Some questions: a meme

[mrissa]

Usually I don't do these because I don't feel I have time to attend to all of your answers individually. Right now I have let go of that and will only write lengthy responses to your responses if I feel moved to do so. I fixed some of the questions, so it's not quite the same as when timprov and greykev posted it. Just answer the ones that interest you, if you like.

1. Can you cook? What's your best dish (or some of your best dishes)?
2. What was your dream growing up?
3. What talent do you wish you had?
4. What's your most important place to take someone who means a lot to you?
5. Favorite vegetable?
6. What was the last book you read?
7. Favorite restaurant?
8. Favorite question to ask someone you've just met?
9. Worst Habit?
10. Do we know each other outside of lj?
11. What is your favorite sport?
12. Negative or Optimistic attitude?
13. Favorite musician?
14. This used to be "worst thing to happen to you." I would hear about that later, but not now. Tell me about something about bunnies or duckies or something else stereotypically adorable. Something non-disturbing, please.
15. Tell me one weird fact about you:
16. Do you have any pets?
17. What's your favorite place to be in the spring?
18. In the fall?
19. in the winter?
20. If you could change one thing about how you look at yourself, what would it be?
21. What cheered you up most when you were very small and sad?
22. What color eyes do you have?
23. Ever been... arrested? Kid, did they put you in a cell?
24. Red or white? (Wine or grape juice, not political affiliation.)
25. If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
26. What if it was $10,000,000?
27. What should question 27 be? Answer it.
28. Do you believe people can change their personality traits?
29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30. Do you swear oaths? On what?
31. Biggest pet peeve?
32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

13. Favorite musician?

I'll answer this one because a) 13 is my lucky number (sort of) and b) I have had roughly the same answer for a long time.

My favorite female vocalist is Patty Smith.
My favorite female singer is Maddy Prior.
My favorite male vocalist is Dave van Ronk.
While I like many male singers, from Frank Sinatra to Pete Seeger, if I had to pick one it would be Harry Belafonte. I may change my mind...

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

4. West Portal. In fact, West Portal is my favorite place to take anyone, at all. If it's early, I take them to brunch at the Squat & Gobble. Later, I like to eat lunch or dinner at Spiazzo, my favorite little Italian restaurant, and then walk the Ave. and stop at the bakery for dessert, and then do a little browsing in the music store and the bookstore. I show them the mosaic over the bank building that says "West Portal Gateway to San Francisco California Mexico Australia Japan" Then I point out where I used to live, and how close it is to the library and the train station, and then I put them on their train back downtown.

If it's someone who's already been to West Portal with me, I take them back. There's always something they haven't tried at the Squat.

17. In the spring: The Golden Gate Park rose garden
18. In the fall: Idaho Springs, Colorado
19. In the winter: Tahoe ski area and at home in San Bruno
27. In the summer: West Portal ...

1. I cook very well and I love to cook. I cook by experimentation: JD says the surefire way to make sure I'll cook something is to ask me if I've ever done it before, and if the answer is no, I'll cook it. But what I make all the time is my pasta puttanesca. I sent gismonda (we went to the Twinkies game) the receipt on the back of a postcard and I can send it to you or whoever else wants it, too. It's truly the best thing ever. Must like anchovies.

24. Sangiovese (red). I'm not picky about wine, but I am the opposite of picky when it comes to Sangiovese, I like them all.

25. Put it toward the house, probably knocking a back door in the guest room.

More soon and of course you don't have to answer them! Now or ever ;)

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

MADDY PRIOR.

So much love for her! But how do you distinguish between singer and vocalist? I'm not a musician, so this might be something every musician knows.

[avitzur.livejournal.com]

1. baklava
3. Singing
4. The Ocean
6. Against Love
7. Millennium
8. How do you spend your days?
9. Snark
10. No
11. Slacklining
12. Cynical and idealistic both at once.
13. Bach
14. I wear bunnie slippers around the house, and keep a spare pair for guests.
15. I never understood a word spoken around me while growing up.
16. No
28. Yes.
29. Walk on ropes.
30. Yes. On my Klingon honor, of course.
32. Silly.

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

3. I wish I could sing well.

6. "Shadowed Summer" by Saundra Mitchell.

9. I pick at my cuticles.

10. Nope!

15. I have perfect pitch, but I can't sing or play an instrument.

22. Green.

25. I'd pay off most of my outstanding debt.

26. I'd do #25, then pay off all the debts of my family and friends and then retire.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

1. Can you cook? What's your best dish (or some of your best dishes)?

Yes. I do a pretty decent meatloaf, and pork lo mein, and beef with black bean sauce, and roast turkey with bread stuffing, and cheese fondue, and chicken with cashews.

2. What was your dream growing up?

Space travel.

3. What talent do you wish you had?

Music, or maybe drawing.

4. What's your most important place to take someone who means a lot to you?

Minicon.

5. Favorite vegetable?

Onions? I like most vegetables well enough, but the concept of having a favorite one just doesn't resonate.

6. What was the last book you read?

Thud Ridge

7. Favorite restaurant?

The Bakery, but it's been closed for years now.

8. Favorite question to ask someone you've just met?

So what do you do?

9. Worst Habit?

Probably better to get other people's opinions on that.

10. Do we know each other outside of lj?

Yes.

11. What is your favorite sport?

I guess table tennis, maybe. Frisbee isn't a sport the way I play it.

12. Negative or Optimistic attitude?

Negative.

13. Favorite musician?

Hmmm. Might be Maddy Prior.

14. This used to be "worst thing to happen to you." I would hear about that later, but not now. Tell me about something about bunnies or duckies or something else stereotypically adorable. Something non-disturbing, please.

Cute fuzzy little ducklings and bunnies, yes! With big trusting eyes, snuggling close.

15. Tell me one weird fact about you:

Hmmm. I've never been paid to do anything I learned to do in a class.

16. Do you have any pets?

Sort of. Naomi thinks I'm hers, I believe.

17. What's your favorite place to be in the spring?

Indoors.

18. In the fall?

Indoors.

19. in the winter?

Indoors.

20. If you could change one thing about how you look at yourself, what would it be?

Hmmm; less realistic?

21. What cheered you up most when you were very small and sad?

No idea.

22. What color eyes do you have?

Blue, I guess.

23. Ever been... arrested? Kid, did they put you in a cell?

No, not even detained.

24. Red or white? (Wine or grape juice, not political affiliation.)

Yes.

25. If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?

Pay off debts.

26. What if it was $10,000,000?

Pay off debts, and then devote myself to a life of leisure crime stuff. More travel, more photography, no more convention running (or not much), possibly work on developing open-source software.

27. What should question 27 be? Answer it.

Favorite cuisine? Many; Chinese and Mexican figure prominently. This is not to say that I do not think very highly of some Indian, American, Japanese, and French dishes.

28. Do you believe people can change their personality traits?

Yes.

29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Hang out with friends, take pictures, eat. Oh, or sleep; I seem to do a lot of that, around a third of every day!

30. Do you swear oaths? On what?

I don't think so. Depends what people mean by the phrase.

31. Biggest pet peeve?

Stupid thoughtless people.

32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?

Smart.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

14. One of my pet parrots has learned to say "I'm sorry" and uses it in context. He bites us, he immediately follows it with "I'm sorry!" We bang a hand or stub a toe and say "OW!", we hear a gentle "I'm sorry!" from the other room.

15. I went to Hammerfest because I wanted a hammer from Norway, and I wanted it specifically from Hammerfest.

28. Yes, I have.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Hm. Thirty-two footsteps leading to the room where the paint doesn't want to dry. I shall attempt brevity. [Inhales].

1. I can cook enough to keep myself alive and no more, with the exception of a few dishes I have learned to cook well just so I have a source for them when I want them (e.g. gumbo). 2. To be a writer for a living. 3. To be able to draw. 4. Wherever that person would like to be taken. 5. Sweet corn less than an hour from the stalk. Runner-up: Real carrots. 6. Unsolved Mysteries of American History, I think the title was. 7. It was called Metro, it served old-school French bistro food, and it doesn't exist anymore. 8. "What would you like to drink?" 9. Misanthropy. 10. Not well enough. 11. Misanthropy. 12. See 11. 13. Depends on the week, but I've been listening to a lot of Cream for the first time lately.

14. The other night I let the cat sleep in the room with me, which he loves but which I do not always allow. He's become a very sound sleeper in his old age. When the alarm went off the next morning, it woke him up and he told it "No!" very distinctly. I mean, it was a cat sound, but it was definitely, "No!" I told him that was my sentiment exactly ....

15. My eyes, as a child, were so mismatched in their nearsightedness that one was legally blind and the other was not far off normal. This is why my glasses always appear to be on my face lopsided in photos from that time, and one of many reasons why I try never to be seen wearing glasses. As I've aged, for various reasons, my eyes have come to be more similar, and now my right eye is only slightly worse than my left one.

16. Two old cats. 17. Out taking a walk. 18. Out taking a walk 19. Burrowed in bed with a cat. 20. It would be easier to say what I wouldn't change. I think I have nice eyes. Oh, wait, did you not mean physically? 21. I don't remember. 22. Blue, tending more to grayish than greenish, if you get what I mean. 23. I have never been put in a cell. I have been a defendant in a court case, though (auto crash in my teenage years). 24. Depends on the food, silly. 25. Save it, or do some major home repairs with it. 26. Do some major home repairs; save the rest. 27. Q: "What should question 27 be? Answer it." A: "What should question 27 be? Answer it." (This question and answer brought to you by Douglas Hofstadter.) 28. I would very much like to believe so. 29. Surf the web; read; watch old movies; play computer games; sleep. Actually that's not the favorites, that's the entire list. 30. I don't swear oaths; I just swear. 31. Idiocy, especially my own. 32. Pseudo-irascible.

[aedifica]

28. At least sometimes. I know that some traits I have are there because when I was young, I decided that was how I wanted to be. (Deciding to be that way was prompted by things I was reading at the time, which shows the power of a book.)

24. I drink wine so seldom that I can never remember which I prefer. This isn't helped any by the fact that I know I've enjoyed some red wines and some white wines, despite having an overall preference for one or the other if I could remember which.

20. By this point I'm pretty used to myself, so I'm not sure there's anything I'd change about how I look at myself. Used to be, I'd have liked to get rid of the belief that my breasts were too small, but by now I'm used to them being the size they are and so I think the belief has gone away on its own.

16. Yes, three cats with varying amounts of orange and white in their fur color.

12. Mostly optimistic.

5. Zucchini (cooked).

1. Yes, though there are many things I don't know how to cook. I don't eat much meat at home because I don't like working with raw meat, for example. I make very good spaghetti sauce and lentil stew. (I don't demand that anyone else agree; *I* think they're very good, and since I'm nearly always the only one I'm making them for, that's what matters.)

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I mean, so much love for her.

[rosefox]

1) I don't have a "best dish" on the savory end of things, but I think of brownies as being My Thing.

4) Home with me, into my bedroom. The metaphor is obvious (though non-sexual) and apt.

8) "How do you spend your time?" I get much better answers to that than to the more common "What do you do?", which has come to exclusively imply profession.

10) Someday, I hope!

14) Sometimes when my kitten is asleep, I pet her just to hear the "mrr?" sound she makes when she wakes up.

17-19) New York.

20) I wish I could see my back, and the back of my head.

21) I have no idea! Books? Hugs from my mother?

25-26) Split it with my brother (we have a long-standing agreement that we will divide any monies over $100 won in a game of chance, not counting inheritance), pay off my debt, put any remainder in savings, continue living exactly the way I have been except with less money stress.

27) It should be "What should question 27 be?".

28) Of course.

30) When it matters, I prefer to affirm. I will occasionally say "I swear to cats!", but I don't mean it seriously.

31) Erroneous grammar and/or spelling, and grating gender-neutral pronouns.

32) Rarely compliant.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

how do you distinguish between singer and vocalist?

More than a little subjectivity is involved, of course. I'm a conceptual artist (mostly on the radio) and a dj/producer of a science fiction humor radio program (Shockwave Radio Theater), so I listen to how sounds create space.

To me, the difference boils down to "carry a tune/phrasing" and "using voice for effect". It would be very difficult to describe Dave van Ronk's version of "Teddy Bear's Picnic", and "singing" might not be in that description. Similarly, I just couldn't imagine anyone doing justice to "Land" than Patty Smith. There is a tune involved, but the imagery of the poetry is pushed by her anger, not her pipes. On the other hand, Maddy Prior's voice is just so good. With few exceptions, her phrasing is always dead on and she used to sing in keys that she now regrets. Her recent material may not have the pyrotechnic artistry of her salad days, but she's still great to listen to.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

time on my hands, and since we don't know each other well, I'll take a whack at all 32.

1. Yes. I even foodblog, on occasion: http://marketcook.wordpress.com/

2. In approximately chronological order: a ballerina, a cowgirl, a cow*boy*, an archaeologist, a writer. I managed the last one, although not in the sense that I'd dreamed of.

3. Tapdancing. I've taken classes, but, um, no.

4. The Oregon coast.

5. Whatever's fresh, in season and local. Never met a vegetable I didn't like.

6. I've been unable to read for pleasure for almost seven years due to vision changes. Last audiobook listened to: Barack Obama's Dreams of My Father.

7. Canyon Way Bookstore and Restaurant, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Newport, Oreg., is high on the list.

8. "What do you do when you aren't earning a living?"

9. Smoking.

10. No, and we've barely met here.

11. Not a big sports fan, though I enjoy a good hockey game every 5-10 years.

12. Optimistic, to a fault.

13. Oh, my, I hate these "pick one favorite" questions. I have eclectic tastes. I tend to listen most to the music I loved in my youth: Leonard Cohen, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton... But my collection is much broader than that. Just lately, I've been enjoying Tricky Pixie (http://www.trickypixie.com/) and Gaia Consort (http://gaiaconsort.com/).

14. Rather than tell, allow me to show. My youngest cat, in typical morning mode:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/kightp/2609689736/)

15. I went to 15 public schools in 13 years.

16. Yes. See answer 14. Also her mother, who is slightly less gooftastic (http://flickr.com/photos/kightp/2565268717/in/set-72157605721579124/)

17. My garden

18. The woods

19. Sitting in front of my fireplace. (Yes, I'm a homebody)

20. Hm. I've mostly made those changes. I'd still like to get more realistic about how much time and energy I have, and learn not to overtax it.

21. Sucking my thumb and reading.

22. Plain old everyday brown.

23. Yes, along with several thousand of my fellow criminals, at the 1972 May Day demonstrations in DC. Otherwise, I've never even had a traffic ticket.

24. Either. I like good wine.

25. Pay off my credit cards.

26. Pay off my mortgage, put some away for retirement and travel, give the rest away.

27. Q. Do you actually enjoy doing these memes? A. Only when I'm bored or trying to avoid doing something else.

28. I believe people can change their behavior, and that behavioral change over the long term can affect personality. But my general observation is that most people don't change so much as they become more like themselves. Which should probably be a warning to us all.

29. Geek out on the Internet. Knit. Sometimes simultaneously.

30. Not really. I sometimes promise, though, and I keep my promises.

31. Malicious gossip.

32. Content

[athenais.livejournal.com]

1. Beef stroganoff.

2. To be famous.

4. To drive them the length of I-280. It's so beautiful.

6. Shadow of the Silk Road, Colin Thubron.

9. I talk too much about myself.

11. Baseball.

13. Akiko Suwanai.

17. Spring: gardens everywhere

19. Winter: the desert

21. Acting out stories I made up in the privacy of my bedroom.

24. I dislike wine. I'm not keen on alcohol in general.

25. Buy a new car.

26. Start my own animal rescue center.

28. Oh, you betcha.

29. Travel internationally.

31. Inconsiderate drivers.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

1. I can. I think my best dishes are usually stir-fries. I get good reviews on my turkey, but since I don't like turkey very much....
4. My heart. Sappy, but the truest answer I could think of.
5. Brocolli, hmong bean spouts, or bamboo shoots. Tossup.
6. Last completed Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.
10. I am sure I've seen you around somewhere. :)
12. I vacillate, but am mostly positive these days.
13. This one is hard for me. There are too many musicians who are too good for different reasons. I think, given my guitar background, that I will go with Stevie Ray Vaughn today.
20. I would learn to keep the things that people like about me foremost in my mind, rather than fixating on what I see as my overwhelming negatives.
30. I don't swear BY anything other than my own conscience. I don't have anything that's more binding by which I'd be willing to swear.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The thing about cooking things you've never done before is that timprov has this, and then he makes really good things, and then he's done them before and is not as interested in doing them again. Sigh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Pseudo????

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What a very fine goofy cat.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Had you read Over Sea, Under Stone before?

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

1. Yes; currently, probably bogrács gulyás. Want the recipe? Wait, you probably have one of your own.

5. Asparagus, or very new green peas

6. The New James Beard, which is over 20 years old.

10. No, which you have likely already guessed.

11. Baseball, although I am prepared to be amused by others. I was a basketball statistician when I was in college, but it was a small school in the midwestern US.

12. Cheerfully pessimistic--this way, I'm often pleasantly surprised!

14. My roommate has the Best Dog in the World, East Nashville Mixed Breed division. (Everyone who has a dog has the Best Dog in the World, at least if they have any fondness for the pup, so it has to be broken down into categories--I expect you have the Best Dog in the World, Suburban Twin Cities Poodle Division.)

15. My toes are all pretty much the same length.

16. I have cats. In fact, I have too many cats, including Black-thumbed Jemmy Casey, Pirate cat of the Cumberland, and The Dread Pirate Roberts, AKA Bob the Emo Kitty. Sometimes they review books.

22. Brown.

23. No.

24. Both, but not in the same glass at the same time.

25. Pay off debt and save the rest.

26. The same, buy a house, and contribute more to my father's memorial scholarship fund.

27. Are camellias prettier than azaleas? Yes.

28. No, but I believe that if they can learn to recognize them they can, to some extent, rise above them.

31. I have to choose?

[jry.livejournal.com]

1. yes, but I need a recipe. I get good responses to my pizza though my crust bears little resemblance to any other pizza crust I've ever had anywhere much to my annoyance.
3. Making conversation with strangers.
6. Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker. It had its moments.
8. I haven't used it yet, but somewhere someone once suggested "What do you like to talk about?" as a good opener and I've always thought it very fine.
9. Internets.
10. Nope.
12. Negative in the short term, Optimistic in the long.
14. Most nights as I ride my bicycle home from work, small fuzzy bunnies run alongside my bike feinting from side to side trying to decide whether to cut across the trail or dive for the underbrush. When one gets ahead it will usually station itself perpendicular to the trail facing the bushes and when I get close it will snap out of sight as if pulled by a suddenly released rubber band.
15. When I was in college I was known for going barefoot around campus and blowing soap bubbles between classes (usually trying to do the trick where you blow six small bubbles which surround a nearly cubic central space) This is my wife's first memory of me outside the first class we had together, History of Math.
16. One spoiled and neurotic cat named Theo.
23. Not arrested, but had talkings-to from police officers on several occasions.
24. Either, but lean red.
25. Rebuild our garage.
26. Along with the usual things, send anonymous checks to imaginary internet friends in need.
28. Certainly.
29. Read in the sun. Ask again tomorrow and it may be different.
31. Server software applications on Windows that pop up windows with a message and an OK button and refuse to process any more until someone clicks it.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

She is. I swear, she's better for my mood than drugs.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

KITTY!

(sorry, brain went into instamelt at the sheer cuteness)

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I don't have time to answer all of these, so I picked a few.

1. Can you cook?
Yes I can. My mother taught me to cook when I was ten. My favorite thing to do is bake. Cookies, bread, cakes, pies--you name it. There was a time in my life I thought being able to open a bakery would be the best thing in the world.

2. What was your dream growing up?
To be a writer. Working on that. :)

3. What talent do you wish you had?
As much as I love music and as important as it is to me, I wish I could either write music or play an instrument. Not just fool around with either, but be really good at it. Alas, I can't do either.

4. What's your most important place to take someone who means a lot to you?
When I was in California, Muir Woods. I loved the quiet of the redwoods, the smell of the air and the birds. I loved to take people there, especially if they'd never been in a redwood forest before. Here in Ohio, I love to take them to the rose garden at Park of the Roses and for a walk along the river that runs outside my window. Both places are wonderful.

9. Worst Habit?
Not speaking up when someone hurts my feelings.

10. Do we know each other outside of lj?
Yes. :) Alas, we don't get to see each other often.

15. Tell me one weird fact about you:
Weird is a relative term. *g* I grew up thinking that I was German on my father's side of the family. Moyer is a very German name, so it was a natural assumption. Then I started doing family history research, trying to find my grandfather and trace his family. I discovered that my grandfather was adopted by his stepfather at the age of two, along with his brother and sister. This was back before Arizona was a state and was still a territory.

It was a true soap opera too, a scandal in the little town my great-grandmother lived in. It involved acquisitions of being a harlot, being run off my great-grandfather's land with a gun and a sheriff's posse having to get her children back for her. And--wait for it--it turns out I'm Irish on that side of the family as well. Kind of explains some of my temper.... *g*

16. Do you have any pets?
The infamous warrior kjittens, Morgan Miranda and Gillian Paul. A combined 15 pounds of trouble.

25. If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
Go to Ireland, Scotland and Wales and see castles.

26. What if it was $10,000,000?
Oh, I have dreams for money like that.

Right after I got back for that trip to Ireland, Scotland and Wales, I'd buy a big piece of land someplace beautiful. Trees and a river and enough open meadow for a couple horsed and dogs to run. I'd build a series of small houses, each with one or two bedrooms, a kitchen, bath, the full house experience. There would be a big community space/house too, for gatherings and workshops.

Then I'd start gathering writers and poets to live there for as long as they wanted or needed. We could hold a yearly retreat as well in the big community house for people who just wanted to visit or have a quiet place to get away and write. I figure there would be permanent residents and people who come and go. The important part would be having their own space to retreat to and still having other people around when they wanted them.

A writer's castle, log cabin style.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

14. My roommate has the Best Dog in the World, East Nashville Mixed Breed division. (Everyone who has a dog has the Best Dog in the World, at least if they have any fondness for the pup, so it has to be broken down into categories

Some might argue that my Abby is also an ENMB, but we always refer to her as a Tennessee Brown Dog instead, and I swear she's part-goat anyhow. Which is to say I've just quashed my initial impulse to contend with your roommate's dog's title. ;-)