A Bulleted List About Me

• I was among the freshman class of babies born at St. Mary's hospital when they first got a baby department
• Eubie Blake and I have the same birthday ... he had it first, though
• I can pop my shoulders out of the sockets, it's a great party game with the kids, donthchaknow
• At age ten, I was Rabbit #2 in the world premiere musical production, "Fifty Cubits"
• I've lived in Richmond, VA; Oak Ridge, TN; Springfield, OH ... and Richmond all over again
• BUT ... I have traveled to Kansas; Colorado; Israel; Athens, Greece; Hawai'i (twice); and NYC
• I was in the first freshman class at Mills E. Godwin HS, who had a full slate of upperclassmen ahead of us
• In 1985, I participated in the first Governor's Summer School for the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University
• Due to a special dispensation from, and the hilarous desire to make it a "race" with, my mom, I first gave blood at age 17 at a school blood drive (I bled faster, and won)
• At nineteen, I was invited by playwright Milan Stitt to apply to the Yale School of Drama ... he saw me in a scene from The Runner Stumbles; this scene also contained the one and only stage kiss I've ever had to perform (my leading man was a guy our professor was trying to bring out of his shell and who'd only taken the class as a requirement ... it was pretty bad)
• As dramatized as part one of the bullet point above may appear, please understand that including this is an indulgence and was NOT itself actually a dramatic moment; I just like that I can say this
• From June 1994 to May 1998, I increased my annual income from $12,500 to $30,000
• Since 1992, my blood donations have been almost exclusively for platelets/plasma; I have a blood platelet count two to three times higher than most people
• At a concert during the Serious Moonlight tour, I caught the towel of David Bowie (with a friend); my mom WASHED it the next morning (silly mama) ... I still have my half of the towel to this day
• My grandfather and my father between them lived in three separate centuries
• I have a great uncle (grandfather's KID brother) who came within a month of accomplishing the three-century feat singlehanded
• I can change the oil, brakes, rotors, and oil sending unit in a car (and the belts on a vacuum)
• I can carry as many as three little girls (at least one has to be a toddler) hanging from my hair
• I'm allergic to penicillin and fake-tanning
• In 1994/5 I assisted the staff attorney with my employer with transcription and editing of his book on estate planning (which was never published)
• A friend of mine wrote and directed the independent romantic comedy "Beyond Expectations" and I got to be an extra, along with our fifth grade teacher, who had a minor career-in-retirement as a movie extra in quite a few productions
• I'm a First Chapter member of James River Writers, and in four years have come close to completing my first book, a historical novel set in Late Antiquity/the early "Dark" Ages