10 Cool Things

Ten cool things that I've done that other people might not have done, or, in which the reader discovers just how dull I really am:

1. Had dinner with Josef Brodsky (who was the Poet Laureate of the United States, and won the Nobel Prize for literature). He really liked puns.

2. Regularly had brunch with Peter Viereck, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. He liked having brunch with me because a) he got a free brunch, and b) I had read Philip K. Dick's novels and could talk about them with him.

3. Spent a month in Rwanda.

4. Made a movie for television that had a cult following. (I made two movies, but only the second one had a cult following.)

5. Earned a black belt in aikido.

6. Sold a poem when I was fifteen. (I thought the poem was awful, but the publisher actually gave me money for it, so I can't complain.)

7. Went to Stonehenge for the summer solstice. I missed sunrise, but it was still cool.

8. Helped save the life of a man who had been hit by a train.

9. Went to the first science fiction convention in Bergen, Norway.

10. Wrote the artificial opponent for a computer game.