MeMe

1. I am married to my best friend - edit: I WAS married to my best friend. Now we're just great friends.
2. I have really cute kids (I resisted the urge to say they are cuter than yours, because I’m trying to be a better person. I will post their picture after the last installment and let you be the judge). - edit: I no longer have the van Dyke, but I still have really cute kids
3. I am a college dropout.
4. I have gotten three legitimate job offers for over 1 million dollars.
5. I occasionally pick my nose.
6. I swam in the Red Sea.
7. I floated on the Dead Sea.
8. The war in the Middle East disappoints me for selfish reasons. I’ve been to Petra, Jordan. I want to take my family there, but I’m too nervous. You’ve seen the Treasury building in Petra if you’ve seen the 3rd Indian Jones movie.
9. I’ve played guitar my entire life.
10. I’ve played guitar in a club with a half-naked woman sitting on my lap.
11. I have an 11 handicap.
12. I played golf at St. Andrews 3 times and never shot better than 95.
13. I got a hole-in-one. It was especially sweet because I was playing with my ex-wife at the time.
14. Men’s Journal magazine did a survey and found that the most trusted profession was being a soldier. The second most trusted was being a doctor. I’m fiercely proud to have been both.
15. I left active duty in the US Army after 21 years without any retirement benefits.
16. In 21 years I was only promoted twice – my promotion to Lieutenant Colonel came with one year left on Active Duty.
17. I was extremely underpaid by the Army for what I did, but I probably made more than you think.
18. I volunteered to go to Iraq and Kosovo.
19. I was in combat in Iraq. Three days before I left, a soldier who was 50 feet away from me got shot in the shoulder.
20. I have received some very high awards during my military service (including the Bronze Star), but the one I’m most proud of is my Good Conduct Medal. It’s the only award that says I was enlisted before I became an officer.
21. I am a Pro-Choice Republican.
22. I’m often embarrassed by my political party.
23. Despite my embarrassment with Republicans, the Democrats are too disorganized to lure me away.
24. I don’t take enough interest in politics to be an Independent or Libertarian.
25. I have never voted in a Presidential election – all for legitimate reasons. During the two GW Bush elections, I was otherwise engaged with military commitments.
26. I have correctly predicted every next president one year prior to the election. EDIT: I finally got my first presidential prediction wrong. I figured Hillary was a shoe-in. Mind you, that’s certainly not what I wanted, it’s just that in November 2007 I figured she was unbeatable.
27. My two Bill Clinton predictions both got me thrown out of an Operating Room.
28. I am a lifetime losing poker player, but I believe I can turn it around this year. - edit: the last two years have turned this around in a big way, mostly due to switching to NL.
29. I am tiltable.
30. I have been playing poker seriously since we moved to Washington State in 2004.
31. I’m proud to say I was born in Brooklyn, NY even though we moved upstate when I was one year old.
32. I miss the Catskill Mountains in the fall.
33. My oldest son has my gift for numbers. When he was 8 and it was time for his friend to go home, my son had to tell his buddy his mom’s cell phone number.
34. The only job I was ever fired from is when I was a telemarketer. I was fired for taking off too much time from work.
35. I was interviewing for medical school at the time.
36. The telemarketing firm asked me to come back two days after they fired me because I was the most productive salesman for the month.
37. I don’t know what that says about me, but I don’t want to think about it.
38. My dad was blind. He lived through 2 heart attacks. He had diabetes and a host of other medical conditions. My dad was not disabled.
39. He died suddenly the day I was scheduled to come home from Iraq.
40. I have been to invitation-only parties with P Diddy and Usher.
41. Me and my two buddies were the only white guys in the room.
42. Usher’s babes are better looking.
43. I do mammography, and I think I’m very good at it. I know I have saved dozen of lives by detecting breast cancer early enough to do something about it.
44. If I lose my license to practice medicine, it will be because of mammography. Up to 50% of breast cancers are visible on the prior mammogram.
45. I hate mammography.
46. One of my favorite anatomical locations is the gastrocnemosemimembranosus bursa. It’s behind the knee.
47. I do a finger trick where I do the Vulcan sign \\// with one hand and the “reversed Vulcan” \!!/ with the other, then I switch back and forth rapidly.
48. I had way too much free time as a kid.
49. I jumped out of an airplane with 95 pounds of gear in total darkness. Airborne!!
50. My chute did not deploy right away. I was too busy bicycling my legs for my life to flash before my eyes.
51. When the chute finally opened, I got the best view of the Hale-Bopp comet on the planet.
52. I believe in God.
53. I have lived in New York, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Georgia, Wuerzburg, Germany, Washington State and California.
54. I’ve been to 21 different foreign countries, including Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Vatican City, France, Belgium, The Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland, Greenland, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq.
55. My favorite city outside of the US is Prague, in the Czech Republic.
56. I have run two marathons. The best was the 2003 Paris Marathon.
57. The best way to see Paris, France is jogging for 26 miles around the city.
58. I used to drive a beautiful BMW convertible, but I look at Ferraris on eBay almost every day. EDIT: I am now the proud owner of a 1988 Ferrari 328 GTS! Edit #2: The Ferrari is gone, replaced by a stunning 1967 Mustang Fastback.
59. I have driven a Ferrari 360, 430 Spider and 458 Spider. They were better than I thought they would be.
60. I used to own a Saturn.
61. I am an Osteopathic physician.
62. Those last two items are related.
63. I cried when I read [another bloggers] post about her mom, because it made me remember my mom’s death. I can’t remember the last time I cried.
64. I wanted to go to my 20th high school reunion just to rub my success in the face of at least 10 different people.
65. Just typing that embarrasses me.
66. I didn’t go.
67. The first girl I asked to my senior prom turned me down and ended up sitting at my table with her date, who happened to be her brother.
68. I had a woobie as a child. It was an NFL blanket with a satin border. I used to rub the satin between my index finger and middle finger for comfort.
69. I can’t resist the urge to rub clothing between my fingers when I walk through a department store.
70. I celebrated my 10th birthday in the hospital.
71. I have a 10 inch scar on my left flank. My dad had a matching scar on his right.
72. I have never tried cigarettes, pot or recreational drugs. EDIT: I tried my first cigar when I was 43 years old. I managed 4 puffs before I got lightheaded and a little nauseous.
73. I used to pour out my beer at parties when no one was looking.
74. I developed a taste for single malt scotch when I was in Scotland.
75. I am intimidated by golfers that wear black gloves.
76. I am intimidated by anyone wearing a “doo-rag.”
77. I have only been intimidated at poker table once. It was the first time I played 10/20.
78. Science Fantasy is my favorite genre.
79. I have read nearly everything by Stephen King and Piers Anthony.
80. As I am typing this, my three year old son came into the room with his shirt over his head yelling, “I am the ghost of Hanukkah!!”
81. I played video games nearly every day as a child, and eventually worked in an arcade.
82. I once played a video game for 13 hours straight.
83. It was the only time in my life I had hallucinations.
84. My favorite movie of all time is The Princess Bride.
85. Dr. Chako is a childhood nickname. I used to wash dishes in an Italian restaurant and the immigrant workers called me Chako. One day, they asked me if I planned on washing dishes my whole life. I told them I was going to be a doctor someday. As a joke, they started calling me Dr. Chako, as in, “Hey, Dr. Chako. Go clean up the vomit by the cash register.”
86. I ended up working with a physician actually named Dr. Chacko (note the extra "c"). She was my boss.
87. She never found out about my nickname. EDIT: I finally told her my nickname in 2009 when we met at RSNA in Chicago. Even though we no longer work together, I was still a little nervous about revealing my nickname to her.
88. The first blog I ever read was The Drudge Report. I rarely check it anymore.
89. The first poker blog I read was Dr. Pauly. It’s still one of the first blogs I read every day.
90. I am obsessive about my hobbies.
91. My hobbies have been video games, Dungeons & Dragons, running, racquetball, golf and poker.
92. Now that I play poker, all of my other hobbies have been sorely neglected.
93. I will play in the WSOP. Edit: I played a $1500 LHE event in 2012. Got knocked out 9 places out of the money. 
94. I absolutely cannot wait for the next WPBT.
95. My ex-wife is a winning poker player.
96. My ex-wife consistently scores higher than me on IQ tests.
97. Those last two items may be related.
98. My ex-wife is a CPA and a vice president with one of the largest tech companies in the world.
99. I have not written a check or paid a bill in many years. Edit: Um... divorce is a great teacher.
100. I married up. Edit: I still think this, even though we are no longer married. 

101. I have thought of at least four things that I cannot put on this list. My ex-wife knows about all of them.
101a. (I couldn't make this 102 because it's called 101 Things About Dr. Chako. Duh.) - I am madly in love with a woman who still can't tell if a flush beats a straight. She's also a physician and she's scary smart. What can I say, smarts is hot. 

Aren't they cute?! Just ignore the ugly guy in the middle.