Tag: Quiz-Things

OK, here we go! We just got back from our annual trip to Ithaca for Apple Fest, and I also just turned another year older, so I’ll get back in the swing with this, a Quiz.

1. If you were trapped in a TV universe for a month, what TV show would you choose?

If I had to actually live in a teevee universe for a month? Am I actually hobnobbing with the cast, or am I just some Joe Schmo living there? Normally I’d take an easy way here with Star Trek, but I think instead I’ll go with the setting of a very new show that I’ve been enjoying a great deal since it launched last season: Port Wenn, the fictional Maine coastal town of Best Medicine. If you haven’t seen it, in the show a city doctor who is very buttoned-up goes to live in this little New England town full of quirky residents. Think House MD meets Newhart.

2. What song instantly revs you up and gets you going? 

Oooof, I don’t know about a song that fires me up…but “Dreams” by Van Halen can, and has, neutralized many a bad mood I’ve been in. Also, “Human” by The Killers is a nice song to play during the home-from-work drive; I like making the transition from being annoyed at work to being happy at home.

In college, my roommate and I would blast the last movement of Saint-Saens’s Third Symphony, the “Organ” Symphony, while we dressed for band or orchestra concerts. That was always fun.

3. Are you decorating your home for fall? 

Not really. I always feel like I should do more seasonal decorating, but it never really happens.

4. How do you treat a cold?

Rest and lots of fluids. Green tea with honey, soup, and a lot of water. My goal is to drown that virus and flush it out of me.

5. What insignificant thing would you be genuinely annoyed if you lost it or it was taken from you?

Well, we recently broke one of the glass bottles we use for maple syrup, and that’s been on my mind for replacement now. I had bought a bottle of syrup years ago in the shape of a snowflake, and we have been rinsing and refilling it for years (along with a few others) from the big quart or, more recently, half-gallon jugs of maple syrup that we buy at farmers markets and the like. That bottle broke during washing a month or two ago. Bummer!

6. What place do you remember vividly, even though you haven’t been there in years?

Maybe next year I’ll drive the 60 miles or so to Allegany and Olean, NY to see how things have changed in the towns I grew up. I have visited neither since 2014, when I helped my parents move for the last time.

7. Do you have a favorite Dolly Parton song or story?

Song? “Hard Candy Christmas”, which I’m sure will be featured this coming Holiday season here during the Daily Dose. Story? I love that she knew that owning the rights to her own songs was important, so she declined to let Elvis Presley record “I Will Always Love You” because he required ownership of any song he did. I also love that someone asked her about the fact that a lot of people think she’s a “dumb blonde”, and she replied, “Whatever, I know I’m not dumb and I’m not blonde.” I don’t know how true this is, but I remember reading that Parton would go out with her husband and be totally unrecognizable because she would eschew makeup and any wig.

OK, that’s all, I got more unpacking to do. Moving on!

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I was planning to take a break from Sunday Stealing this week, but I kind of like this format: it’s ten statements and you indicate if they are true or false for you. So, here we go. I’m marking the TRUE ones in BOLD ITALICS.

TRUE OR FALSE

1. I’m married.

(Nearly 30 years, huzzah!)

2. I’m raising a teenager.

(Nope, they are 27 now, so we’re 7 years past the teenager point. But they have turned out amazingly well. I don’t write about them here because it’s their life and I don’t think it’s my place to chronicle it, but they have done a lot of amazing things the last several years to improve their life and explore who they are. A lot of what they are doing now amazes me.)

3. I recently vacationed in California.

(Maybe someday!)

4. I have traveled to Asia.

(Maybe someday! Though I’m less sure of this one.)

5. I have a dog.

6. I received money from a class action settlement.

(I vaguely remember getting a few bucks off some goofy thing. I can’t remember the details.)

7. I’ve been in the waiting room when a family member had surgery.

(This is not fun. I am a worrier by nature.)

8. I have attended a convention.

(I’m not as big into fandom circles these days, but I do still think Buffalo should host a Worldcon! Come on, folks!)

9. I subscribe to my local newspaper (either print or online).

(We subscribed to the Sunday Buffalo News for years, but it just got worse and worse and worse over the years. I waffled for a long time over letting it lapse, because supporting journalism is important, but there’s also the fact that spending money on a continually worsening product just to support that product’s existence just felt worse and worse.)

10. I recently had work done to the exterior of my home.

(We outsource the cutting of the grass, and I’m counting that. I hate lawn work. It probably makes economic sense to get a mower and do it ourselves, but…look, I really dislike lawn work, and I even think that Americans have created this whole lawn work thing so they have something that’s “productive” to do during their leisure time. I think it’s a Calvinistic “The Devil finds work for idle hands” sort of thing, and I can be downright suspicious of people who insist that they really do like yardwork.)

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I guess I should really be doing this installment of Sunday Stealing on my actual birthday, but I’m not going to remember to post this on September 26, and I’m finding that scheduled posts isn’t working very well here these days (I’m not sure if that’s because of the site theme I’m using or what), so I’ll just do it now:

Wikipedia Meme

First, what is your birthday (month/day)?

Already noted: September 26! (Year: 1971. Get off my lawn.)

Now, go to Wikipedia and list:

1) Four historic events 

–In 1580, Sir Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the Earth. The voyage took almost three years, and when Drake arrived in the English Channel again, he learned that he had been presumed dead.
–In 1687, the Parthenon in Athens was badly damaged because someone had decided that it would be a great place to store gunpowder and munitions. It exploded. Oops.
–In 1789, President George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. Neither office is held by anyone worth anything today.
–In 1960, Democratic presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy faced the Republican nominee, Vice President Richard Nixon, in the first televised presidential debate.

2) Three births

Every year on my birthday I note that I share a birthdate with George Gershwin, Olivia Newton-John, and Jim Caviezel. So here I’ll note three other notable persons sharing my birthday:

–1774: Johnny Appleseed (I don’t want to admit how old I was when I learned that Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, I always figured his was like Paul Bunyan)
–1888: T.S. Eliot, English poet. I actually haven’t read enough Eliot!
–1963: Lysette Anthony, English actress. Twelve-year-old me had quite a crush on her when she appeared in Krull.

3) Two deaths

–1902: Levi Strauss, the guy who invented Levi’s jeans. Maybe I should wear a pair of Levi’s overalls this year in his honor….
–1984: John Facenda, the guy with the distinctive voice who narrated a bunch of NFL Films productions back in the day. You know, the guy who said things like “On this icy January day, two sets of warriors took to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field to decide the championship of the National Football League!”

1) One holiday or observance 

Well, I’m sure that any year now, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons will achieve critical mass of societal awareness!

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Today’s Sunday Stealing is a standard “List of favorites” kind of thing, so I’m going to ignore the “favorites” thing and instead just write about the first thing that comes to mind after each individual prompt. Make sense? No? Well, we’ll figger it oat. Here we go!

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE …? (Not doing favorites. Just riffing. -Ed.)

1. Flavor?

So on Saturday nights we almost always have “Charcuterie Night”, in which I cut up some cheeses and present some cured meat of some sort for dinner. Right now I have cheddar on the mind, because I almost always have some kind of cheddar on the plate. It’s on the mind right now because the current cheddar, “Vermont Sharp” by Cabot Creamery, is kind of disappointing. I like my cheddar flavorful, and this…isn’t. Maybe it’s a batch issue, as I’ve never been disappointed by Cabot Creamery’s product before, but I think next week it might be back to Kerrygold.

2. Movie?

Also on Saturday nights we usually watch a movie, and we alternate weeks as to who gets to pick the movie. The Wife has a habit of picking things that are really different; sometimes her picks get really out there, but that’s great! Last night we watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western anthology movie by the Coen Brothers, and as is usually the case with these two, it’s a hilarious and violent and weird movie. Next week, though, I get to pick! (Though I’m actually on vacation right now so we might make every night movie night! Yee-haw!)

3. Piece of jewelry?

I don’t wear much jewelry. I like to wear my wedding ring and another ring that The Wife got me before we were married, but only on my days off; there are times in my job where I’m putting my hands places that I wouldn’t want my nice jewelry to be. I also have a few watches on neck chains; I should dig those out and replace the batteries and start wearing them, especially now as we are (theoretically) heading into the cooler part of summer. I’ve never been a big fan of metal chains on my bare skin, but who knows, I was never a big fan of button-up shirts or v-neck tees before, either.

4. Place to be?

Anywhere, if I have my camera on me! Otherwise, home, with my books and dogs and those family-type people.

5. Boy’s name?

There’s a long-simmering, long-unfinished book on my hard drive that I should probably finish because it has a character in it named “Sair Guthrick Marbury”, which might be my favorite character name of mine, ever. (“Sair” is an honorific title like “Sir”, given to artists and creative people of note.)

6. Girl’s name?

Desdemona. Why? Because I’m thinking of upgrading my camera to a full body-and-lens system in the relatively near future, and I am taking to naming my devices using names of women from Shakespeare. My phone is Ophelia, and my current camera is Miranda. (This computer is Galadriel, which is from Tolkien, because I hadn’t started using Shakespeare names at that point.)

7. Candy?

Oooooh, I love candy, but I’ve had to really back off my love of the stuff for health reasons. A shame, too, because candy really does make the world better. Candies I like that you maybe don’t? Necco wafers and candy corn.

And then there’s liquid candy, best known in the form of rum!

8. Sports team?

Hey, the Bills had their first preseason game in the new stadium yesterday! I don’t even know, as I write this, if they won. It’s preseason, who cares about Ws or Ls, it’s mainly about seeing who can play and who can’t. Giddyap!

9. Color?

For now? Green. Because it is now the back half of August, which means that green’s clock is ticking down….

10. Month? 

September. Why? Because!

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This week’s Sunday Stealing is a list of things you either have done or have not done. I’ll bold the ones I have actually done, and I’ll provide occasional comment throughout because a list by itself is kinda boring, right? Here we go!

Have you ever …

1. Slept under the stars


I mean, technically, we’re always sleeping under the stars! But really, I get the point here. Have I slept the entire night outside, with nothing between me and the sky? Well, no. But I’ve dozed off out there, and I’m counting it. Especially the times as a kid when we were camping and I was sitting by the campfire and the next thing I remembered, it was morning and I was in the camper.

By the way, I’m reminded of a great joke:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they lay down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.

“Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

Watson replied, “I see millions and millions of stars.”

“What does that tell you?”

Watson pondered for a minute. “Astronomically, it tells me that there  are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I  deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I supect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Why, what does it tell you?”

Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. “Watson, you imbecile. Some bastard has stolen our tent.”

2. Played in a band


Concert bands and jazz bands count. No, I have not played in a rock band, a country band, a jam band, or a swing band.

3. Visited Hawaii 

And we’re hoping to go back next spring!

4. Visited Easter Island 

(Does anyone just…visit Easter Island? It’s extremely remote and I’m not sure what there is to really do there other than see the Moai statues.)

5. Watched a meteor shower


My mother loved the Perseids.

6. Seen the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace

Aside from Hawaii, I have never left North America.

7. Been to Disneyland or Disney World 


I was at Disneyland when I was very young, and Disney World when I was a little older (both before I was ten). I had an Epcot visit in college while on a music tour, and The Wife and I celebrated our first anniversary, in 1998, at Disney World. I used to really want to go back, but now? I’m not against it, by any means, but it’s not a priority.

8. Climbed a mountain 


Well, define “climb”. I’ve hiked quite a few. If by “climb” we mean the whole bit with pitons and ropes and the possibility of long plummets punctuated by unfortunate impact, then, no.

9. Held a praying mantis

As a kid. I’m not clamoring to do so again. They’re beautiful insects, but I don’t think they need to be handled by humans.

10. Been to the Louvre 

I wouldn’t mind at all!

11. Had food poisoning


Yeah, that was unpleasant. Luckily it passed pretty quickly.

12. Eaten vegetables you grew yourself

I’d do more, but I’m lazy.

13. Slept overnight on a train

I’d love to do this!

14. Built a snow fort

When we moved in 1981 to WNY and finally lived in a place with consistent snow, where we lived was too sparse to make a snow fort really worth the effort. And why make a snow fort when sledding on the hills is right there as an option?

15. Held a lamb

16. Gone skinny dipping

Weirdly, I prefer swimming clothed!

17. Been on a cruise (day cruises and dinner cruises count)

Booze cruise FTW!!! Also whale watching off Cape Cod and dolphin watching off Cape May.

18. Seen Niagara Falls 


Well yeah, it’s just 30 miles that way. [points]

19. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

If by “ancestors” we mean my parents, then yes! I’ve been to Pittsburgh many times and was born there myself. If by “ancestors” we mean Germany and Ireland and wherever else might be in there, then no.

20. Sung karaoke

21. Sat for a portrait

22. Walked on a beach by moonlight


23. Been transported in an ambulance

24. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling 


Snorkeling.

25. Kissed in the rain


26. Played in the mud


As a kid, yeah. But I’m not a fan of mud. I see photos of muddy people from Woodstock or other festivals and I’m like, “Ewwww.” And this from a person who finds getting hit with pies a fun experience….

27. Gone to a drive-in theater

Only as a kid. There’s a popular one not far from where we live, but somehow it never ends up on our summer agenda….

28. Changed your vehicle’s oil yourself

I did this a few times some years ago, mainly so I could get that in my memory bank and develop a few mechanical skills. But I don’t bother anymore; I just get it done twice a year, once at inspection time and once six months or so after that.

29. Taken a martial arts class

30. Visited the Vatican

I have very little interest in seeing the Vatican, actually. My parents went to the Vatican when they went to Rome twenty years or so ago. My mother, who by this time was not just a lapsed Catholic but an angry lapsed Catholic, really hated the experience. She only wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, which apparently comes at the very end of a long tour during which there are no places to sit to take a rest, and she also had things to say about how many “marble penises” there are in the Vatican.

31. Volunteered at a soup kitchen or food pantry

I donate a lot of product and money, but I’ve never donated labor. I should, I suppose.

32. Sold Girl Scout cookies

33. Bought a used car

I honestly don’t see any reason to buy new.

34. Sat on a jury

35. Ridden an elephant

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Sometimes the Sunday Stealing is really short, and sometimes it’s…not….

The Alphabet Meme

Answer these questions with anything from a single word to a paragraph or two. It’s up to you.

A is for Age.

50-mumbly-mumble.

B is for your Booze of choice.

Rum. Or bourbon. Or scotch. Tequila’s nice on occasion. Gin works, as does vodka (though I prefer flavored vodkas). And I love me some orange liqueur! (I actually don’t drink nearly as much as my booze roster suggests.)

C is for Career.

That’s what you do instead of the thing you really thought you’d actually be doing. Nothing wrong at all with Facilities Management at a large retail store, but it’s not really a job anyone sets out to do, is it? Meanwhile, writing and photography remain tantalizing possbilities.

D is for your Dog’s name.

Carla and Hobbes. I should post some new-ish photos of those two one of these days….

E is for Everyday Essentials.

Water, vitamins, daily meds, coffee, and overalls.

F is for your Favorite Food.

Burgers. Or pizza. Sausage is lovely, in many ways. Waffles! Chicken in so many forms. Special appreciation for the wings. Cake, cookies, ice cream. Pie.

G is for your favorite Game.

I honestly play very few games. I’d like to play more, but I dare not allow myself to become a videogamer. Tabletop would be fun, but I need other players….

H is for your Hometown.

Let’s just go with Buffalo.

I is for an Instrument you play. 

I used to be a really good trumpet player. Those were the days…and I often think that if I could re-do one decision, leaving music would be the one.

J is for your favorite Jam or Jelly flavor.

Grape. Or strawberry. Or blueberry. I just bought a jar of bacon-onion jam yesterday, I’ll have to report when I open it and put it on something. And hot pepper jelly is oooooh Lord where has this been all my life!

K is for Kids.

One living.

L is for the Last show or movie your watched.

Last night we watched Riding in Cars With Boys, a memoir-type movie starring Drew Barrymore. It was pretty good, for a movie where everybody in it is an ass in one way or another.

M is for your Most prized possession.

Honestly, I’m not sure. I have a lot of stuff. I should probably start looking to wind down on stuff someday in the not-too-distant future.

N is for the Name of your first crush.

There was probably one before her, but whatever, she’s the first one I remember and this was third grade in 1980, in Hillsboro, OR. What are the chances? Beth Kornegay was cute as hell, if I remember correctly. (No, I have not investigated her at all, nor do I plan to, nor do I want anyone else do so in my stead. I’d be stunned if she had any memory at all of who I was, especially since we moved away a year later.)

O is for what you Observe from your window.

Oh look! Carla wants to come in. [reaches over to pull open the sliding door so Carla can come in]

P is for Phobias.

I love to swim, but I have to be able to see the bottom. Deep water where the bottom is out of sight? Nope. 

Q is for your favorite Quote.

I’ll name a different one each and every time I’m asked this, so right now I’ll go with the first one that pops into mind: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” (Groucho Marx)

OK, fine, one more, a bit more cynical but I come back to it a lot these days: “I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around. I know, they say, they say: “well if you don’t vote you have no right to complain”. But where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent people, and they get into office and screw everything up, well you are responsible for what they have done, YOU caused the problem, you voted them in, you have no right to complain.” (George Carlin)

R is for Regret. 

Oops, I mentioned that up above. Leaving music. I really think I should not have done that.

S is for Sweets.

Too damn many, I tell you what.

T is for the Time you wake up.

Too damn early, I tell you what. I’m almost never up any later than 7, and during the week I’m up right around 6.

U is for Underwear.

What about it? It’s there.

V is for your favorite Vegetable.

OK, don’t be getting all biological on me here, got it? I know it’s technically a fruit, but I’m going with tomato. Onions are also awesome, as are peppers of many, many varieties. Potatoes are lovely. Corn, too. I’ve even come to like asparagus, though only if it’s grilled. Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and grill it? Ooooh, that’s good.

Broccoli and cauliflower can be ejected into the sun.

W is for your Worst habit.

I have a terrible sweet tooth, and I swear like a sailor. Also, I often have sufficient difficulty just getting motivated to do stuff that I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be well-served getting tested for something like AD-HD.

X is for X-rays. 

I had them for my teeth a few times, and for my collarbone when I broke it in school. (By the way, a dental tech discovered the hard way that I have a really sensitive gag reflex when she stuck her fingers in my mouth to put the X-ray film in place without explaining first what she was doing. I have never once felt any guilt over that.)

Y is for your Yummiest recipe.

Pastitsio, which I make once or twice a year to this day. (I thought I did a more recent post of the recipe but I’m not sure where it is; this link is from the very early days of this blog when it was still on BlogSpot.)

Also Buffalo Chicken Soup. As soon as the weather starts getting the slightest bit cold, my family starts clamoring for this stuff.

I cook and make a lot of stuff; maybe I should do more of that content along the way…I also make a lovely whipped cream pie, but honestly, while you probably could slice it and serve it, it’s actually designed for a different use entirely….

Z is for your Zodiac sign. 

Libra, though I do not truck with astrology at all. It’s fun, but it’s total nonsense. (Year of the Boar in the Chinese zodiac, by the way.)

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It’s early and I’m waiting for The Wife to get up so we can go do something fun, so I’ll pass the time by doing the Sunday Stealing! I haven’t done one of these in a few weeks and this one’s pretty easy. Technically it’s a FAB quiz (Film, Audio, Book) with one extra question added:

1) If you could attend a 4th of July fireworks display anywhere in the United States, where would you choose?

I’m not nearly as entranced by fireworks as I once was; I guess that comes from living with dogs and seeing how all the booms can affect them. But I do still like seeing them if I’m from a distance…and there’s just something about seeing fireworks exploding over a beautiful vista that can still excite me. I’d love to stand on the edge of Brooklyn, looking toward Manhattan, and seeing this:

Another great spot is a lot closer, though: Fireworks over Niagara Falls is amazing to behold. They launch them from the Canadian side. Amazingly, it’s been nearly ten years since the last time we were up there at night! I made a video from that visit, which you can see here (if the following embed doesn’t work super well, embedding Flickr videos can be wonky).

I think that’s the key to fireworks: seeing them from a distance, and over a spectacular vista. I wonder if they ever launch fireworks over the Toronto skyline…obviously not for July 4, but that city is spectacular.

2) What book are you currently reading?

I’ve just finished a re-read of a children’s book that I loved as a kid, one my mother picked out for me, called Paddle-To-the-Sea, which traces the adventures of a wood-carved Native American in a canoe that a young boy whittles and then sets free on the waters of Lake Superior, to float all the way to the sea. Mom had me read this book not long after we moved to WNY back in 1981, and it really shaped my perception of the Great Lakes region ever since.

I am also reading a novel called Where the Sea Lavender Grows, by Kitty Johnson. This is not a novel I’d likely ever have chosen had it not been part of a curated list, in this case the monthly offering of free “First Read” novels that are offered as part of my Amazon Prime subscription. The novel tells the story of two women, living decades apart, who live in the same cottage in England. So far I’m not sure what to expect of it, but I’m enjoying it thus far.

I’m also starting Ways of Seeing by John Berger, which is a book about visual art. With the new influence photography is having on my life, I’m finding myself engaging with visual art in a way that I never was able to before (more on that to come, I have a whole video and newsletter on the way about it), and I’m reading more and more books about art. And you know, if I have to have a “midlife crisis” where I decide to sink my attention and time into something, art is a pretty good one. I’ll take it.

I also checked out the newest edition of Tom Ang’s How to Photograph Absolutely Everything, which I read in a previous edition three years ago when I was just starting out with the camera. I do like going back to “Photography 101” kind of content, because while I’m getting better and better, I still think it’s a good idea to go back and brush up techniques that I haven’t tried much yet and remind myself of things I can do that I haven’t done yet.

Recent books completed: You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming (I think I only have two Fleming books left, one novel and one story collection), When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (I hate to say this, but I increasingly think Scalzi just isn’t for me anymore, in terms of fiction), The Uncool by Cameron Crowe (Crowe’s memoir of his youth as a precocious music journalist; good book but it meanders a lot toward the end).

3) What have you been listening to?

In addition to all the music I listen to for presentation on this site, I’ve been listening to an album called Revel In Time, by Star One, which is a progressive rock/metal project band created by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, a Dutch musician. I will eventually write about this, but I don’t feel like I have the current vocabulary to do so. (I honestly don’t know how rock critics, the Lester Bangses of the world, can write cogently about an album after just one or two hearings. I have to live with an album for quite a while before I feel remotely qualified to write about it.)

4) What shows or movies have you been watching?

Right now we’re plowing through Season 3 of Sneaky Pete, a crime series featuring Giovanni Ribisi as a conman who gets out of prison and basically finds himself out of the frying pan and into the fire. It’s a really entertaining show with heists and conmen and found family that doesn’t realize it’s been found and a really engaging cast of characters. I’m also surprised to learn how good an actor Ribisi really is; he’s been on my radar forever and I’ve never thought him bad, at all, but here he’s magnetic.

We’ve also been watching Rizzoli and Isles, for our weekly murder-procedural fix, as well as slowly making our way through Blindspot (this show is bonkers) and a few others.

Movies? Oh, remember that data failure that cost me six weeks of content here? That also killed six weeks of updates to the post I was maintaining in which I wrote briefly about every movie we’ve watched this year. I suppose I should go back and reconstruct that, but the enthusiasm is lacking. We’ll see. But a couple of standouts are Remarkably Bright Creatures and Voicemails For Isabelle, both of which I recommend.

What’s going on in your worlds, folks?

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…let’s do this week’s Sunday Stealing, shall we?

1. Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

No. I can roll my tongue, though. Apparently that’s a genetic thing that only some people can do.

2. What foreign language did you study in school? How much of it do you still remember?

French. I don’t remember much, verbally, but when I encounter written French I can pick my way through it, kinda-sorta. I’m able to discern what the road signs in Canada are telling me, if I look to the French side. I do wish sometimes that I had kept up with it more, particularly when I’m listening to music by Berlioz and watching Emily In Paris.

(Yes, I watch Emily In Paris and I love it for all its goofy soap-opera glory.)

3. What recipe did you most recently prepare? Where did you get the recipe and how did it turn out?

Goodness, I’m honestly not sure! It might be the Pastitsio I made for The Wife’s birthday. I don’t cook directly from recipes a whole lot these days; you get to a point where you can pretty much throw things together most times. In fact, the Pastitsio might not even count, since I’ve made that dish so many times over the years that I never need to even consult the recipe I learned anymore. Maybe it was when I made waffles last; I use Alton Brown’s waffle batter recipe, and I never remember the exact measures of the things in it. I love cooking from recipes, though! I need to take some time and figure out some future recipe exploration.

4. What song have you listened to over and over and over again?

Oh, how many! I do try to vary up my music selections, but I also do go into “play that again, Sam! And again! Again, Sam! You know what, Sam, just keep playing it until I tell you to stop!” mode on occasion. Some songs that have received this treatment over the years are (and here I’ll just do songs, because if I include filmscore tracks or classical pieces we’ll be here all day):

“Dreams”, Van Halen
“Human”, The Killers
“Last Dance”, Donna Summer
“Gentle On My Mind”, Glen Campbell OR The Band Perry
“Love’s Been Good To Me”, Frank Sinatra
“Midnight Train to Georgia”, Gladys Knight and the Pips
“It Always Happens This Way”, Toulouse

5. Are there currently any pets in your household? Are you considering adding another? 

I’ve written many times of the little menagerie we have going on here! Dogs Hobbes (greyhound) and Carla (staffie mix), and cats Remy, Rosa, and Daisy.

6. As an adult, have you ever performed with a drama group? (Student productions don’t count.)

No. This is a thing I’ve never much felt like exploring, in all honesty.

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