I'm really game for anything; the date was all I needed to get things in mind.  Though personally I'm not a fan of character sheets: writing is an organic process, and I usually have to just write some kind of freeform intro to get a feel for the character.  That is to say, we don't receive a dossier for each new person we meet in the real world -- first impressions are difficult to make when we already know most everything (OOC'edly, anyway).