Jeff Duntemann's ContraPositive Diary

My good sister challenged me to do the Ten Things You Don't Know About Me meme, and it really is a challenge. I'm such a damned blabbermouth in my writing (and have been so for such a long time) that I'm not sure that there are ten things that none of my readers know about me that are worth knowing at all. I will try. And I'm asking this of my readership: If you did in fact know any of these ten things (be honest now) write and let me know: (Gretchen, you don't count!)

1. I am allergic to the sap of balsam pines. Not life-threateningly so, but I get a rash when I touch them.
2. I have a book in my library that once belonged to J. Allen Hynek and is autographed by him.
3. One of my friends (Prof. Irwin Scollar) was mentioned in a Carl and Jerry story in 1964.
4. My mother worked in ceramics.
5. There is a cow skull on the high shelf here above my reference titles, wearing my Lane Tech mortarboard and tassel, along with the Chicago City Science Fair medal I won in 1970. On the shelf below the skull is a vertebra from a horse.
6. The doctor who gave me all my childhood polio shots and other vaccinations (and they were legion!) was Dr. Pierce.
7. My father had a pet alligator when he was in high school, and it ate the neighbor's cat.
8. I had only three wisdom teeth. (And no mathematical ability teeth!)
9. I was baptised twice.
10. I have the ashes of three dogs (each in his own little plastic box) in our breakfront, right under the good china.

I'm aware that we're into extreme trivia territory here, and so for me the meme really isn't that much fun. I know that a couple of my readers may know a couple of these things (Pete, that's you!) but I'm betting that no single person beyond my family knows more than three.