100 True Statements About Karen

 100 True Statements About Karen based on the false ones.

1.    Karen lives in Tucson, Arizona.
2.    Karen doesn't smoke, and drives a Saturn.
3.    Karen is close personal friends with her husband.
4.    Karen voted four times against people named George Bush (HW or W).
5.    Karen hates conflict and confrontation.
6.    Karen has never been to Japan.
7.    Karen appreciates comments in 4 of her 5 blogs and journals, as long as they aren't hateful. The St. Michael's announcements blog doesn't accept comments.
8.    Karen's street has a Spanish name (it's a Calle or a Camino).
9.    Karen and John saw the Clash in concert several times.
10.  Karen never saw the Beatles in concert, only Paul and Ringo separately circa 1990.
11.  Karen thinks much of Management theory is pseudoscience, not to mention boring.
12.  Karen is fairly shy, but good at speaking up in class.
13.  Karen avoids alcohol as much as possible, even buying alcohol-free cough medicine.
14.  Karen's current boss is the best, most intelligent, supportive, decent one she's ever had.  It will be a wrench to leave, but economic necessity requires it.
15.  Karen's first novel has been rejected by a number of agents and editors.  However, the manuscript itself has not been submitted anywhere in about a decade, and it's much better now than it was then.
16.  Karen's second novel is so long she's broken it into three volumes à la Tolkien.
17.  Stephen Spielberg has never heard of Karen or Heirs of Mâvarin.
18.  Stephen Sondheim knows no more about Karen and her work than Spielberg does.
19.  Karen has no children.  Had the fertility treatments worked, the kids' names would have been Romana Jean and Alexander Scott.
20.  Karen has read The Lord of the Rings lots of times.
21.  Karen has never read Dune, mostly because Bob ordered to to read it.
22.  Karen dated a lawyer before she met John.  Bob was smart, funny, honest and non-exclusive.
23.  Karen is too fat. This is the main reason why most of the photos she posts of herself are either very old or involve Halloween costumes.
24.  Karen doesn't do nearly enough cleaning.
25.  Karen seldom dresses up in conservative career wear, and almost never wears makeup.  That will probably have to change soon.  Drat.
26.  Karen has loved dogs all her life, and got one of her own as soon as circumstances permitted (fall 1978). Jenny was a housewarming gift from Bob.
27.  Karen is terribly allergic to cats.  This has limited her appreciation for them.
28.  Karen's birth name was Karen Christine Funk.  Her confirmation name was Genevieve.
29.  Karen was falsely teased about flunking first grade, as part of the teasing about the name Funk.  In fact, her mother wanted Karen skipped ahead to second grade, but the school principal didn't believe in doing that.
30.  Karen is allergic to guinea pigs, cats, horses, and feathers, pollens, grasses and other stuff.
31.  Karen's least favorite kind of weather is 10 degrees F with blowing snow.  However, she wouldn't mind one of those rare Tucson snowfalls that melt in a couple of hours, tops, if they stick at all.
32.  Karen drove through a lot of winter monsoon rain this past week, and didn't enjoy it very much.
33.  Karen prefers series fiction and other long forms, with lots of backstory, sometimes bult up over decades.  Examples include Doctor Who and the Murry-O'Keefe and Austin novels by Madeleine L'Engle.
34.  Karen never took calculus or physics, because she did badly in intermediate algebra and chemistry.
35.  Karen has had a fair number of traffic tickets, especially for speeding.
36.  Karen is a hopelessly bad guitarist and pianist, due to poor eye-hand coordination and lack of practice.
37.  Karen seldom gets enough sleep.
38.  Karen's only moped was stolen from in front of her house in the early 1980s.  She and John were home at the time.
39.  Karen has two Honda scooters, both in terrible condition.
40.  Karen was a big fan of the original series of Star Trek, and once sat in on a Gene Roddenberry press conference (1975).
41.  Karen found the compilation of the previous list harder than she expected. This one was easier.
42.  Karen knows from personal experience that tengremen are interesting to write about.  They could never be pets.
43.  Karen once got into a childhood fight with a girl named Jamie, and accidentally "flipped" her.
44.  Karen collected bone china animals in fifth through seventh grades, possibly later as well.  Most of there were eventually broken, either by her or the twice-a-week housekeeper, and were probably disposed of by her dad after the divorce.  She wants them back.
45.  Karen did a lot of birdwatching in 1986 and 1987.
46.  Karen has been to Niagara Falls at least five times, including twice during a scooter trip between Columbus and Syracuse.
47.  Karen is not secretly from another planet. Really.
48.  Karen's license plate says MAVARIN, and her license plate holder says "Follow me to the country in my mind."
49.  Karen has read A Wrinkle in Time many times, and can quote parts of it from memory.
50.  Karen appreciates her online friends, including old friends from her Syracuse days.
51.  Karen has many Disney movies on VHS or DVD.
52.  Karen taped the entire Zorro tv series off Vault Disney before Disney Channel stopped airing vintage shows.
53.  Karen has been to Disneyland and Walt Disney World, but not Disneyland Paris, Tokyo DisneySea or Tokyo Disneyland.
54.  Karen wants to visit Animal Kingdom and the Disney MGM theme park, plus all the new Magic Kingdom and Epcot attractions since she was last at Walt Disney World years and years ago.
55.  Karen and John would buy annual passes to Disneyland if they lived in California.
56.  Karen had a Barbie, Skipper, a Tutti and a Casey circa 1967, and has the same iterations of each doll now (but not the same actual dolls).
57.  Karen played a lot of Canasta with her family as a kid.
58.  Karen once aspired to play the fastest mistake-free games of Klondike in the world.  This was during a rainy vacation near Old Forge, NY.
59.  As a kid, Karen usually lost at Monopoly to Joel R.
60.  At some point in the 1990s, Karen compiled numerous fun song combinations for the My Three Songs and Top Five at Five features for Cool 92.9.  This was before her friend the program director was suddently fired for no good reason.
61.  Karen got through her bachelor's degree in just under 29 1/2 years, from beginning to end (September 1975 to February 2005).
62.  Karen is a terrible athlete who usually got picked last in gym class.  The only athletic activity she was ever good at was bodybuilding in the early 1980s.
63.  Karen never owned a Chatty Cathy, only a Chatty Baby.  She has two vintage Chatty Baby dolls now.
64.  Karen had a Jan doll from Remco, but not Jan's friend Heidi.  Now Karen owns the entire line of Remco pocketbook dolls, and would like to get all the accessories.
65.  At the age of seven or so, Karen was lashed to a tree trunk by an excited cocker spaniel that was tied to the tree.  The dog, Lucky, lived next door to Karen's grandmother and Aunt Flora in Dewitt, NY.  Lucky ran around the tree in circles, trapping Karen with its leash or chain.
66.  Around 1972, Karen was badly scratched and bruised by a St. Bernard near the Speakman camp on Lake Ontario.  It wasn't a mean dog, just large and young and excitable.
67.  In high school and college, Karen often got stuck at the bottom of page one of a story she tried to write.  Her files include quite a few such attempts.
68.  Karen's husband dislikes much of Karen's writing, because he dislikes the fantasy genre.  However, he does like The Princess Bride.
69.  In 1987, Karen sprained two ankles (and broke one of them) trying to see a fan-tailed warbler in Sycamore Canyon near the Mexico border.  It took her about 12 hours to hike out of the rugged canyon.  She didn't even get a definite sighting of the bird as it flew away.
70.  Karen once spent an hour and a half waiting from someone who simultaneously waited for her at the same intersection. Bob was on the southwest corner, Karen on the northeast corner - or something like that.  Bob got mad anyway.
71.  Telling Karen she must do something usually makes her want to stubbornly avoid doing it.
72.  Karen has many hundreds of unread emails on other screen names. Most of them are from a very active email list she wishes she hadn't been subscribed to.
73.  Karen often spends time in IM with people she's only met online.
74.  Karen almost never wears a watch.  Watches irritate her skin, and the cell phone makes a good substitute timepiece.
75.  Karen has terrible eyesight, and got her first glasses in second grade.
76.  Karen has had two colds in the past five months, and her right ear is still ringing from the first one.
77.  Karen has outlived at least one of her doctors, a personal friend who died of a heart attack a few years ago.
78.  Karen doesn't read most of the blogs she likes more than once a week, if that often.  There are a few exceptions, however.
79.  Karen has written extensively about the tv series Quantum Leap.  However, she's pretty much burned out on doing so.
80.  Karen has interviewed  many actors, writers and producers, mostly in connection with Quantum Leap or Doctor Who.
81.  Karen once discussed James Thurber with William Windom at a charity tennis tournament.
82.  Karen has broken an ankle at least three times.  She's not sure whether it's been the same ankle each time.
83.  In college the first time around, Karen tried to let Jenny Dog go outside by herself on the "honor system."  It was winter, and Karen didn't want to get dressed in winter clothes just to walk her puppy. This was a mistake, because Jenny would take off to go visit Liz, about a twenty minute walk away.  Once some girls took Jenny into their home before Karen got there, and renamed the dog "Sabrina."
84.  Karen used to read textbooks to a blind grad student named Liz. Liz said Jenny's fur reminded her of a lion.
85.  For most of the 1990s, Karen and the United Whovians of Tucson used to answer phones at KUAT pledge drives.  Once, John Levene (John Anthony Blake) came to town for one of these events at Karen and friends' instigation.
86.  Karen has called or emailed the NPR show Talk of the Nation quite a few times, most recently today. Sometimes her remarks have been aired, sometimes not.
87.  Karen has a friend who is a struggling actor in L.A. but a former household name in England.  See #85.
88.  Karen eventually washed dishes last night.
89.  Karen has been extremely unproductive on her novels this past week.
90.  Karen tries never to say mean things.
91.  Karen does her best to encourage her friends to write, particularly Sara, whose current draft is better than she thinks it is.
92.  Karen considers William Shatner a bit of an ass who needs a good director to keep him in line.  He can be highly entertaining, though.
93.  Karen has never ever watched an episode of Survivor. Well, maybe 10 minutes of an early episode once.
94.  Karen hates nearly all reality tv, especially gross and mean-spirited ones. Exceptions: a few PBS and BBC shows, usually with the word "House" in the title.
95.  One of Karen's  least favorite tv and radio personalities is Howard Stern.  However, she believes in Stern's first amendment rights.
96.  Karen thinks that almost nothing Michel Eisner has done in recent years was good for Disney or its fans.
97.  Karen once wrote a song in a Mâvarinû. "Mâvarin, Mâvarin/Besta lûva [something something]..."  It was a very very long time ago, and she can't find a copy now.
98.  Karen wishes John would write that mystery novel he started a couple of years ago, because it sounded really interesting.
99.  After 25+ years of marriage, Karen still loves John very much.
100. Karen wrote this list by revising the false statements list.

This time they're all true.

Karen