1st or 3rd Person?

[Juniper]

I'm fiddling around with a story. Maybe a novel, if I am ambitious enough. I'm not going to discuss it, but I have two questions for you.

1.) Do you enjoy stories written in 1st person, or do you find them annoying and prefer 3rd? Do you think there are just some tales more suited for 1st rather than 3rd? Do you think it's acceptable to hop between the two?

2.) Do you think it's weird for an author to write in the POV of his or her opposite gender? Meaning, would it be weird if I wrote a story in which a guy was the protagonist? Is it kind of freaky that the stories I like the most are the ones in which I do this? I did this for a story I wrote for my class last quarter and they told me I did it quite well. Hm.