Matt at A Variety of Words has tagged me with the "8 Things" meme. Hmm...

1. My parents were at a wrestling match when my mother went into labor with me. Mil Máscaras, the famous Mexican luchador, was in the ring at the time. If the circumstances of my birth had any influence on my life, it might explain why I rarely back down from a fight and eventually went on to learn Spanish (even though I'm half Italian and half Vietnamese).
2. Although I was born in California while my father completed his naval service in Long Beach, we moved to his home state of New Jersey when I was 19 days old. My first residence here was the Lincoln Motel (back then it was a Holiday Inn) in Newark's de facto red-light district. I am not going to even speculate on what kind of influence it had on my future.
3. I went to parochial school from kindergarten to 8th grade. The nuns were frightening and the other kids were mean, so I spent a lot of time reading. Sometime in the middle of 6th grade was when I decided I was an atheist. As a result, my parents had to send me to a private high school because I was dead set against more nuns and they had no confidence in the local public school. They made a lot of sacrifices for my education.
4. In 1991, I graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's in history. My concentration was in British history—specifically, the Tudors (I share my birthday with Elizabeth I.)—but I wrote my senior thesis on James VI/I's acquisition of the throne and the birth of the United Kingdom under Stuart rule.
5. Clearly, I am an anglophile. However, I am conflicted because I have family living in France due to scattering after the Vietnam War. I also did study abroad in Grenoble and speak much better French than Spanish. Because I knew three languages, I went on to an international job with a publishing company. I've been to the Frankfurt Book Fair six times, and never want to see the inside of a book trade show again.
6. When I was in my mid-twenties, I had an ovariectomy due to a grapefruit-sized benign tumor. The first painful symptoms appeared while in Frankfurt, and I remember thinking how horrible it would be to drop dead on the bathroom floor of the Marriott on Hamburger Allee. I obviously lived, had surgery back in the States a few weeks later, and was told that the only way I'd ever conceive would be to have an egg rendezvous with a sperm on a petri dish. I'm okay with it now since the last four years of teaching elementary school has been excellent birth control.
7. My half brother is 27 years younger than I am. I like him a lot and tutor him on weekends, but, seriously, it's more birth control.
8. I left teaching at the end of last school year because I was exhausted from a monster commute and needed to reevaluate where I was going in life. Currently, I rely on freelance writing and BookBlog for money (hence the advertising and sponsored posts). Working from home is a pleasure, but being self-employed and scratching for dollars is incredibly hard. I have recently stepped up a job search and hope to rejoin the non-self-employed labor force soon.

So, there it is.

8 Things - The Rules

1: Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2: People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3: At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4: Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Now I'm supposed to tag 8 people:

• Clyde at Recycled Sip - One of the first blogs I read.
• Mulenga at Mulenga's Blog - He needs a shove back into blogging.
• Zonker at Thunder and Roses - He also needs an incentive to post.
• Kate at KateSpot - Maybe this will take her mind off the wildfire for a few minutes.
• Maxine at Petrona - One of my favorite bloggers.
• Debra at The Deblog - Despite her past unhappiness with my critical nature and big mouth, I have no hard feelings toward her personally and would enjoy learning more.
• Frank at Books, Inq. - In my humble opinion, the smartest book editor/reviewer working today.
• Steven at Stevenhartsite - I enjoy his posts and am looking forward to reading his book.

So, there it is again.