Related to number one in my list of 100 things, CNN has published an article about Hello Kitty being officially named the Tourism Ambassador for Japan.

You go girl!

I also learned from that article that Hello Kitty and I were born in the same year. I bet she’s an Aries too.

Off to book tickets to Japan…

Inspired by: Tricia

1. I adore Hello Kitty to a point that should be embarrassing for a grown woman.
2. I used to hate pink, but now it’s my favorite color.
3. My pet is a fish named Crazy, but I really want a kitty. My roommate is allergic.
4. Growing up, I told everyone I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but I really wanted to drive around a pickup truck full of cleaning supplies and clean and polish road signs.
5. I have a secret hope that one of these summers, I will get so many freckles, they’ll all touch and I’ll finally have a tan.
6. I just started the Couch-to-5K program and in 9 weeks I’ll have worked up to running three miles. In a row. Without stopping.
7. I’m obsessive about lists and keep a collection of them. Things to do today, things to do this week, things to do this month, things to do this year, things to do before I die, things I need to buy, things I need to remember…
8. I can never buy things with my name on them. They never have “Natalie”.
9. I love vintage poster art. I once went to a vintage poster fair and saw the real things – it was so cool. I wanted to buy one, but the cheapest one was $200.
10. My favorite fruit is any kind of berry.
11. I adore Marilyn Monroe and Audry Hepburn.
12. I think that I’m afraid of my own power.
13. I taught my best friend Diane to knit, and now she’s better at it than me. I knitted toys for her new baby anyway.
14. I don’t understand people who don’t like knitting or reading.
15. I love having long-term projects that take months or years to complete. I think that sometimes I drag a project out just to make it last long enough to make me happy.
16. I’m totally and completed addicted to lip balm. There is at least one tube or compact of lip balm within arm’s reach of my body at all times.
17. I can’t stop collecting small notebooks.
18. I can’t stop collecting blank journals.
19. I re-read old books the way some people catch up with old friends.
20. I wrote a novel that is sorely in need of some revisions and rewriting.
21. I get up each morning four hours before I have to be at work even though my commute is only 20 minutes so I have plenty of time to have a slow start to my day.
22. I’ve broken into three separate hot tubs to go skinny dipping.
23. I love my job. I love making web sites. I like being the only girl at most places I work.
24. Sometimes I think I’d like to move to Italy. I’ve never been there.
25. I was married for seven years, separated for six years, and now divorced for two years.
26. One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is walk along the boardwalk at the beach.
27. I love to bake, but only bake for other people.
28. I took my sewing machine to be fixed a year ago and haven’t used it since. It was broken for four years.
29. I think I could be happy being single for the rest of my life and just traveling and working. I also think I could be happy being married and having kids. I don’t know how to decide.
30. When I start to worry about the future, I try to just have faith that everything that happens is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
31. Sometimes I have dreams that come true later.
32. I could live the rest of my life on nothing but cheese, chocolate, and bread.
33. I love wearing high heels and being ultra girly.
34. I want to take ballroom dance, belly dance, and swimming lessons.
35. I took classes to become a professional mediator, but stopped short of getting certified.
36. I saw my grandfather in my kitchen a year after he died.
37. I’ve learned the hard way that you shouldn’t play ‘light as a feather stiff as a board’ with a waiter wearing nothing but tighty-whities in a hot tub.
38. I can’t stop eating peanut butter frozen yogurt from the Big Chill. I go at least once a week.
39. I love pinup girls. I want to be a pinup girl.
40. I kissed the Blarney Stone even though it looked gross.
41. I read so many books as a kid, the school librarian gave me special permission to take out up to 10 books from the library each week. The other kids got two.
42. On my first day of kindergarten, I wore a t-shirt that said “Girl’s Lib”. Yes, it was the 70s.
43. On my second day of kindergarten I wore my Mork and Mindy suspenders.
44. I was in the marching band in high school. I loved it. Nothing particularly interesting ever happened at band camp.
45. I spent weeks searching for a pink laptop bag for my laptop. Then I sewed a Hello Kitty patch on it.
46. Sometimes I really love going out for a nice dinner by myself with a good book.
47. I think that whoever asked for the date should pay.
48. I want to get some formal training in graphic design.
49. I think my housekeeper might be stealing little stuff from my apartment. Like my stapler.
50. In ninth grade, I sunk every minute of my extra time into saving a friend’s life who kept threatening to commit suicide. After that, she would only talk to me to be mean. Really mean.
51. Hemingway’s shortest story (For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.) makes me really sad.
52. I don’t use Twitter much, but I could stare at Twistori all day.
53. I never had rice until I was 16.
54. I was once offered a job as flight attendant on the condition that I removed my ankle tattoo. I refused.
55. I’m almost always doing something. I almost never just sit and relax.
56. I think that there is no better breakfast than a crepe with nutella. And sometimes strawberries and bananas too.
57. I own shelves full of books and with very few exceptions, I’ve read them all cover to cover.
58. I was disappointed with college because I thought it was going to be full of people passionate about learning and reading. It wasn’t.
59. I really love playing board games, even though most people think they’re nerdy.
60. In fact, I’m undefeated at Trivial Pursuit.
61. I’ve never been in a limo.
62. I can’t wait until I get my braces off. I intend to go to the ridiculous candy store up the street and buy tons of starbursts, gummy bears, chocolate reisins, and swedish fish and feast on them until I’m sick the day they come off. Then I’ll chew gum for hours.
63. I try really hard not to care what other people think of me.
64. I refuse to believe that gay marriage is evil.
65. I never want to live anywhere that it snows ever again.
66. I’m so scared of bees and avoid them at all costs. I was 17 before I was stung. I’ve only been stung one time since then.
67. I’m reasonably sure that in a past life I was a blond bombshell actress.
68. Being serious for a really long time makes me silly.
69. I also get silly when I’m tired.
70. I got highlights to cover my gray hair.
71. I’m sad that all my friends seem to be moving away from Los Angeles. I love it here.
72. Considering the good eye I have for design, it’s shocking how bad I am at framing and taking photographs. Never hand me your camera.
73. I’m in the midst of my own long-term extreme makeover. Grew out my hair, got braces, and have lost 50 pounds so far.
74. I work really hard not to let jealousy get the best of me.
75. I cannot roll up my tongue.
76. If I was a boy, my mother was going to name me Gregory Nathaniel. If my dad had known he was going to have three girls, I would have been Faith and my sisters would have been Hope and Charity.
77. I have a hard time buying shoes, bracelets, anklets, and bras on account of my larger-than-average body parts.
78. When I hear a new song I love, I play it over and over until I know all the words.
79. I snore.
80. I made it to the State Championships of the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee when I was in sixth grade. I got out in the third round for misspelling ‘independence’.
81. My favorite lunch is a grilled cheese sandwich and cream of tomato soup.
82. I graduated high school with a 4.0 and college with a 3.9.
83. I love that I’m an INFJ, the rarest personality type in the Myers-Briggs test.
84. I didn’t go to the dentist for 12 years. I go regularly now.
85. I’m really good at grammar and spelling. I think it’s all the reading.
86. My favorite Christmas special is Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. I know all the songs by heart.
87. I’ve never needed glasses or contacts, but dread the day I will.
88. I hate spending the entire day in meetings.
89. I don’t drink coffee. I never did.
90. My favorite movie snack is popcorn with extra butter and M&Ms mixed into it. If you’re going to eat a bad-for-you movie snack, you might as well go all the way.
91. The house I grew up in had an old-fashioned claw foot tub. I was the only one in the family who loved it. I’d take baths with the water up to my neck.
92. I’m so hyper-sensitive to caffeine that an espresso can leave me jittery and with ringing in my ears.
93. My favorite video games are puzzle games like Tetris.
94. I love going to a baseball game and kicking back with a hot dog and a beer. I don’t really know much about baseball, and don’t care to learn more than I know now.
95. The ocean and the moon are my favorite things. The stars are a close second.
96. One of my most treasured possessions is a ring that belonged to my grandmother.
97. I’m often annoyingly positive.
98. I am a staunch believer in karma.
99. I hate avocados, olives, pineapple, and mushrooms.
100. I am an Aries.