8 Facts Meme

Okay, I got tagged by Mojoey who runs the Atheist Blogroll.
So first the rules must be posted before the response given.
Rules:

• Post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

So here is the information about me.

1. Habit: I talk to myself. More when I'm alone than around people, though I seem to wander off sometimes into my own thoughtspace and end up in a sotto voce conversation with myself. This also plays into my sense of hearing.
   
2. Habit: I pull on my beard a lot. Not in a thinking-about-something-beard -stroking-look-intelligent way. More in a do-I-have-split-ends way.
   
3. Fact: I have a rash on my leg. I was bitten by a tick in the woods 2 weeks back and the lower half of my shin and calf has broken out in a large rash. I'm heading to the doctor's over a  bit of reluctance to have it checked out.
   
4. Fact: My dog is named Ken. Ken is the other reading (on-yomi) of the Japanese character for dog. People here in Kobe find it amusing enough even though it's not a great joke. But it's Japanese-y and easier for my folks to say than my wife's second choice "Asashoryu," her favourite sumo wrestler.
   
5. Fact: My wife speaks Japanese better than me but doesn't test as well. We found this out when we both took the JTOC test about 6 years ago and I beat her by 30 some points but she knew what the genetics radio program questions were about because she'd listened to the show on the radio previously. I couldn't follow that sort of thing to anywhere near her level, so I took the test. She took the content. I still get stick for the results.
   
6. Fact: I haven't really settled on a theme or expertise for my blog. I'm jealous of folks like The Uncredible Hallq who has his jive down on religious and philosophy issues, or Canadian Cynic who's got his consuming interest in Canadian politics (a scene I lost touch with during my first stint in Japan and never got back on board). My interests are too wide (and lacking depth) and my attention span too short, so I flit from topic to topic like some sugar-addled ADD sufferer and never settle.
   
7. Fact: I have spent most of my adult life outside of Canada. I left for Japan shortly after I finished university and have been back for 3 since my mid-20's. I'm out of touch with the place and how it's changing. When I went back to Ottawa I changed from being a gaijin in Japan to a gaijin in Ontario. During those 3 years I never settled into my old groove. After we booked and ended up in London I felt more comfortable being a gaijin when it was in a foreign land but I've not felt like I was where I was from in a long time. That's how I ended up with the name for the blog.
   
8. Fact: I'm an atheist. I don't suppose I've always been but I don't remember ever believing. For me it's not like I reached any kind of 'epiphany;' I just thought about it one day between high school and university and realized that I'd been born Catholic but never done anything about it. I'd never been convinced in the first place so I never gave up. I don't have a conversion story just a slow unwinding where you know the beginning and the end are completely different, but there's not clear point in the middle where there was a change.
   

So in turn I'm going to tag the following people:
Pooflingers Anonymous
Canadian Cynic
Galloping Beaver
Unrepentant Old Hippie
Rational Reasons
Watashi to Tokyo
900 ft Jesus
The Homeless Atheist

--  From: 	The Eternal Gaijin 	Lost Somewhere in Kobe, Japan 	"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."