in high school and usually ended up (inadvertently) memorizing all the lines for the entire play.
87. I’ve always wanted to have naturally red hair. (I’ve been known to dye it sometimes.)
88. My hair is brown and long.
89. I’ve never cut it any shorter than about chin length.
90. I never consumed more than a sip or two of alcohol until after my 21st birthday.
91. I was always terrified of being drunk. I imagined that it would happen suddenly after that third sip and that I’d have absolutely no control over myself, like being posessed. (Brainwashed by too many after-school specials — see # 17.)
92. Now I quite enjoy wine and cocktails.
93. Guilty pleasure: I’ve watched the soap opera Days of Our Lives off and on for about 20 years.
94. The PC in our house exists for the sole purpose of allowing me to play Sims, Tropico, Zoo Tycoon, and other simulation games of that sort.
95. Aside from that, we’re a Macintosh household.
96. I enjoy cooking and baking.
97. I’m really bad about making too much of whatever I’m cooking . . . and then not eating the leftovers.
98. It’s been over a year since I last wore my contact lenses. Never really made a conscious decision to switch to glasses, it just happened.
99. I’m a chronic eavesdropper. I can’t help myself, I just love collecting snippets of strangers’ conversations.
100. I listen to NPR on my way to and from work everyday.

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