Eight random things

I was 'tagged' by Ophelia not too long ago on one of those Blogosphere chain-letter thingies that is circulating around. I am to name eight 'random facts' about myself and then pass it along to eight further unsuspecting victims.

To be honest...I'm not so sure what a 'random fact' is, and it is impossible to be truly random about this, since any choice is based on some kind of selective criteria. But...I'll go with 'things that just kind of occur to me which people wouldn't otherwise know and which are, in the end, basically unimportant (and which don't fit into the category of, um, Too Much Information...)'.

1) An old friend of mine that I haven't heard from for about a decade got in touch with me today, and I'm very happy about that.
2) As I am writing this I am listening to the Grateful Dead (As point two was written, it was specifically 'Dire Wolf', from Workingman's Dead).
3) My favourite German word is 'verweilen', both for its meaning and euphony.
4) My alignment of choice is 'chaotic neutral' (or at least it was, back when those things mattered to me).
5) One of my favourite writers once made dinner for me.
6) I have an irrational fear of spiders.
7) I have forgotten how to solve quadratic equations.
8) I'm a decent shot with a pistol.

OK, next: RJ, Jeanie, Geoff, Sharon, Ario, Chris, Jeangis, Jasper/Peter.