Category: Occasional Quizzes

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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