Magenta's quiz

[mrissa]

magentamn did a quiz thing, and I wanted bits of stuff to poke at while I worked on the first scene with the Ojafnatharmen, so here we go:

1. How many keys are on your keychain?
5

2. What curse word do you use the most?
probably damn -- I don't count

3. Do you own an iPod?
no

4. Who on your Myspace "Top 8" do you talk to most?
I'm not on Myspace.

5. What time is your alarm clock set for?
I believe it's set of 8:50. That's not when I get up, and it's not when markgritter gets up, though: I get up sometime between 5 and 7, whenever I wake up, and markgritter gets up around 10, after hitting the snooze button more times than I could bear if I was actually in the room for it. (This is why he has survived nearly seven years of marriage: because I am awake before he starts hitting the snooze button. Otherwise, all bets are off.)

6. How many suitcases do you own?
N, where N is a large number. I don't know how many of them are still functional, is the thing. We were pretty hard on suitcases for awhile.

7. Do you wear flip-flops even when it's cold outside?
No, I wear SmartWool when it's cold outside. Sometimes also when it's warm outside: it keeps my feet cooler than other socks in my hiking boots. (I do wear flip-flops other times when it's warm, though.)

8. Where do you buy your groceries from?
Byerly's, mostly, and Cub Foods.

9. Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?
Be in. I trust other people's camera skills more than mine, and I have no real desire to put in enough effort to change that. Having dd_b around some of the time really gives me no motivation to change that.

10. What was the last movie you watched?
"My Neighbor Totoro"

11. Do any of your friends have children?
Yes. I have had friends with children since I was 14 or so. The friends in question weren't 14, but still.

12. If you won the lottery, what's the first thing you would buy?
You know, a week ago I would have had an answer to that, but then Baen's Universe bought "Singing Them Back," and I decided that I could, too, have the elisem amber necklace that is mine mine mine and makes me look like a Viking princess. A very happy Viking princess. So I talked to elisem, and that's that. I hope to buy theswantower's book tomorrow, if it's at Uncle Hugo's. I'd probably still do that if I won the lottery.

Maybe we'd go out for dinner? Yes: I would buy dinner. Probably scallops and vinho verde and torta and some lovely cheese and stuff. (We could do that tonight, too, but I'm not sure we'll be motivated.)

13. Has anyone ever called you lazy?
Heh. Not without snickering up their sleeve.

14. Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep faster?
Heh again. Uh, no. I never have a hard time falling asleep. Staying asleep, yes, sometimes. But not falling asleep.

15. What CD is currently in your CD player?
Indigo Girls' "Rareties" or something of that nature is in my car CD player, which is where I listen to CDs most. It's the one with "Uncle John's Band" and "Finlandia" and "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" and "Let Me Go Easy." I was going to ask dd_b if he wanted to borrow it yesterday, because we'd talked about a couple of the songs on it many moons ago, but I forgot.

16. Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk?
Regular. Chocolate milk (the homemade kind, not the kind that comes pre-chocolated) is a fine thing in its place, but regular skim milk is my drink of nearly every meal. It goes with everything.

17. Has anyone told you a secret this week?
I wouldn't mention some of the things people have told me in general conversation with their names attached; I suppose that counts. But that's discretion, not secrecy.

18. When was the last time someone hit on you?
[checks watch] Oh, do you mean someone new? Umm. Byerly's yesterday.

19. What did you have for dinner?
Yesterday? Bratwurst with raspberry-wasabi mustard, salad with mediocre winter veggies.

20. Do you wear hoodies often?
No, I only own one, because markgritter doesn't like them, and I don't like them enough for it to motivate me to get more above the anti-motivation of his dislike. It's not that I only wear clothes he likes, but his opinion does matter.

21. Can you whistle?
Sure.

22. Have you ever participated in a protest?
No. So far I have inclined towards other methods of making my views known. You may call this introverted, hyperverbal, money-centered, or lazy, as you see fit.

23. Who was the last person to call you?
The garbage people wanted to let us know that yard waste pickup starts April 10. Woo. Before that, my mom and dad did our usual Sunday phone call somewhat late.

24. What is your favorite ride at an amusement park?
Tilt-a-Whirl, especially if I am wedged between two large, coordinated people who are enthusiastic leaners.

25. Do you think people talk about you behind your back?
They sometimes mention that they have, so I expect so. I talk about you folks behind your backs, too, you know. We spent half a dinner conversation on "underappreciated traits of buymeaclue" once, for example.

26. What area code are you in right now?
651

27. Did you watch cartoons as a child?
Sometimes. Mostly I listened to them, as I mostly listen to TV in general. I'm not very good at watching TV.

28. How big is your local mall?
Heh. Our closest mall is Bigdale, which is to say, Mall of America. So: large.

29. How many siblings do you have?
None, and I have never once wanted any.

30. Are you shy around the opposite sex?
No. Around the same sex, sometimes; certain kinds of women make me very nervous.

31. What is your biggest regret?
I try not to have very many regrets larger than "damn, they're out of chocolate-frosted Bismarcks; if only I'd gotten in the shower earlier."

32. Have you ever had Jamba Juice?
Yes. I have had meals composed entirely of Jamba Juice. I miss Jamba Juice. The nearest one I know of is at Whole Foods up in the city by the lakes, and usually if I'm up there and want something cold, I want Sebastian Joe's; it's not far anyway.

33.When was the last time you laughed so hard your sides hurt?
Yesterday, with timprov. We're pretty funny, actually.

34. What movie do you know every line to?
"The Princess Bride," and "Real Genius," and "Sneakers," and...several, I think.

35. Do you own any band t-shirts?
No, but I'm wearing an author-poet sweatshirt right now.

36. When was your last plane ride?
I think it was to Grand Rapids for mattgritter's graduation, last late-spring

37. How many chairs are at your dining room table?
We only have one eating table, and it has four chairs at it normally.

38. What is your favorite salad dressing?
That kind at Pasta Primavera in Pleasant Hill -- it's so zippy. I miss it. (On a different day I would probably answer differently.)

39. Do you read for fun?
Uh, yah.

40. Can you speak any languages other than English?
French, some; Japanese, a bit; the Scandinavian languages, a bit.

41. Do you do your own dishes?
We have a dishwasher. I often load and unload the dishwasher. Washing dishes that don't go in the dishwasher is officially designated as markgritter's chore, but sometimes I do it anyway.

42. What color is your bedroom painted?
Sigh: a pale brown. We will eventually repaint it bright white. It's not offensive, it's just...too inoffensive, really.

43. Have you ever cried in public?
Uh, yah.

44. Do you have a desktop computer or a laptop?
Desktop. I deliberately did not get a laptop so that I wouldn't be tempted to take things with me at all times.

45. Which do you make: wishes or plans?
This is not a binary operation, o quiz.

46. Are you always trying to learn new things?
No, sometimes I'm sleeping, and sometimes I'm learning new things entirely accidentally, and sometimes I'm having old things beaten back through my thick Norsky skull, and sometimes....

47. Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoos?
No. I used to say that if I had to get my ears repierced, I wouldn't do it, but then I met porphyrin and elisem, and they changed my mind. But I still don't want additional holes -- my topological properties are quite altered enough -- and I can't imagine liking a picture enough to want to see how it would do on my skin for the rest of my life and whether it would do like my grandpa's tattoos have.

48. Do you believe that the guy should pay on the first date?
Yes: free first dates for lesbians!!!

Oh, sorry, perhaps this is not what they meant. I don't believe that this is a question of should/ought. If a person asks for a date, that person can either choose to pay for that date or choose to make it clear in advance that the parties are expected to pay for themselves. Anything that person may have chromosomally, genitally, socially, or in any other gender-determining fashion is irrelevant to the question of payment.

49. Can you skip rocks?
No.

50. Have you ever been to Jamaica?
No, go fish.

51. If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?
Sarah Pippalini? Oh, no, sorry, bad joke. (First dirty joke my grandfather ever told me, in fact, and I believe the last one as well.) I don't see the point of being a non-Mris. We already have someone being those other people, or else we don't have them yet and I don't know what the appeal is yet. Some people around here are fairly clear on the appeal to them of having a Mris, so we might as well continue to go with that.

52. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Uhhhhh...eight? Maybe ten? Mostly sandals.

53. Do you love your job?
Yes. Even when I hate it.

54. Has someone you loved died in the last year?
No, it's been a bit longer than that, for someone I loved personally rather than someone whose work I loved.

55. What to snack on at the movie theatres?
(That is not a sentence.) On Saturday when we went to see "V for Vendetta" -- for which, I might add, I am too cynical, and could it have been improved with more Stephen Fry? of course it could -- they had an ad for M&Ms, and I suddenly yearned. Mostly, though, I don't snack at movie theatres.

56. Who was your favorite teacher?
(grumble mumble total orderings) Kathy Kinkel or Kinkle or something. She was my gifted ed teacher for first and second grade, and she rocked. Also Marylyn Bremmer, my seventh grade English teacher, who has been a friend since she stopped being my teacher. Also Jan Lund, my high school French teacher and AcaDec coach, also a friend since she stopped being my teacher (actually since before -- there is no other reason for the stuff she put up with from us, especially from me and the Michaelfreak). Also Ron, Gabe, Honest Gabe, who taught freshman and senior honors English in high school and who is more missed than I can say. Also Dennis, my college advisor, and Tom, who taught me Nuke and Quantum and Math Methods and Modern. Also Eric, who started his class in Tudor-Stuart history with, "If you don't read science fiction, you need to start, because that's the mindset we'll be cultivating for this class."

57. Have you ever dated someone out of your race?
No, everyone I've ever dated was a member of the human race. Oh, wait, I take that back: I did date a slime mold and a toad. But they looked like they were members of the human race. It was an easy mistake to make, as a teenager.

58. What is the weather like?
The weather is like a shark: it can't stop making analogies.

(alecaustin, you have created a monster. Well, three monsters, really.)

59. Would you ever date someone covered in tattoos?
Sorry, my dance card is pretty full at the moment, tattoos or no tattoos.

60. Do you have an online journal?
No, you're hallucinating this. Yes, I have this lj and also novel_gazing.

61. What was your favorite class in high school?
Advanced Topics in Mathematics. Senior math seminar. The teacher invited me to take it as a sophomore, and he believed in me and my ability to teach myself things that might prove useful later in the class, like calculus.

62. Does your closest Starbucks have a drive-thru?
What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino? I get coffee at Caribou when I get coffee at all, or at independents, but there aren't as many of those here as I'd like.

63. Do you eat breakfast daily?
Yes, or else I fall over, and nobody much enjoys that.

64. What was the last thing to scare you?
timprov slept 18 hours straight. That was pretty spooky for me until I checked at 17 hours and saw that he wasn't dead.

65. What is your favorite fruit?
I like fresh blackberries, fresh raspberries, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, fresh Braeburns and other similarly crisp apples, fresh canteloupe, fresh peaches, plums, pluots, dinosaur eggs, occasionally green or black grapes, kiwi...I like fruit. Mostly fresh fruit in season. Sometimes fresh fruit out of season. I can also occasionally do with canned peaches, blueberry pie, boysenberry sorbet....

66. Do you pay attention to calories on the back of packages?
No. I look at other package information, like whether corn syrup is the first ingredient (or, in many foods, whether it's on the list at all), but I am not a calorie-counter.

67. Are you picky about spelling and grammar?
I was going to just reflexively answer yes, but it's not quite that clear. It matters to me that I use the language well in my own work. It matters that others do the same in their work, but that doesn't always mean a strict adherence to grammatical rules. It matters to me that communications are clear and reasonably easy to read: if I wonder whether you meant matrices or mattresses, in one infamous example, that's not good. But one of my oldest friends is a terrible speller, and I'm glad to hear from him despite having to occasionally put some effort into puzzling out what he was trying to get at.

68. What was the last thing you ate?
Raspberries. The next thing I eat is likely to be a Reese's Peanut Butter Egg. I swear the holiday funny-shaped ones are better than the regular round ones. I don't know why, they just are.

69. Do you get along better with the same or opposite sex?
For years, the answer would have been painfully obvious: opposite. And I'm still one of those women who just likes males. I don't mean sexually, although I am heterosexual. I mean I'm comfortable, generally, with little boys, with old men, just males. But in recent years I've met more and more women who are not interested in backstabbing social games, and I've come to really appreciate having women friends.

70. What did you dress up as for your first Halloween?
I'm not sure what they dressed me as when I was a baby. When I was old enough to say what I wanted to be -- when I was 3 -- I was a fairy princess. The year after that, I was Princess Leia. And wore my hair like that off and on for years afterwards, incidentally.

71. Do you like mustard?
Oh, for sure. Do you know how many kinds of mustard we have in the house? Neither do I. That's how much I (we) like mustard.

72. Would you ever sky dive?
Not voluntarily.

73 Do you sleep on your side, tummy, or back?
Stomach, and what am I, five? Tummy? Jeez.

74. What character from a movie most reminds you of yourself?
Someone from "Real Genius," but which someone varies from day to day. Today is something of a Mitch day, unfortunately. Jordan, Laszlo, and Chris are all more common.

75. Do you enjoy giving hugs?
To the right people, yes; there are few things I enjoy more.

76. Would you consider yourself to be fashionable?
No, not generally. I wear the most flattering clothes I can find, and if that means I skip entire seasons or entire looks that span more than one season, I deal with that.

Sometimes I think I would look a lot better in a particular style than 95% of the people who are actually wearing it, but that doesn't mean I would look good.

Also, many of the "cutting edge fashion" garments are not cut for my body, so even if they would theoretically look good on me if they fit, I have no expectation that they will do so, and I don't fixate on being able to wear them.

77. Do you own a digital camera?
Yes.

78. What celebrities have you been compared to?
I am rarely compared to celebrities. If you feel so inspired, go for it; but it wasn't likely, and we didn't expect it. (Oh. It's very possible that Arlo Guthrie is high on the list.)

79. Does it annoy you when someone says they'll call but never do?
Sometimes. Depends on the person. Sometimes I don't want them to call any more than they want to call, so it's just a bit of social niceness.

80. Are you a jealous person?
No. Sometimes envious, but rarely jealous. When my friends far away are doing fun things together, sometimes I wish I could be there doing those fun things, too, but I never wish I was taking the place of one of them. And I don't really worry about someone taking my place in anything meaningful -- in people's personal or professional affections, for example. You can have more than one friend, you can read more than one book, and a good thing, too.

81. Do you ever feel guilty after eating meat?
If I was going to feel guilty after, I just wouldn't do it. It's not like I like meat.

82. If you were born the opposite sex, what would your name have been?
Mark. My folks never discussed it. As they were going into the hospital, my mom looked up at my dad and said, "If she's a boy, you're going to have to name her." She knew I wasn't a boy, though. She knew I was a brown-eyed little girl named Marissa. After I was born, my dad said, "We would have named her Mark Adam, I guess," and Mom said, "The other girls would have teased her." So I got them a Mark later, and it worked out all right; they seem pleased enough.

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

Cool meme. buymeaclue is definitely underappreciated. :p

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

We spent half a dinner conversation on "underappreciated traits of buymeaclue" once, for example.

...?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

(I tried to figure out how not to comment without sounding like I was fishing, but I figured the only option was going to be not commenting at all and well, I'm not quite that restrained. Heh.)

(Short dinner, maybe. Two Triscuits and a cup o' milk.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, it was a multi-course dinner at a fancy-ish place, bread and soup and walleye cake and main course and dessert. But it was a conversation -- it's not like it was a list I was making with mnemonic devices.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

22 Is a protest different than a boycott? 'cause I still feel guilty eating at a quiznos.

65 ces ces se 'dinosaur eggs'?

68 Yes. Much better. Even the stupid-shaped ones are better. Mostly, I think, because the enrobing chocolate is sweeter and softer (more cocoa butter) than their usual cup chocolate, but also because there's so much more peanutbutter.

Hmm, neat questions. [must. resist. compelling. meme.]

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The French you're looking for is "qu'est-ce que c'est," if I recall correctly. And dinosaur eggs are another pluot/plumicot variety. They're mottled and ugly and very, very tasty.

I think a protest would be if you picketed Quizno's. (I still don't eat there, either. Beige bastards.)

[greykev.livejournal.com]

How on earth does "qu'est-ce que c'est" turn into three syllables? Never mind, I've probably been slurring it together too long to learn the correct pronunciation, and I only use it with you and the Freak anyway, so you already know what I mean.

It would help if their sandwiches weren't 300% better than Subway's. Really, not that it takes much anymore. Without their sticker deal (even if I never redeemed any) there is nothing to make me prefer subway to other fast food, however healthy it might be.

[ksumnersmith.livejournal.com]

"qu'est-ce que c'est" -- oui, c'est ca.

(And one of my favourite phrases, too. So useful!)

[pameladean]

I purely love watching you smack a list of dopey questions full of unconscious assumptions around.

The information is nice too. But I really love the smacking around.
Those quizzes annoy me so much I never even start them.

P.

[markdeniz.livejournal.com]

Some interesting stuff here and as an Englishman living in Sweden I would love to know what your Scandinavian language knowledge is.

A fellow Mark too... well sort of! ;-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When greykev met scottjames and Le Freak and me, we had a few French-class Franglish slang bits, but Kev never took French, so he was stuck phoneticizing what he heard us saying. Other than qu'est-ce que c'est, we had the "ne [blank] pas" formulation for everything, particularly when it was alarming. "Aaaack! Ne do that pas!" was very popular. I believe someone had been told "Ne t'inquietes pas" one time too many, or something.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, the correct pronunciation is slurring it together. It's French.

I just don't eat sub sandwiches when I'm not in Omaha. (Although if any Minneapolitans have recommendations....) I love Buffalo Co. and Little King, and I don't really see any reason to settle for less. I'll probably have Subway sometime in April because it's close to Minicon and fast and cheap if I'm with people who are interested in fast and cheap. Which seems not unlikely, but I'm not likely to push for it, either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hvor ar jarnbarnen? etc.

Norwegian is the easiest for me to puzzle out, then Swedish, with Danish and Icelandic bringing up a distant rear. Some constructions are retained in the idiomatic English of my family members and other Scandosotans, so that may make it easier to figure things out. But I'm always surprised when people have trouble with rudimentary Norsk, because it's so easy.

I have a few phrases of really idiosyncratic Finnish -- "secret code" and "no quarter" and "Väinämöinen got in the boat" -- but I don't do anything like speaking Finnish, unfortunately.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like kicking them firmly.

Okay, not that this is an earth-shattering bit of sharingness...

[careswen.livejournal.com]

I too married a man with the name I would have had if born male.

Re: Okay, not that this is an earth-shattering bit of sharingness...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is it also your brother's name, or did they change their minds? Or is your brother older -- I forget?

Re: Okay, not that this is an earth-shattering bit of sharingness...

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Brother came first. And actually, come to think of it, Michael was to be my middle name. First name was to be William -- Mom wanted a Bobby and a Billy...*shudder*