25 Things About Me

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
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I decided to post this on my blog first since facebook is just going to grab the feed anyway, and if i decide to post it on my blog after i already posted it on facebook, well it will just post twice, so here goes. . .

1. It’s 7:15 AM, and I’m never up this early anymore except on Sundays, which is a lie, because sometimes the snooze/ reset on my phone alarm is too easy.

2. I used to sleep through my alarm all the time, so now I have to set 3 different alarms on my phone each with a different ringer because my body has the innate ability to stay asleep. When I lived with other people in college they probably (ok they did) want to kill me because my alarm always went off a million times. (Did I mention that i’d keep resetting the alarms as if i had a snooze button for at least an hour….that has to be annoying)

3. It’s snowing, in fact, it’s a snow day here for everybody in NE OH which means nothing to me anymore since i don’t go to school anymore.

4. I love to waterski and snow ski. I grew up water skiing in the summer at Atwood Lake and skiing in the winter at Peak ‘n’ Peek in Clymer, NY.

5. As a direct result of my love for snow skiing I now have a fake tooth. When I was 16, I was skiing with my brother at Brandywine (it’s a tiny ski resort here in NE Ohio…and by tiny i mean less than 400 ft vertical drop). Long story short we hit a patch of ungroomed snow, it was actually 2 inches of real snow on top of dirt. This made me stop instantly, well my skis stopped, and I kept going till i hit the ground with my mouth, and busted up all kinds of teeth. I had to get an implant, (yes they even have tooth implants now) and for 2+ years I had a retainer with a fake tooth on it that I could and would take out constantly.

6. While we’re talking about teeth, I might as well mention that I still have all of my wisdom teeth, and have no intention of getting them out anytime soon. Say what you want, but my dentist doesn’t think that I need them out either. I guess I have a big mouth.

7. In October of my Junior year in High School I weighed 230 lbs, by March, I weighed 180.

8. My original major when I decided to go to the University of Akron was Mechanical Engineering. I was a direct admit and even got a scholarship, but before I scheduled for classes I changed my mind and signed up for Music Ed with an emphasis in trumpet. After my first day (literally my first day) of Musica Ed classes I dropped everything except Music Theory and took all Gen Eds, which eventually led me to my Communication Degree and Music Minor. (i’m such a go getter huh)

9. My first plane ride ever was the summer after my sophomore year in college. I flew from Cleveland to LA on route to China for a cultural exchange program. So minus touching down for layovers, my first flight was 20 hours long.

10. I’m nervous whenever I’m on a plane. I think the problem is that I can’t see the pilots reactions. I mean you never know which batch of turbulence is the one that the pilot is saying oh sh@#. The worst is when your pilot doesn’t speak English. “We ah expewencing some Turbuwence”

11. I’m 50% Estonian and proud of it. You’ve probably never heard of said country, but take a look at a map. It borders Latvia and Russia.

12. My grandpa dodged the Russian draft during WWII. He ended up fleeing to Germany. He and my grandma were in Dresden when Allies bombed the crap out of that city. They obviously survived, but weren’t too fond of fireworks for quite some time after.

13. I’m an uncle and proud of if. Search my flickr stream and you’ll find my niece Kendall Joelle Hays. Flickr.com/andydolson

14. I love photography. I taught myself how to use an old Pentax K-1000 then took a photo class and learned how to develop and print my own pictures. This was the last semester of my senior year, and if I had known earlier how much I enjoyed it, I would’ve minored in Photography.

15. I used to live in basement of an old house in Akron. When we moved in it was gross and smelled bad, but I kid you not, when I was done fixing it up, it was the envy of all my roommates. It was by far my favorite place I’ve lived. If anyone has an old basement they want to rent out for cheap, you’ve got yourself a tenant.

16. I have lived out of a bag/ my car more or less since I started college. I always have a toothbrush with me, and have the God given ability to sleep on the floor. All through college, even when I had a bed, I slept on the floor.

17. I have a habit of scraping my fingernails on my teeth. Not scratching my teeth, not biting my nails. It’s weird, don’t ask.

18. I have recently been learning php (the web scripting language) which i hope to use to supplement income by designing and building websites. I taught myself (with much help from Jonathan Penn) CSS and html over the past few years, but Wordpress has forced me to learn php. Need a website? I can build it for you, and I’m not expensive ;)

19. Last year I made an in house training video for the Nestle’ factory up in Solon, OH. Well, it’s a Stouffer’s factory but it’s owned by Nestle’. I was a Communication major in college, which I already mentioned, but my focus was Media Production which was more or less Video Editing (we did radio and TV production too, but more video) Anyways, I never planned on using my degree until I made that video.

20. Every year for Christmas I make a video for my family. I don’t start working on it until after we open presents at Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. I concept, shoot, and edit everything that night by myself which usually means I don’t sleep between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. What stinks is that my family has come to expect this, and I have to top myself each year, which I’ve managed to do, but if I keep raising the bar for myself someone’s eventually gonna get hurt.

21. My dad is one of 9 kids so I have a lot of cousins. I graduated from high school with 2 of my cousins in my class. I had another cousin the year ahead of me, one a year behind, my brother year behind him, and another cousin a year behind my brother. The Dolson’s sure know how to procreate.

22. My family has a cottage on Atwood Lake that my grandpa built pretty much from the ground up. What started as a one room cottage turned is now a maze of additions with 6 bedrooms, 3 and a half bathrooms, and is fully furnished with the sweetest 1970’s decor.

23. Don’t tell my family this, but one day, I would love to convert a few rooms of The Cottage (that’s what we call it) into a studio. I’d leave most of it alone, but run snakes throughout the house, so that we could do tracking in any room. Like I said, I’d leave most of it alone, so it would be the perfect place to make a record. How awesome would it be to stay for 2 weeks, or a month with your band, go fishing, boating, have campfires, oh, and record music. I’d call it The Cottage. keep checking those album credits, one day you’ll see our name in there.

24. The first TV show that I ever got addicted to was The Office, but since then, thanks to my sister’s Tivo, I’ve been sucked into, LOST, and 24. And now, thanks to hulu.com I’ve also seen every episode of Arrested Development, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. (i love charlie, i want to be charlie)

25. This is the last one, so dang. . . this is hard .. ..hmm. . .well since this is going on my dolsonmusic site, I might as well put something about music. I honestly don’t listen to that much music. In fact, you’d probably laugh if you ever looked through my iTunes. It’s really hard for me to get into a record or a band, but once I do I’ll be a fan forever, so I have full catalogs of bands. I think it’s because I can’t listen to music as background and I rarely have time to just sit and listen to music. I’m always around music, and everything I do is in someway connected to making music, but yeah, I guess I’m not hip enough to have the latest on the indie scene or know every band that’s ever existed. oh, well……wow that was anti-climactic, so i guess i’ll just throw this in there to give it some flare. I don’t like Bob Dylan. I know that it’s singer/songwriter blasphemy to speak such words, but I just can’t handle his voice. just bein honest.