I've got a little list. Well. More than one, really; it's *me*.

[mrissa]

I like the lists-of-questions memes in theory, but most of the actual questions don't do much for me. I would far rather have fewer questions but like them better. So here we are:

1. Yesterday I seeded some tomatoes. That is, I pulled or cut the seeds out of them. For all I cook, you'd think I'd have done that before, but I haven't: I've either used a mesh sieve later, or else (and this is most of it) I've made the sort of "rustic" thing where some tomato seeds won't make any difference. But with the orzo I was making last night, I didn't want to water it down or blend the tomato in that far, and I wanted chunks of actual tomato rather than tomato puree through a sieve.

So the question is: what have you never done that's a simple thing that would surprise the people who know you pretty well? "Climbing Mount Everest" is not the kind of answer I'm looking for here, since most people will be unsurprised to hear that most people have not climbed Mt. Everest. Ditto "visited Mars." We're not looking for the huge expeditions. Think simple. Think obvious.

2. I have a stack of books on the American labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the corner of my desk. They theoretically apply to at least two writing projects, and this surprises me.

What has become interesting to you in the last two years that was not interesting before?

3. There is now sitting on my desk courtesy of dhole a Crusader-era potsherd. It is both the oldest possession in my immediate surroundings and the newest possession in my immediate surroundings. It is not quite as long as my littlest finger and has a yellowy-green glaze on it.

What are your oldest and newest things immediately around?

Your turn!

Comments

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

hmm!

1. i've never submitted a short story for publication anywhere. i've submitted one poem for publication since college english where we had to. i used to be hella prolific in these genres, and everyone pretty much assumed i'd send stuff off, but i never really have. (the one poem i submitted didn't get accepted, nor did any of the three or four i had to send in college.)

2. peak oil, (anti)consumerism, and sustainability.

3. oldest ... jd's mom sent him some antique books. they're unreadable because if we touch them they'll fall apart. we're constantly pondering the use of them, but we can't get rid of them since she sent them to us. i also have an old (maybe not quite antique) dining room table and chairs which are in extremely usable and good condition, we use them every day. the chairs are much older than the table and show it, but they have another good 100 years in them.

as for the newest items, it's all media.

[crimini.livejournal.com]

1. Campfires. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a "camper" or much of an outdoorsy type. But I can lay a super campfire. I went camping as a kid and helped my dad lay the fire; when I was older, he even let me light it. I still really enjoy campfires, but not camping.

2. Children, for obvious reasons. And kids books.

3. Oldest thing on my desk is a berry bowl Franciscan china in a retro pattern. I'm not sure what year, but it's part of a collectible pattern. My newest thing on my desk is the new, flat iMac keyboard. It's pretty cool, but I'm still getting used to it. It's very very quiet, like typing on a laptop keyboard, which I've always liked.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think 1. is something you have done or can do that would surprise people, yes? Rather than something you haven't done or can't do?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm.

1. I, also, have not seeded a tomato. Nor baked bread (I've made pie crust and biscuits, though).

2. Rather embarrassingly, I can't think of anything for this category. Stock photography isn't a *new* interest, I've got the classic book on it from the 1980s; I just haven't *done* anything about it until this week.

3. Chunk of old bronze age pottery with a similar recent history to yours. Otherwise, there's a Nikon F body sitting three feet to my right (introduced 1959), and a box of maple sugar candy (with one left).

[ckd]

Hmm.

1. There are a bunch of books released in the past few years that I haven't read yet, even though they are exactly the kind of books I would normally buy-in-hardcover-and-devour (and in most cases, have done the "buy-in-hardcover" part already), from authors whose books I have been eagerly reading for—in some cases—literally[2] decades. This is not a reflection on the quality of those books or their authors[1], which is why I will not name any names. Need I say that depression sucks? Because it does.

2. Not much has become interesting to me in the last two years, alas.

3. Since I'm at work right now, this will be a little skewed. Newest? My new iPod, which is finally once again large enough to hold my entire music collection. Oldest? In some sense, there are music files on my iPod that are approaching 20 years old, since they're rips from some of the first CDs I ever bought. The oldest physical object is probably the LISA '98 proceedings seen under the shark in this userpic (which is on the shelf above my desk; the proceedings, not the shark).

[1] Really, it isn't. One reason I agreed to the awards panel at Farthing Party was to make me read some of these books (or at least try to). It worked a bit, but I'm still not unstuck.

[2] No pun intended.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Depression does indeed suck. I've seen something similar to this in other people, and I'm very sorry to hear it.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

It's been the reason I've stopped my book a day reading. I miss it too.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Nifty questions, I had to really think about the first two.

1. Waterskied. I'm sure many people haven't, but growing up in Central Oregon you snow ski in the winter and water ski in the summer unless you are just completely out of step. They are *the* major forms of activity. I did not do downhill skiing, I did cross-country. But I've never been towed behind a boat.

2. Textile arts would be the major thing. I took up fabric dyeing and clothing embellishment. Also, lesser mythological beings...for example, dragons get all the glory but what about the poor salamanders and basilisks? I've been reading a lot about the more obscure fey.

3. The oldest would be a pair of giant wooden cabinet stereo speakers that my parents got in Germany before I was born. They still work perfectly and even looked nearly knew until Magick decided to chew a hole in the wooden grill over the front of one of them. Stoopid dog. The newest is...oh, it has to be one of the books or DVDs laying around the living room. Not sure which one is the absolute knewest, but it's a book or a DVD.

[jenett]

1) Not sure. Must think on this one.

2) I have a pile of books in my bedroom about various bits of French history involving Louis XIV through XVI and supposed survival of Louis-Charles (XVI's son).

This started with wanting to read more about Madeame de Pompadour after seeing the Doctor Who episode "Girl in the Mirror" (well, started there, reaffirmed after the Hugo win.) Since I normally say that my interest in history tails off abruptly after about 1600. (Erm. Not that I'm not interested at all, just that it drops to fairly low on a long list of other preferences), this is all pretty new and cool.

3) I'm at work, so this is somewhat less interesting than it might be. Newest thing: pile of magazines on my desk waiting to be checked in.

Oldest thing: I've got a 1965 book about Frank Lloyd Wright on my desk, withdrawn, that I want to pass onto my mother, because she's interested, and it's got some stuff she may not have seen (it's written by someone who lived in one of the Wright houses.)

That's immediate vicinity: the library has items with dates of publication back into the 1890s (which is, actually, a little distressing, but I think they're in our "People throw fits if we make noises about getting rid of this" room) And we've got a painting that's late 1800s, and this terra-cotta statue of Athena which is relatively old. But it's a big room, so the book is the thing immediately at hand.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am really amused that the late Bourbon monarchs are your new very modern interest. That's...very you, in an endearing way.

[jenett]

Does it help that one of the books is about identifying Louis-Charles' heart based on new DNA techniques?

I am weird, though. I've read a bunch of Holocaust related modern history (and certainly taken classes in more recent history, and can talk intelligently about a fair bit of it. And I know *far far more* about 1700s Boston than anyone in their right mind should (this came from being the History admin on a MUSH based then and there.)

But for personal pleasure reading? Anything after about 1750 is 25th or lower on a list that includes other fascinating stuff. (Though, actually, I don't read a whole lot of earlier period history in the sense of books about it, come to think about it. Microhistories, yeah. Social histories, sometimes.)

I've been really pleasantly surprised with the readability of my current pile, actually: it's a confused time period, and easy to either gloss over stuff or get seriously tangled in.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Uff da, isn't it, though! So many people with similar names and titles!

[brooksmoses]

Oooh -- I wonder if I just recently got a copy of that book. I don't have it handy, since I'm in Boston, but the "book by someone who lived in one of the Wright houses" description fits.

[jenett]

The book is currently at work, but I can check on Monday.

[rosefox]

.) Despite all my many and varied crafting interests, I've never learned to crochet. I have books on it, and crochet hooks. I'll get around to it someday.

:) Nonfiction, especially history/geography/anthropology/cultural studies. I had terrible history teachers in high school and didn't learn to really enjoy reading about it until I was in 11th grade; then I got distracted by other things. Urban history pulled me back in (full credit to Louis Mumford, who writes about ancient cities like they were right next door) and now I'm occasionally startled to find myself snagging as much nonfiction as fiction from work. I'm very glad I've finally learned that not all nonfiction is dreary and dry.

:.) Oldest: my clothes dresser, which belonged to my great-grandmother. Newest: the anti-eczema goo my dermatologist just prescribed.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

1) I'm extremely good at catching a ball -- or anything really. You throw something at me, I will catch it easily It doesn't go with the rest of my skills at all, but I clearly put points into it in character creation without thinking that it doesn't go well with "can't run".

2) Winston Churchill.

3) I guess the oldest thing in here is a Roman tile -- not one Alter gave me, one from Caerleon. The really cool thing is though that it's terra sigillata, and I also have a pot that's terra sig made in 1999 by my friend Gill and given to me in 2001 as a wedding present. Archaeologically, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Practically you can, because they're separated on the shelf by a very ugly bust of Lovecraft, a money-box with a dragon on it, a wizard Elise made and two Chinese wooden men.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

1. I never learned to ride a bicycle. My parents didn't believe in using training wheels, and they tried to teach me on a gravel road. And I wasn't the kind of athletic kid who could learn in less-than-ideal conditions like that. By the time I could have learned, I felt I was too old. Now I'm older, and wish I had, but only a little. I occasionally have dreams that I'm riding a bike, and think, "Hey, yay! This isn't so hard!"

2. Going to graduate school. Considering it. Seriously. Probably more on this later.

3. I'm in my office at work, so just about everything here is the same amount of newness-to-me. The oldest things are training records from the 1950s. The newest thing is the fax printout waiting for me in the fax machine.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

1) I've never kept a budget or tracked my money/spending as a whole. I think I have pretty good financial habits (read, I'm Dutch and thrifty) and I have the necessary math skills, but Jeff does the finances at home for us now, and I just didn't track it when I was living with friends after college.

2) Social justice, the problems of modern slavery and forced prostitution, poverty, microfinance (Kiva.org!), and really, truly thinking about the way I live my life and spend my money, so I don't just act without thinking about the larger consequences and statements that my actions make.

3) I'm at work, so... Oldest - My abacus. The main server I work with is named "abacus" so I brought in the abacus I got as a child for decoration. New - A pedometer. Jeff and I are participating in the fall "track your steps" program that's supposed to encourage faculty and staff to stay or become healthy.

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

1. I've never finished a novel. Most people assume I have, because I've started three, but I haven't. It's the most difficult art for me.

2. The study of economics and personal finance has become much more interesting to me in the fast two years than I would have thought. Economics is still a very difficult field for me, but I'm fascinated now by the idea of capitalism. I embraced the concepts after I realized I was afraid of my relationship with money.

3. The oldest thing in my apartment is a Native American arrowhead from Northern Alabama, probably 3-400 years old. My Uncle Vic gave it to me from his collection, and though he had some thousands of years old, I doubt mine is more than a few hundred! It's sitting on my bookshelf.

The newest thing around is the new status of my friend Kristin, who is now six weeks pregnant. She's not anything other than my friend, but I still think that's pretty cool.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

1. I have never learned to ride a bicycle, ever. I have owned a couple of them, even a ridiculously expensive mountain bike (which I won at a fair), but I have never actually learned. I has feets, and they work well enough for me.

2. I have become ridiculously interested in baseball. I currently have the MLB website set as my homepage so I check scores religiously several times a day. :)

3. The newest old thing in my house currently is a Hungarian-German dictionary published in 1857. It belonged to my grandfather, and my father brought it back from Europe last Spring.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

#1 Even though I've lived in MN for 18 years now I've never been to a hockey game of any kind.

#2 Compleatist OCing on music and artists. I think I have more than 52 hours of Keith Jarrett, over a 100 of JS Bach, 50 plus on CPE Bach just to mention a few.

#3 It's rather morbid but I still have the dogtags I was wearing when I died the 1st & 2nd times in '72.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

1. I've never liked opera.

2. Eastern Europe.

3. I'm at work, and not at my own desk. Were I at home, the newest item would be a string of felt strawberries, and the oldest item would be a framed print of fashionable headgear from a French book printed in 1826.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

1. I have never fingerpainted. :)

2. Karate, obviously. The public school system, also obvious. Various teaching methods for getting a certain godchild of yours to sit down and pay attention... yah.

3. Newest thing around me is the breast pump on the floor behind the easy chair, as the old one bit the dust hard. Oldest is the bit of the Gibeon meteorite on the barrister's bookcase.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you want to fingerpaint?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

newest: story in book form (month and a week old)

oldest: scale model of the Victory, Nelson's flagship, under fighting sail (fifty to eighty years old)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

1) I've never fried an egg. Or bacon. I can remember the first time my mother fried an egg, too. I've never mowed a lawn (designated Male Task in my family).

2) Filet crochet. That's become interesting in the last *month*. It's fiddly, it's mildly painful, it's repetitive, all the stitches line up nicely. I am a sucker for things lining up nicely. And colors in the right order.
Also, sewing. I'd like to learn (and have an excuse to go to the fabric store, where the quilting fabrics are a big rainbow all along one section).

3) Oldest might be this jade plant. The plants themselves are cuttings from another jade, belonging to my grandmother or great-grandmother, so the DNA's been around a while. Newest is a Great Big Sea CD; there are a couple weird pops in the songs and I've emailed them asking if this is just a recording issue or if I should return it and get another. I would like to not have weird pops in my music.
Or... wait, the size 30 yarn and 11 hook are newer than that.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

1. I have never played golf, tasted venison, attended a football or hockey game, or watched Jaws.

2. What leaps immediately to mind as things interesting to me that weren't two years ago are Autism and writing ad copy. Pretty obvious, I'll bet.

3. Oldest thing in this room is an old stamp holder and letter weighing thingie we've got from the 40s or 50s on the bookcase. Oh. And prolly some of the books are older than that, too. Newest: Éiden's GINORMOUS birthday balloon of mylar. It's a huge sun with a slightly cranky and possibly Victorian aspect.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

1. I've never seeded a tomato either. I've also never gone camping, which always seems to surprise people. Hey, I grew up in a family whose idea of roughing it is a hotel without a pool.

2. Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. I mean, I always liked Shakespeare, and would read the odd play from time to time, but recently I've gotten interested in his lesser-known contemporaries (especially Thomas Middleton), and the whole social context of drama and how theaters worked and all of that.

3. Oldest: a 1960s-era Parker fountain pen. Newest: Sheakespeare & Co. by Stanley Wells, most recent book acquisition related to #2.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You had to go to hotels without pools??? Poor dear! My family's idea of roughing was a hotel with an outdoor pool!

Also, you have to go downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast instead of ordering up room service. It may be hard, but you get the satisfaction of proving your own toughness to yourself.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

1. Although I am the devoted co-owner of two cats, I have never, not once, changed the cat box. This is not due to horrible selfishness, but because I am mildly allergic to cats, which is livable though unpleasant on a day-to-day basis. But when I even go near their box it starts flaring up and making me wheeze and itch and become generally useless. So I've never even tried.

2. I never used to care about cataloguing my books. Filing, yes, but I didn't keep a database or anything like that. Nowadays I'm really starting to be obsessive about it.

3. The oldest thing in my house generally I wouldn't be sure about, but the oldest thing in this room is probably the 1650 edition of the moral prescriptions of Valerius Maximus. The newest would be one of the slices of the pumpkin cheesecake we brought home three hours ago, which unfortunately turns out to be far too sweet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Pumpkin desserts are dangerous that way. Sometimes tangy and pleasant, sometimes far too sweet.

I make a good pumpkin bread.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

1. I have never...I'm not sure. I keep thinking of things like "eaten sushi" and "cut my son's nails," but those are things I'm pretty sure I've done once, but the resistance is so deeply ingrained that I still think of them as "never."

2. Water law has become interesting to me.

3. I think the newest thing around me is the photo card reader onehipmama was given this summer. And the oldest thing is probably one of my books; I like old books. There's also a Civil War regiment document hanging on the wall, but only dating from the 1860s, I don't think it's the oldest thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So they are more "Lalalala I can't hear you" than "I know I have done neither of these things"?

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Hmm, reflexive denial, in any case.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

1. I've not read a Robert Heinlein novel yet, even though he's been on my to-read list for close to twenty-five years (Reader's Digest quoted his "Specialization is for insects" bit...). There's always been something I wanted to (re)read more, even though at this point I have both professional and personal reasons for getting to know his work. (That said, that's part of the problem -- when I feel I "should" be doing something that's actually an elective, it tends to get shuffled behind both the true "should"s and the procrastinatory impulses/trifles.)

2. I wasn't much interested in Japanese culture prior to traveling there. And the current obsession with French pop music snuck up on me this past winter.

3. Oldest - probably the pistol my husband's great-great-grandfather (give or take a great) used to conceal in his coat while delivering payroll in the wilds of Canada.

Newest - possibly the flirty dress I bought at My Sister's Closet yesterday (a consignment shop). It's a subtle dark brown print, suggestive of leopards without being blatant abut it, and I happen to be going to a benefit for the zoo in a couple weeks, so I am pleased at having lucked into something fitting for it (I hadn't planned on hunting for something new to wear, so it definitely feels like lagniappe).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean: there's an unfortunate valley between the things that are truly important and the things that are purely fun. Some things are truly important and a great deal of fun (she said, looking at the alien picture her godson just left her), but some things are merely important-ish and fun-ish, and those are the ones that fall between the cracks.

"You must answer me these questions three ..."

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=1= Had a kid. It's supposed to be so easy for us male-type persons.

=2= Following soap-opera comic strips. But only because then I can understand what Josh (http://joshreads.com/) is snarking about.

=3= Oldest: My Mom's house. Newest: Chocolate chip cookies she baked for my birthday.