(Oh geez. Wasn't going to post until Friday, but I couldn't resist this. I have ridiculous amounts of headcanon...)
Roderich in general:~Roderich actually has a nice tenor singing voice. He doesn't tell people this, though, because he doesn't think his singing is very good (mainly because he tends to compare himself with some professional-grade opera singers he knows through the orchestra he plays with.) He'll sing sometimes when he's sure he's alone, like in the shower at home.
~Roderich actually has almost a boringly good relationship with his family. He sends them little e-mail status updates about his life about every month and always flies to Austria to visit them over the holidays.
~He's not a morning person. In spite of the fact that he does try to have a regular, eight-hour sleep schedule, he always needs a couple cups of tea in the morning before he's actually functional.
~He doesn't really know how to behave around children or pets (mainly because he has had little experience with either.) He can be kind and gentle with them, but he isn't one to offer affection or baby-talk. (He also tends to be wary with animals in general due to the diseases they can carry, of course.)
~Even though he can come off that way, he's really not an arrogant person. He does demand a certain level of respect (evidenced by how he is
Dr. Edelstein, not 'Roddy') but only because he believes that's how doctors, especially specialists, should be treated. When he gets snappish and judgmental, it's usually the result of stress, and he doesn't make any of his pronouncements about hygiene and disease without knowing that there is more than one study to back them up. His faith in his own judgment comes primarily from his sense of the education and experience he's had, not a belief that he's particularly brilliant or savvy.
Health-related:~Roderich has a smartphone with links to the CDC website and various medical journals, so that he can pull up studies to bolster his points. He also has quite a few books and printed journals taking up space in his office and his home, because being aware of the latest research is important to him.
~He never goes swimming. Heck, it's a challenge to get him within fifteen feet of a pool or hot tub, because of the bacteria that have been known to thrive in them. In his house, he has a central filter for his water and actually goes so far as to clean his showerheads to make sure his water isn't contaminated.
~He doesn't actually use the central bathroom in his house very often because it doubles as his lab space. When he isn't having company over, he typically has petri dishes all over the place, culturing samples taken from different spots in his home.
~He enjoys cooking, mainly because he can know for sure his food is uncontaminated if he's the one to prepare it. He has a nice digital food thermometer that he sticks into everything he makes to ensure that it's at the proper temperature. Generally, he tends to be wary at any rate of eating seafood because of reports of
marine toxins, and he prefers buying irradiated fruit because it's less likely to have bacteria growing in it.
~A lot of his particularly phobic actions can be traced back to his late twenties, when his engagement with Elizabeta fell through. He was a bit of a germophobe beforehand, but the stress of that and his resulting need for more control over his life kicked the anxiety up to eleven. During that time, among other things, he pretty much went on a vaccine binge, as evidenced by his list of vaccines below:
-Anthrax (in late twenties)
-Chickenpox (varicella) (got it in his early twenties)
-Tetanus, Dipitheria and Pertussis (DTP), (childhood—in infancy and then at age 5) with Td boosters every ten years
-Hepatitis A and B (got Hep A in his early twenties, Hep B in childhood)
-HiB (Haemophilus influenza) (got it in his twenties, in spite of the fact that it rarely affects people over 5)
-(HPV he’s planning to get, though at the moment it’s not licensed for people over 26)
-Flu (the injection kind, every year)
-MMR (measles-mumps-rubella—he had a childhood dose and one as an adult in his late twenties)
-Meningococcal (as a teenager, then around 30 when they released the conjugate vaccine that gives better, longer-lasting protection)
-Pneumococcus pneumonia (in his late twenties)
-Polio (in childhood, then in late twenties)
-Rabies (in late twenties)
-Rotavirus (around thirty)
-Shingles (herpes zoster) (around thirty)
-Japanese encephalitis (a few years ago)
-Smallpox (in his late twenties. Yes, he found a way to get it. Probably through one of his school friends who's now working at the CDC.)
-Typhoid (in his late twenties)
-Yellow fever (in his late twenties)
~Oh, and have another list. Roderich takes a lot of supplements in order to keep his immune system up--not all in separate pills, but these are the specific substances:
-Vitamin B2
-Vitamin B5
-Vitamin B6
-Vitamin B12 (may help immune system, though evidence is uncertain)
-Vitamin C
-Vitamin D
-Zinc
-Lactobacillus (if he hadn’t been eating enough yogurt)
~Roderich also has numerous antimicrobial drugs in his house (in the immortal words of someone on the cbox: 'enough for a small pandemic' XD), along with plenty of first aid supplies. Between those, his two refrigerators and freezers, and the shelves of canned food in his basement, he could survive for quite a while in his home were some kind of disaster to occur.
~Other bizarre facts about his home include the fact that he has no carpeting (only easy-to-wash rugs), no curtains on most of his windows, and dust mite pillow and mattress covers, in spite of the fact that he doesn't have any dust-related allergies. He also has a little garden out back in which he grows some of his own food.
(will update with more later, hurrr. XD)
