And Now The Exciting Conclusion of 100 Things About Colin

71) I cannot see a stray dog without instantly becoming sad.

72) I'm one of those people who doesn't think marketing affects me, and I know everyone thinks that, but I find the delusion extra funny in my case since I write advertising for a living.

73) I'm a pretty good tipper, I think - almost always at least 20 percent.

74) I would be a bad candidate for high-powered meetings or extended international peace summits, due to my soft voice and tiny bladder.

75) Literature that affected me at an early age, in case you happen to be a 22nd-century biographer looking to deconstruct my canon after I'm dead: Roald Dahl - The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More; Herman Hesse - Demian; Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

76) I'm kind of a calico, with brown hair, blonde eyebrows, and a red beard.

77) I own no fewer than four personal grooming devices: a beard trimmer, a newer beard trimmer with a vacuum stubble-collection system, an electric razor and an ear/nose hair trimmer. "But Colin," you say. "You don't *have* ear or nose hair." "Exactly," I reply with a sly nostril flare. "Exactly."

78) I was once hit on, by a really drunk young woman at an art show. Penny and I were running a booth urging people to make hand puppets, and this girl seemed to be needing a lot of help with her puppet. I pretty much chalked this up to drunkenness until I heard Penny growling.

79) I don't like it when cartoon characters mutter the word "Curses!" I always want to know: "...Okay, *which* curses?! Specify!"

80) I read everything except books. Leave me alone at a restaurant table, and by the time you get back I'll have read the menu, the drink menu, all the dessert descriptions, all visible wall signage and the condiment labels. If you're gone too long I'll read many of the words backward.

81) Can't really steer with my knees, and my wife makes fun.

82) I can't play any instruments either. Not even a drum. I wish I could.

83) Oh, and I'm the worst singer you know. I sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" once with a musically inclined friend, just to humor him, and he got irritated with me for not really trying. I *was* really trying.

84) My neck hurts.

85) When I was a kid, I used to bore myself to sleep by doubling numbers until I drifted off. "1...2...4...8...16...32...64...128...256...512...1028... uh... ...2056... ...zzz..."

86) I let my cat keep licking my hand because I'm flattered.

87) The other day I got watery-eyed reciting the first line of the Shel Silverstein book The Giving Tree.

88) I wonder if I'm done.

89) I'm not done, but have like thirteen more to go. On my desk there is a miniature model of a goat, a mini-turtle, a dead leaf and a wind-up robot who rides a tricycle.

90) And an antique typewriter.

91) I'm shy, but this gives me great sympathy for others who are as shy as I am. This sympathy then manifests itself as exaggerated gregariousness whenever I can tell someone's uncomfortable - my effort to relieve them of people's attention. I suddenly turn into Mister Personality. It's probably not as awkward as it sounds - shy people do know how to act outgoing. We watch others do it all the time.

92) I've bookmarked more websites than I could possibly ever read.

93) Sometimes I help my garbage man lift the bags up into the truck.

94) I have never been punched, except once in the ear when I was about twelve. It hurt.

95) Ask me about the movie "A Perfect World," starring Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, and I'm all praise. I think that is a fine film.

96) I have a soft spot for things that are underrated, to the point that I'm almost pathologically contrary to public opinion.

97) I write advertising for a living, and few aspects of my job bother me more than the situation where I can think of the perfect word to use in a headline, like "martinet," but know that it's a bad idea because the average person wouldn't know it. I hate not having *all* the words at my disposal.

98) Sometimes I have a feeling a word is perfect for a headline, like "double-clutching," but I have to look it up to be sure I'm using it correctly. Even though I realize that a word I have to look up is obviously not one I can use in a headline for the general public, I usually look it up anyway.

99) My kitchen countertop is quartz, which is awesome. Nothing Penny or I have done to it has resulted in any visible damage - it still looks like it did the day we moved in - and we've done nothing but abuse it. I understand it was grotesquely expensive.

100) This one is long and obscure, but I think we're at the end now: in 7th grade my favorite band was Digital Underground, who if you'd ever heard of it would probably be because of their song The Humpty Dance. Being a true fan, I considered The Humpty Dance to be Digital Underground's *worst* song, and much preferred the last song on that side of the cassette, "Doowutchalike." So. "Doowutchalike," like a lot of the D.U. catalog, relied heavily on samples and grooves from old Parliament and Funkadelic albums. One of these samples, then, featured George Clinton saying "chase the cat!" - As in, "Why must I be like that... why must I... *chase the cat!*" My friends and I misheard this as something like, "Jeeztacain," and repeated it wherever possible, and one time I said it in front of my German teacher, who gasped in horror and wrote me a misconduct. I later cleared my name by bringing in my Digital Underground cassette and playing it for Mrs. Bryant, who agreed that even though neither of us could determine what exactly Clinton was saying, it was not Jesus Christ.

101) (Why not?) I could usually go for a pickle.

102) I can't stand concerts. I don't know what to do, since I don't dance, and I don't sing, but I like music. There are always a lot of people there who seem to like the performing musicians a whole lot more than I do, and I'm divided between being irritated by those people and sorry for dampening their enjoyment.

103) I lose stuff a lot. I can't remember the last time I was using a pen and it ran out of ink.

104) I firmly believe the past tense of "remind" should be "remound."

105) Update: Penelope is actually a little taller than me now. But my feet are bigger.

106) I don't smoke, but I sometimes wish I did because I think it looks totally cool. For this reason, I'm fond of cold weather because I can stand around outside, blowing out smooth clouds of pseudo-coolness. If I did smoke it would probably be Lucky Strikes.

107) I got some powerful bad handwriting. Contrary to what Mrs. Morgan told me in the third grade, though, it turned out to be almost entirely irrelevant to my adult life. I hold the pen wrong, sort of clutching it in my fist, and I generally print instead of "writing." When I do write in cursive, it pretty much looks like a ransom note because no one can recognize that it was me who wrote it. I have yet to use this to my advantage.

108) I have a tendency to take it personally when I'm driving down the road and a streetlight suddenly turns off.

109) I once spent a fairly ridiculous amount of money on an umbrella. Forty or fifty dollars, I think it was. Funny what people will do when it's the week before their outdoor wedding and the forecast calls for scattered showers.

110) Whenever the guy on the radio says the time and temperature, I check it against my car's clock and thermometer to see if we agree.

111) When it comes to swimming, I've always believed the fastest way across the pool is to submerge myself completely and power forward across the bottom, instead of all that splashing around on the surface.

112) I crack up every time I think of this – the least popular product idea in the history of Kellogg's cereal: "Fruit & Fiber & Fire Ants."

113) I hate to jog but love to run.

114) I'm kind of sad that my list of a Hundred Things is finished. Maybe I'll take Val's suggestion and keep going.