Category: Occasional Quizzes

I actually had a different post in mind for today, but current events have made me not want to write about that particular topic just now. Instead, let’s do the Sunday Stealing, which this week is about summertime stuff. (Roger did this one too, as always, but I’m actually not going to read his answers until I’ve written mine!)

1. What is the hottest temperature you’ve seen this summer so far? 

We were in the 90s for a few days last month. That was enough to make me wilt! If you don’t like your summers super hot, Buffalo’s a good place to live. We have never once hit 100 degrees since they started keep those records, back whenever it was that they started recording that stuff. With climate change ongoing I don’t know how realistic it is to think that record is going to stand, but there it is. The same breezes off Lake Erie that can make the snow really brutal in the cold months also keeps it from hitting the century mark, so there’s that. I’ve also availed myself of the lake breezes by going to the Buffalo Outer Harbor much more often this year for my photography walks.

I am actually better at coping with heat than I used to be, which I find very interesting. The Wife used to be the one who did well in heat where I started getting salty anytime it went above 78 degrees, and I used to basically retire overalls from June through mid-September. Now, I find I can be outside relatively comfortably well into the 80s (especially if there’s a breeze), and I am still wearing overalls constantly. In fact, I find that the lack of a tight waistband on overalls makes them in fact cooler.

Here I am, by the way, at Knox Farm State Park earlier this very day! It’s mid-80s today, so…yeah.

2. What is your favorite summer beverage?

Non-alcoholically, I have become a huge fan of sparkling water in recent years, and I drink tons of the stuff. It keeps me hydrated and helps satisfy my urge for something fizzy (I love fizz). There are more and more flavors coming out now, which is lovely. I have recently discovered that a half-lemonade, half-lemon sparkling water mix approximates sparkling lemonade, so that gives me a cheaper option for something I like a great deal.

In terms of booze and beer, I love the shandy beers that are popular now; Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy (beer with lemonade) is the heavy hitter on the market, but I’ve been mad at Leinenkugel for a while now, so I’ve switched to Narragansett’s version.

(Why was I mad at Leinenkugel? Because they discontinued my favorite product of theirs, Sunset Wheat, and refused to bring it back…but I’ve just Googled it and apparently they did bring it back? Hmmmm. I’ll have to go have a look next time I’m at Consumer’s Beverages.)

3. Have you seen any fireflies/lightning bugs yet? Cicadas?

I haven’t seen cicadas, but I’ve sure heard them! I’ve seen fireflies, though. They live in the woods out back and they are magical.

4. What are the last 3 things you bought online?

OK, that doesn’t have anything to do with summer! But, I bought two pairs of vintage overalls recently (they’re still in shipment) and a purple mandarin-collar dress shirt to go with the yellow and pink ones that I already own.

5. Where do locals go to cool off?

Probably the beaches of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, local streams and lakes for various frolicking, and onto the waters themselves–lots of boats around here! 

6. Where did you buy your last postcard and what was on the pc?

I have no earthly idea. 

7. What’s your favorite summertime scent?

The aroma of the corn on the cob when you open the wax paper after cooking. The charcoal and the meat on it. Freshly-mown grass is always a lovely scent. We have milkweed growing out front that we refuse to remove because it’s good for caterpillars; that stuff smells wonderful when it’s flowering. And in the very early summer–actually, it’s late spring–the blooming lilacs.

Late summer is when the scents of harvest start to take over….

8. What kind of a/c do you have – central, room, fans only, chillers, none and what temperature do you set it to?

We have central air, and honestly, I can’t function without it. What I said above about me being able to deal with higher temps than I used to doesn’t mean that I want to deal with higher temps. I need the inside of the house to be a refuge from intense heat. We set it to 68 overnight and 72 during the day. Sometimes, when it’s really hot and the AC runs more than it normally does, the coil will actually ice up. I notice that when I think, “Huh, the AC’s running but it sure seems warm in here,” and when I check the vents, nothing is coming out. When that happens I switch the fans from “Auto” to “Run” and then turn off the AC, so the fans can blow air across the iced-up coil and melt away the ice; then, when I can feel air issuing forth from the ducts again, I turn the AC back on.

We also have fans to assist with the air circulation, and I run one aimed at me overnight. I like the white noise, and it helps keep me cool overnight.

9. Do you have a summer vacation planned and if so, where are you really going??

Yes, and nowhere.

This has been a rough year for vacations. All the health problems with my parents last year, that led to mom’s passing and some ongoing stuff with Dad that I haven’t written about yet (and I’m not sure if or when I plan to do so), meant that I hit January with three vacation days left to use before my next renewal.

My vacation time renews on July 30.

So, yeah: I’ve basically had to go a full seven months without an actual vacation. That has been really tough. (And no, I do not for one second hold this against my employer in any way. It was just the unfortunate way that particular cookie happened to crumble this year.) So, I promise you, I have a full eight-day vacation scheduled to start almost immediately upon the arrival of August. I don’t usually take vacations that long, but this time I’m going to, because my brain is just increasingly mush. We’ll probably go to the County Fair a time or two, and I’m hoping to schedule a full day of street and architecture photography in the City of Buffalo, but no trips planned at this point.

10. What are your favorite summer activities?

I don’t know that I have any activities that are specifically summer activities! I love hiking year-round, and cooking year-round, and all the rest of it. Locations can be summer only: Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, for instance, is a lot less interesting when the boats aren’t there…but I’m not even sure I’m right about that. Various festivals, though–the Sterling Renaissance Festival, the Erie County Fair–are summertime staples.

11.  What’s your favorite summertime food?

Peaches, fresh tomatoes. We’re coming up on the season for our actual favorite summer-time meal: BLTs and corn on the cob. Corn used to be a butter-and-salt-always affair, but the last few years we’ve discovered Mexican Street Corn, which is amazing stuff. A bit filling and rich, though! Fresh fruit salads are always wonderful.

Oh, and the local black raspberries. I need to figure out how to get a bush of those going. That’s the flavor of childhood, for me. In the house I mainly grew up in, there was a hedgerow along the property, and in that hedgerow were several bushes of these things. Picking them and eating them right off the bush? That’s where I’m transported when I get to eat these. I found a vendor selling them at the Farmers Market yesterday, and tonight I’ll be enjoying them with some vanilla ice cream. A lovely way to serve them, but…it’s not quite picking them and consuming them right off the bush.

12. Did you ever go to summer school?

Nope!

13. What’s your favorite summertime memory?

Hooo boy, that’s a tough one. I’m honestly not sure I have one. Lots of competition for that title, I must say.

14. Do you like fireworks?

Meh. I do like the way professional fireworks look, but the noise and smoke is awful and it does not make for a happy evening with the dogs. (Currently Carla is the one really affected by them; Hobbes doesn’t seem to react much, but he’s young. Cane got worse and worse with fireworks as he aged.)

15. How do you feel about the longer days of summer?

Heh! I’ve ranted many a time about this very subject on various social media platforms. The longer days themselves are fine, and they come naturally. What I seriously dislike is our artificial pushing of that natural development through Daylight Saving Time. The switch from one clock setting to the next always screws me up for a week, and the Spring Forward one is always brutal. Also, we’ve pushed the Fall Back one so far back that now it seems like we just leap into the darkest time of year in one fell swoop. I do not like this. I also do not like it being light enough outside to read at 9:30pm still; believe it or not, I actually like circadian rhythms and I like darkness when it’s supposed to come. So, the longer days? Great! Helping them along with a dumb policy that is of no actual benefit to anyone? Ugh!

OK, those are my answers. Time to go read Roger’s!

 

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Another week for Sunday Stealing, this time with the questions being about travel. I’ve had travel on the mind for several years now, partly from watching the wonderful shows of Anthony Bourdain and then Phil Rosenthal’s Somebody Feed Phil, and partly from studying photography and seeing the dispatches sent back by the pro photographers. And, yes, from a few small travels of my own. Let’s get to it!

1. Have you traveled abroad? Where have you been? If you haven’t been overseas, which country would you most like to visit?

No, I have not. Places I’d like to see or go? Great Britain, for one. Vienna. Maybe Paris, but I’m not totally sure on that one. Japan…I’ve heard things about Kyoto that sound life-changing.

2. Where did you go on your last trip? Talk about where you went and what you did.

Defining “trip” as “any jaunt out of town that involves a hotel stay of any duration”, it would have been our annual trip to Ithaca last year. When we can we prefer to make a two-night stay out of this journey, but that didn’t work out last year. But basically the usual itinerary is kind of the same: lunch locally on Friday, then we road-trip to Rochester where we stay and have dinner. Then the next day we travel to Ithaca, stopping along the way at a winery and to see some sights in the Finger Lakes before we attend Ithaca’s Apple Harvest Festival. That’s a lot of driving for one day, which is why we prefer to have a two-night stay in Rochester (from home to Ithaca is about three hours). I would just link the post where I talked about that trip and shared a bunch of photos I took from it, but…it appears that I never actually wrote such a post about last year’s Ithaca trip. I chalk this up to the fact that starting in mid-August, and not really ending until just this past January, was a cataclysmically awful time in my life.

Prior to that, we had a long weekend in Toronto last spring, and prior to that was Ithaca again.

3. What is the best place for a vacation in your country? Why is it good?

It depends on what you want, really. If you want a hot city or a cold nature place, or a cold city and a hot nature place…or if you want mountains or seaside, forests or deserts…quiet or crowd energy…I couldn’t begin to say what’s best. I can say why I’ve loved places I’ve gone to, though.

4. What is the longest time you have been away from home? Did you feel homesick?

We were in Hawaii for eleven days. It was not enough. (Though I did miss our dogs terribly. And our cats a little.)

5. How long should a vacation be? How long does it take you to really relax?

Now, a vacation isn’t quite the same as a trip, is it? I think a vacation should be long enough to allow one to fully get one’s mind off work, and there’s no real one-size-fits-all for everybody on that. For me to really be a vacation it needs to be at least five days; anything shorter than that is a long weekend. (And those are lovely, truly! I’ve got one coming up, and I desperately need it!)

I think I read somewhere recently that the optimal length of a vacation is eight days; anything more than that and while you might have continued fun, your mind won’t benefit any more for having not been at work. I don’t know about that, but I do know that for many Americans, including myself, an eight-day vacation is kind of a luxury.

6. What forms of transportation do you prefer to use when you travel?

If I could take a train everywhere, I would. I dislike flying because the airlines have made it unpleasant, though I don’t find it hellish. (Oddly, I love airports! I find them incredibly fascinating places.) Unfortunately, trains are not much of an option these days, so it’s mostly driving.

During our Toronto trip, we stayed in the outskirts of Mississauga, ON, and relied on the GO Train system to actually get into the city. Good public transportation is a wonderful thing.

7. How do you choose where to go? Are you inspired by other people’s travel stories? Or photos? Or advertising?

I love reading travel writing, and watching travel documentaries! We don’t get to travel far-and-wide enough to have to make decisions on where we go, though. That’s the thing about travel: it’s really a matter of privilege, isn’t it? Which I think is a big part of why so many people have annual trips that they take to the same place: when you’re laying out big money for travel, you don’t want to risk it not going well.

8. What’s more important to you when you travel – comfort and relaxation, or stimulating new experiences?

Some of each. I don’t like “on-the-go, all-the-time”, but just sitting in the hotel or lazing by the pool all day for the duration? No!

However, I do also think that traveling to beloved places because you want to do beloved things again and see beloved things again doesn’t get celebrated enough.

9. Do you like to try local foods when you go somewhere? Have you ever had something really delicious?

Always! Part of the whole reason for travel is food! I’m always flabbergasted that people travel to places far away from their homes and then eat at the same chain places. I do not understand that, ever.

Hawaii, just to name one example, was an amazing food experience. Just the garlic shrimp from the shrimp trucks blew our minds.

10. Things can go wrong when you travel. Have you had any bad travel experiences?

We had set up our Toronto trip before it emerged that The Wife was having mobility issues, so that made for some challenges, especially when one restaurant we wanted to go to was seven or eight whole blocks from the nearest subway station…and then it turned out that the trains weren’t even running that far because of construction, so we had to transfer to buses and then still walk the eight blocks there…and then back again. And this was after we’d managed to get lost in Toronto’s Underground City thing. That day as a challenge.

Oh, and the flight back from Hawaii was…an adventure.

11. Do you take a lot with you when you travel? Or do you try to pack light?

I probably pack heavier than I should. I don’t admit to many downsides of overalls, but they take up more room in the suitcase than normal pants. The Wife always makes fun of me for packing tons of clothes, but I’m always like, “I have an outfit for each day, plus one ‘lazy in the hotel room’ outfit!” And when we went to Hawaii, I did not pack an outfit for each day! That would have been absurd. Our suite had a washing machine, which made things easy. Plus I knew I’d end up buying a new shirt or two.

12. Which places in the world do you think are too dangerous to visit? Why are they dangerous?

Honestly, I don’t think I’m educated enough on the world right now to really assess this. Bad things can happen anywhere, and they do.

13. What is the best age to travel? Can children appreciate the experience?

They can, but then you have to tailor a lot of the experience to them. Nothing’s worse than being dragged somewhere with your parents, away from your friends, and having nothing to do.

14. What are the advantages and disadvantages of traveling alone?

No idea! I’ve never traveled alone, except for a training trip for a job I had years ago, and that doesn’t count. I suppose it’s easier to keep track of yourself.

I’ve thought about going on writing retreats in the past, or maybe a photography trip now, but I haven’t pulled the trigger.

15. What kind of accommodation do you like to stay in when you travel?

Hotels, mostly. I really don’t think I’d like the vibe of an Air B&B or an actual B&B. I’m not super-demanding; clean and cool rooms, a decent selection of channels on the teevee, Wi-fi, and near to decent restaurants, and I’m good. The place we stayed in Hawaii was luxurious, and I’m going to have a hard time with not staying there if/when we go back. And we rented a wonderful cottage on Seneca Lake for our 25th anniversary; that was an absolute delight!

16. Do you like to talk to the local people when you travel? Why or why not?

We do, in the course of just being there and interacting.

17. Would you like to go to a big international event, such as the Olympics or an international film festival? What would be good or bad about attending such an event?

I honestly don’t think that would be pleasant at all…but then, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade was an absolute joy to attend, so…maybe?

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I took a couple days off from posting here, so let’s get back in the swing with a Sunday Stealing quiz! This one looks pretty benign:

1. Are you double jointed?

Nope!

2. Are you ticklish?

I know I used to be, I don’t know if I still am. Honestly, you reach a point in life where tickling isn’t a thing anymore, and looking back on all the tickling that went on in college, I’m wondering if that maybe shouldn’t have been a thing at all.

3. Cookies, cakes, or donuts?

Yes.

Honestly, the biggest impediment to my health right now is my undefeatable sweet tooth. The only area of life where I’ve really been able to conquer it is coffee: for years I took it with a lot of sugar, but now, I can’t abide sugar in my coffee. But other than that, I love sweet stuff and I have very low resistance to it. Not great. I’m better than I used to be, but I’m nowhere near as good as I should be about it.

Oh, and Roger‘s right about how wonderful pie is! I am always ready to second someone else’s endorsement of pie. And that’s not even referring to pie as facial accessory.

4. Did you go to prom? 

No, and I have never once regretted not going, either. I didn’t understand the fuss then and I still don’t get it. I wasn’t one who detested my high school years, but I didn’t see them as a font of Wonderful Lifelong Memories, either, and I was realistic enough to know then that I was unlikely to ever see any of those people much again once high school was over, so…why bother with a dance?

(One thing that I’ve noticed people making a big deal of is “seeing their kids off to Prom”. I don’t really get this, either. I don’t judge it, but I don’t get it.)

(Another thought: when I was a kid, Prom was all about couples, or one boy and one girl going together, even if they weren’t a “couple”, strictly speaking. I know now that Proms can be more about going as a group of friends, without the whole “couple” thing at all if you don’t want it, and if that had been the vibe, then maybe I would have gone.)

(Ultimately, though, not going to Prom felt like an act of rebellion against all the “High school is the best time of your life!” crap that I was hearing constantly back then. I believed even then that if you can honestly look back decades later and conclude that you really did peak in high school, you have made a colossal error or a sequence of errors at some point.)

5. Do you bite your nails?

No. I did as a kid, but that habit went away also when I was a kid. Playing trumpet and piano, as well as typing a lot, always gave me incentive to just keep them trimmed, and as nervous habits go, nail-biting was never one of mine.

6. Do you enjoy dancing?

No, but I think that’s because I’ve never done it enough to get beyond the point that I feel really weird when I do it. Maybe if dancing had been a thing in gym class when I was a kid…well, actually it was, briefly, when I was in third and fourth grade, and we did square dancing. (Years later, I learned that there might have been some less-than-great reasons for square dancing in schools.) But once I got to ultra-conservative small-town Southern Tier New York? Dancing in gym class? You must be joking! Get in there and wrestle, kids!

Now, watching dancing is an absolute joy.

7. Do you forgive easily?

Not super easily, no…it usually takes me a bit of time and distance to get there. I usually do, though.

I don’t forget super-easily, though, and if something happens that requires forgiveness, then once I’ve done the forgiving, I’m still likely to incorporate some extra distance into the relationship.

8. Do you prefer to bathe or shower? 

Shower.

9. Does your name have any special meaning? 

Not that I am aware of. And now, well, if there was, I’m never going to know it. But I’m sure the subject would have come up at some point. (In fact, it probably did and I just never bothered retaining the information.)

10. Have you ever gone camping? 

Yes, when I was a kid. It was our standard means of lodging when we were oot-and-aboot. My parents always owned a camper, and in fact they owned one up until they started downsizing their “estate” in the early 2010s in anticipation of moving to the Buffalo area to be nearer us.

11. Have you ever won something?

Yes, here and there! Winning stuff is nice. The best thing I won is probably the Short Fiction Contest that the Buffalo News used to run every year. In 2007 the subject was the assassination of President William McKinley (which happened in Buffalo), and my story won. You can read my winning entry here!

12. What did you last eat?

A chocolate chip cookie from our favorite local bakery that we visit each Saturday morning. My last meal was the Baja Chicken Penne that I got from Poppyseed, a local restaurant that’s been around forever and there’s a reason for that.

13. What’s your longest relationship so far? 

Excluding my father and my sister, obviously, I’m still connected (via Facebook) with people from grade school, including one girl I knew way back in Second Grade when we lived for one year in Elkins, WV.

14. Have you ever been on a diet? 

Yes, and I don’t bother with that anymore. It’s a waste of time and energy and they always eventually fail. I do find myself needing to recalibrate my daily eating toward healthier options and mixes once in a while, but I don’t go on “diets” in the sense of “I’m not eating any of that” or “I’m only eating this.” 

My favorite dietary advice came from a chiropractor we saw for a while, back in the 2000s. He was anti-diet for the reasons I state above, and what was more, he advised indulgence on small levels. He said to me something along these lines: “If you have to eat chocolate every day, fine! But don’t make it a full-sized mass-produced Snickers bar. Eat one smaller portion of very high quality chocolate. Compensate for the small serving by making the quality outstanding.” I like that advice a lot.

By the way, I have recently decided to restrict my alcohol consumption to only nights where I do not have to work the next day. I never indulge enough to the point of a hangover, so that’s not the issue. But it’s almost certainly healthier–and absolutely less expensive–to cut that aspect of my weekly consumptions down a lot.

I end this topic with a quote from James Bond, in the novel Casino Royale:

“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”

15. Do you enjoy DIY or crafts?

Meh, not really. I admire everything I see that’s along that line, but never enough to want to take any of it up myself. DIY, in terms of house maintenance, just makes me feel like I’m working because my day job at The Store involves a lot of that kind of thing, so if I’m getting out my tools and stuff at home, I feel like I’m just working more, and nobody wants that. And crafting is a great creative outlet, but for me, writing and photography are always filling my creative outlet needs, so I’m good. I’ll leave the painting and the wood carving and the pottery to others. Give me a pen and a camera!

And that’s the last question. Here endeth the lesson!

 

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I always check out Roger’s answers to these before I decide if I want to do the quiz too–sometimes the Sunday Stealing can be a bit heavy–but this week’s seems fine, so let’s do it!

1. If you like art, who is your favourite artist and why?

One of the developments of this point in my life that I did not see coming was my newfound love of museums and art galleries. I never disliked them, by any means, though I do recall having a limited attention span for such things when I was a kid. But now? I find myself almost obsessing over such places. Like, all I want to do is travel to other cities and see museums…and when we’re not traveling, I want to hang out in the museums here. I even bought a membership in the AKG Museum for The Wife and I last Christmas!

My favorite artist would probably be John Constable, whose landscape paintings probably play a big role in my approach (thus far) to landscape photography.

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I remember seeing several of his paintings reproduced in a high school English text, and I’ve loved his work ever since.

2. If you were able to learn any three skills or talents instantly and with success, what would they be?

Refrigeration repair (this would be exceedingly handy at work and in general), piano playing (I took lessons as a kid and I was not terrible, but I haven’t touched a piano since college), and maybe some kind of dancing–ballroom, maybe?

3. If you were to live in Ancient Times, where – in what country – would you want to live in?

Celtic Britain, I suppose. Though the “nasty, brutish, and short” nature of life isn’t much of a selling point.

4. What is something you’re embarrassed to admit to liking? Whether it be a guilty pleasure show, or unusual hobby, etc.

Sheesh, I have no idea! I mean, I’m a weird dude who collects bib overalls, wears poofy shirts that make me look like I just walked off the set of a pirate movie, and I think it’s fun to get hit with a pie once in a while. I collect Toby jugs and I have a lovely little collection of toy spaceships. I’m honestly not sure what’s left!

5. What is the worst job you’ve ever had?

Beer delivery. This was right after college. I rode around in trucks and helped deliver beer to stores and bars in the Southern Tier. Lots of heavy lifting, and some of those places were really hard to get into. Also, I wasn’t very good at it, and the manager guy decided to can me, but he didn’t have the guts to do it face to face, so he told me to keep calling every day to see if I was needed. This went on for two weeks before the sumbitch finally summoned up the intestinal fortitude to tell me I was done.

The company was called Allegany Beverage and his name was Hank something. If you know him, tell him I said he was a gutless weasel then and I stand by that. Harumph. (I turned out fine, obviously.)

6. What is something that you wanted to do as a child that you would still like to do now?

Conduct a symphony orchestra! I coulda been quite something in that arena! And instead, I’m watching Gustavo Dudamel live my life, the jerk. (Maestro Dudamel is incredibly gifted.)

7. What do you hate being judged for more than anything else?

Not smiling enough. Yes, this is a thing. There’s an expectation in a lot of walks of life where you’re supposed to be wearing a permagrin, and if you aren’t smiling at every moment, people assume you’re in a bad mood or, worse, you’re unfriendly and antisocial. This is utter nonsense. Anybody can walk around smiling all the time

8. What is your life’s mission?

To create something worth leaving behind. I’m not sure if I’ve got there yet.

9. If everyone walked around wearing warning labels, what would yours say?

“May contain adult-like substance.”

10. At what age did you first feel like you were an adult?

I have no idea. In fact, it may not have even happened yet. Instead I find myself thinking, “How can I be this old when on the inside I’m just a 12-year-old looking for the next big high?”

11. When did you not speak up, but wish you had?

I wish I’d spoken up more in school against the bullies who surrounded me. 

12. What is something that makes your skin crawl?

MAGA.

13. What was the last thing to give you butterflies in your stomach?

I’m getting that feeling a lot when I make videos of myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever warm up to the sound of my own speaking voice. (I am behind on videos because things have taken a few busy turns the last month. I’m getting back into it very soon, I promise! It’s on my list of goals for June.)

14. What’s your favorite type of media to work with? (Paint, clay, pens, etc.)

Photography! Always photography. One of the things that makes me most happy about this particular new journey I’m on is that I feel like I can finally do something meaningful in the visual arts. I was never good at drawing or painting as a kid, which was unpleasant because that was in the days of teachers refusing to admit that maybe a kid just wasn’t good at something, so I had a few art teachers in school do the whole “You can draw if you just try harder” bullshit, which I now know to be complete and utter nonsense.

15. What question do you hate answering?

I can’t think of one specifically, but I dislike political “gotcha” statements that are phrased as questions, but are clearly not intended to gather any information of interest to the person asking, if that makes sense. Like telling people I live in New York State, and being asked something like, “Huh, do you like all those taxes up there?” I find that annoying. Also non-political versions of that, like “So whaddaya do with all that snow?” when I tell people I live in Buffalo.

Oh wait, I can think of one, but nobody has asked it, or any of its related versions, in a long time. Maybe that’s because I’m old enough that it’s not a thing anymore, but I used to have to brace myself for this, after I told people that we have a daughter: “Just one? Why’d you stop there?” One time I waited a few seconds, said “We didn’t,” and…left it there.

OK, that got a little heady, didn’t it?

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It’s early and I’m on my first cup of coffee, so I figured I’d do one of these occasional quizzes from Sunday Stealing. (The quizzes are weekly, it’s my participation that’s occasional. Roger participates every week!)

Here we go!

1.    What was the best toy you ever owned?

Goodness. You know, I oddly can’t recall a favorite or “best” toy. I did have some great stuff as a kid, though. There was something called, I don’t know, Treehouse Family or some such thing; it was a big plastic tree where the leaf canopy (basically a big inverted green bowl) lifted up to reveal the “house” inside, and you could then play with the little people in their treehouse lives. Or the battery-operated mine car thing that ran on a track and picked up “coal” (little black plastic balls) and dumped them off elsewhere on the track.

You’d think I had a ton of Star Wars toys as a kid, but I didn’t, really…just a few here and there, though I did have more space toys with which I supplemented my Star Wars play. Yes, in my 6-year-old 1978 head canon, there was a ship in Star Wars that looked a lot like the space shuttle.

2.    When in your life have you felt the loneliest?

Wow, that took a turn for the serious. I’ll answer 2007, and I’m not going into why.

3.    What is your strongest emotion?

OK, after the toy question, this quiz has gone uber-serious on me. I find that sadness is always lurking in the corners, and I’m hoping that’s not just a creeping-age thing that gets worse. We’ll see, said the Zen master….

4.    When were you the most disappointed in yourself?

2007. Not going into why.

(Interestingly, Roger took the exact same approach to this question.)

5.    Which law would you most like to change?

Lifetime tenure for Supreme Court judges. Oh, and to hell with the Second Amendment.

6.    Who is the person you have hated the most in your lifetime?

I really don’t like admitting to hate. That said, I find myself pining for the day that our 45th president can only be spoken of in past tense, and I make no apology for that. The man has done nothing at all in his years on Earth but pervert everything he touches.

7.    What has disappointed you the most?

The formation of a gigantic cult around our 45th President.

8.    What’s the best possible attitude toward death?

It’s gonna happen, why worry about it? (I try to maintain this attitude. I am not always successful.)

9.    What’s been the longest day in your life?

November 28, 2005.

10.  What is the biggest coincidence in your life?

Honestly, I’ve no idea.

11.  What’s the oldest you’d like to live?

If I can reach a relatively active and dementia-free mid-80s, I think that’s good.

12.    Who is the most amazing woman you know personally?

That one. [points at The Wife]

13.    What was your best experience in school?

I joined Band in 5th grade, mainly for kicks because the band teacher (Mr. Beach) asked me to. I didn’t take it seriously at all, and it showed in my effort and results…until sometime in 7th grade, and I don’t even recall when this happened, when I decided to start taking it seriously and work at it.

14.    What’s the most meaningful compliment you’ve ever received?

A boss of mine once had to sit me down for a real “Come to Jesus” moment, because I had genuinely been kind of rudderless at best and spiraling downward at worst. (To my credit I had already recognized this and was already striving to turn that shit around, but it hadn’t really manifested yet outwardly, and a single individually-mild screw-up on my part was sufficient for the “WTF is wrong with you?!” discussion behind a closed door.) Less than a year later he sat me down again to tell me that I had really turned that shit around and to keep it up. This happened more recently than I like to admit.

Also, a few times in my life I’ve had people who I know to be better writers than me tell me that I’m a good writer. That always feels good.

15.    What is the most you’ve spent on something really stupid?

Well, I’m really glad that it didn’t turn out to be the camera that I dropped a chunk of money on last year! It might be a pair of overalls that I paid honestly more than I should have to discover that they didn’t quite fit, despite the sizing tag. There were also a couple of computers I’ve bought, one a desktop and one laptop, that I bought out of necessity when a previous machine died, neither of which I was really happy with. I suppose it’s good that while I do spend more money on stuff than I should, I don’t tend to blow it on shit.

OK, that was way more introspective than I expected!

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Swiping this from Roger, as always.

1. Do you believe in the unknown and Mystics?

Not particularly. I mean, I do “believe” in things that we don’t know yet, but I do not attribute “unknowns” to anything supernatural. Neither am I particularly given to mysticism, though I do enjoy thinking about mysticism and the supernatural.

2. How do you tell time? Do you use a watch or your phone, and why?

Phones and wall clocks, generally. I like watches, but none of mine are currently functional. I should see to this.

3. How do you stay cool in the summer?

Air conditioning inside, though it increasingly feels “tinny” to me, if that makes sense. Every year we have a long stretch where the windows are closed for a week or more, and eventually the air inside starts to feel kind of gross when we do that. Generally I go for loose-fitting clothing, staying out of the sun, and drinking lots of fluids and doing as much cooking outside as I can.

I have found, though, that as I get older, the heat bothers me less and less and the cold is starting to bother me more. This is a development I wasn’t prepared for, and I hope it doesn’t go too far. I have little desire to move south because I’m cold all the time.

4. Egg yolk or white?

Both. I love eggs!

5. What is your current on-repeat song?

I don’t stick to one song or piece for very long; there’s just too much music out there to listen to to really lock on to something a lot. But I will note that I’ve been greatly enjoying the soundtrack to La La Land, which may end up being my favorite movie of this year. (Well, favorite movie that I see this year, anyway.)

6. What is your favorite sound in the world?

Frying bacon? A cello singing away in its mid-range? Train wheels? Skates on ice? A book being closed? A pen scratching on paper? So many sounds! Church bells? A pipe organ? A match being struck? The shutter release on a camera (even if that clicking sound is often fake now, if you’re using a phone or the electronic shutter on a camera)?

But the best sounds are probably made by water: a rushing stream, a waterfall, or lake waves lapping along a rocky shore, or ocean waves breaking on a sandy one.

7. What’s the must-have-items in your bag?

Heh! Now that I’ve embraced photography and am consuming all manner of photography content online (mainly via YouYube), I’ve seen tons of videos similarly titled: “What’s in my bag”, which translates to, “Here are the current contents of my camera bag.” And I suppose I’ll need to do one of those myself one of these days. For now, what I carry daily if I’m leaving the house is three items: keys, wallet, and phone. On work days, I take with me a few extra items: pen, index card for notes, digital thermometer (refrigeration is a big deal in my line of work), folding knife (I should probably just start carrying the knife always), and flashlight. A dedicated flashlight, as I do not like using the flash LED on my phone for this function.

8. When dressing up, which one do you put on first: pants or tops?

Well, when your pants are almost always overalls, you get used to top first. It’s hard to put on a shirt when you’ve already fastened your overalls up!

9. what is the one thing you wish you could take back?

Not getting too personal…if we could have the 2016 election back, that would be great.

10. what is your pet peeve?

Bad driving, in all its forms.

11. have you ever been ashamed after buying something frivolous? What?

There was one time when we were in a financial hole and I bought something frivolous for myself because I didn’t realize that we needed something important for The Daughter.

12. what dessert would you eat even if you were beyond full?

If I could conquer my sweet tooth, that would be awesome. It’s probably the single biggest factor in my health not being what it could/should be. (I’m not in bad shape, health-wise, but it could be better.)

13. sweet or spicy?

Sweet, even in savory applications…but I do love spicy! I have dialed down my heat levels though, over the years; pure burn for me tends to kill the flavor profiles in foods, so I want heat in addition to flavor. Heat is a part of flavor, not a thing in itself for me.

14. Which website do you visit most often?

My “big three” social medias: Facebook, Threads, and Bluesky. Also YouTube; I always have multiple tabs open to various YouTube things I’m either watching or intending to watch. I have a small roster of comic strips that I read every day, as well as a small list of blogs I visit daily. (Roger’s is one!) And, of course, this site! Yay!

Now, I should probably visit eBay and Etsy less….

15. Which countries/states have you visited, and which one did you like the most?

I really do love my own state, New York, best of all. It’s got everything I want, in terms of cities and nature. I’m not wild about its government, but I don’t dislike it enough to want to go live someplace I’d find hellish. But for states I’ve visited, it’s actually faster to list the states I haven’t visited: Rhode Island and Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Alaska. I’ve been everywhere else. Hawaii is flat-out amazing and I think every day about going back, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.

Countries: Just two, outside America. I’ve been to Canada and Mexico. Honestly, though, my entry into Mexico was when I was so young that I have literally no memory of it, so I’m not sure I can even count it anymore. I love Canada, though; Toronto is one of my favorite places on Earth, and my dream vacation right now is a trip there for a week of museums, food, and street photography.

Yay! Another quiz down! Wheeeee!

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