It’s that time again! Melanie has the questions, rules, badges, and pingbacks at her site, so follow the link over to her joint if you’d like to play along, or at least want to see how other people answered these questions. And awaaaaay we go…
How many people in real life or on social media (including WordPress, which has become a rather social media site) do you consider good enough friends to help you "hide the dead body"? As a shot-in-the-dark answer, I’d say a dozen. Which dozen they are, I couldn’t say, but I’m sure there are twelve. More or less.
Are you ready to order? What are you having (craving) right now? Just finished a piece of Mary’s apple/pear/cranberry cake, and it was good! She found a bag of cranberries in the freezer, and even though they were probably close to a year old, they were still good, so she got the rest of the ingredients and whipped it up the other day. I’m also having coffee — decaf, of course — which I have pretty much all day.
How’s the weather in YOUR neck of the woods? Right now, bright and sunny, 74° (feels like 79°). We have the windows open.
There has always been something. Before there was something, there was only nothing. Which do you think is more likely? I’ll say the former. It’s the easiest to explain to myself. Something coming from nothing is a bit hard to fathom. The nature of the something that was here at the beginning is a little harder to explain. Was it God or some form of cosmic energy? I dunno, and I don’t lose any sleep over it.
What is your favorite time of year? Why? The week between Christmas and New Year’s. For a period of time, where I worked gave me that week off, and Mary and I just enjoyed it, and it’s remained so to this day. And you can’t beat pizza rolls for dinner on New Year’s Eve.
Hey, guess what today is? In the US, it’s either Columbus Day or Indigenous People Day, and in Canada it’s Thanksgiving! Pick your holiday and have a good one!
It’s also time for Share Your World! Melanie has the prompts over at her place, as well as badges and whatnot, and the rules, in the event you want to play along (and why not?).
And awaaaaaaaay we go!
Are we “here” or do we just think we are? (A metaphysical question today folks.) Can you prove your point of view? Interesting question. Reminds me of this scene from Blazing Saddles.
There are times I think that we’re all figments of the imagination of an autistic boy, kind of like St. Elsewhere. Or that what we call "here" is in a jar on a shelf, the remnants of a science experiment on which the experimenter got a C minus. In any event, we still end up thinking we’re here, whether or not we actually are. So, for all intents and purposes, we’re "here," whether or not "here" exists.
Which brings up another question: Where are we when we’re having a dream? This is a weird thing that happens to me: sometimes I’ll wake up from a dream and think I’m back in the home of my teens, and that the rest of my family is outside the room, but then I’ll realize that no, I’m here with Mary and I’m in my own home in Georgia. Other times I wake up in a room that is like the room I was asleep in, but it won’t actually be the room, because I’ll wake up again and there’s no trace of anything that happened in the room before.
I know, I’m getting weird. Let’s move on.
From an identity stand-point, which would be the worst for you personally to lose? Your face, your body or your voice? Which do YOU identify with most strongly for your own sense of self? Geez, out of the frying pan, huh? Probably my face, simply because neither my body nor my voice is that big a deal.
Do you have a ‘song’? If you’re part of a couple, you could use “your couple’s song” OR a song that’s just always resonated with you. Not really, kind of funny for a person who posts 30 or more songs to his blog in an average week.
Are ghosts real or has someone been smoking something and just imagines them? I’ll leave the door open on this one. There are stories about famous ones, like "Resurrection Mary," who allegedly haunts Resurrection Cemetery in Chicago, and just about anywhere you go you hear ghost stories, but I haven’t had any personal contact with any. Not like these kids, anyway…
Notice how cosplayers would rather be Velma than Daphne?
Time once again for Share Your World! Melanie has the questions, rules, and other paraphernalia over at her place, so go visit her if you’d like to play along. And awaaaaaaaaay we go!
When was the last time you tried something new? How did that go for you? A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try to win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, which say it will pay me $1,000 a day for the rest of my life. So far, so good: they send me around a million emails a day and I do what they tell me to do. "Play these games!" "Take these quizzes!" "Use our search engine to do your searches!" "use the 8 bazillion tokens we give you every day for more chances to win stuff!" Since hardly anyone gets magazines anymore (I mean, why? Everything is available online anymore and no trees are harmed) they’ve taken to try to get me to buy Harriet Carter-type stuff and pay for it over five months (e.g. a pen that writes underwater for five payments of $1.99). I figured how to page through those pages rapidly and submit my entry. I’m not sure how I’m doing because I haven’t won anything yet. The big prize is awarded on Hallowe’en, so keep your fingers crossed.
What’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever heard someone say? A guy I know from Nigeria told me that when everything is going wrong, he goes to bed, and everything looks better when he wakes up. I’ve tried it. He’s right.
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? I’d still be 64, I just wouldn’t know it. I’d say 16, but I’ve got this bum leg and bad knees…
Have you ever seen a ‘fresh’ corpse (aka dead body)? Funny you should ask: tofay is the 20th anniversary of my mother-in-law’s death. We were getting ready to leave for the hospital when we got a call that she was dying. I think I broke land speed records getting to the hospital, but we got there about five minutes too late. She was still in the bed and pretty warm, but there was no doubt she had departed. My in-laws were some of the finest people you’d ever want to know, and hardly the day goes by when I don’t think of my own parents or my in-laws.
It’s Monday! Time for Share Your World! Melanie has all the questions and the rules of the game, in case you’d like to play along. And awaaaaaaay we go!
Where do you feel most at home? Please be more specific than “at home, doh” please. It could be a room in your home, a person, a location… My "office" in my house. I spend a good deal of time in here, it’s a complete disaster area, and I call it home.
Would you rather ride a bike, ride a horse, or drive a car? With my bad knees, I’m really not in any position to do any of them. I’ll say a bicycle.
What song would you sing on “Karoke Night” (if you were forced to do so)?
That’ll teach ’em…
University or life experience, which do you feel best prepares you for life? Unless you’re going to be a doctor, nurse, lawyer, engineer, secondary school teacher, or accountant, you’re better off diving right into adulthood. Half of a bachelor’s degree is bullshit busywork, stuff you probably should have covered in high school or that you can get for about $5 in late fees at the library. I say, get the life experience first, then decide whether you need the sheepskin. Life prepares you for life, not university.
See you in the funny papers! And don’t forget, the bird is the word!
It’s that time again! Melanie has the weekly list of questions for us to answer, and she also has the rules for this little exercise over at her place.
This week is the last week that Roger is supplying questions based on the Harry Potter series of books. Unlike the producers of the Harry Potter movies, he chose not to come up with two sets of questions for the final book in the series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, one set for part 1 and the other for part 2. So here are my responses to the questions he posed…
Have you ever driven the wrong way on a one-way street? How did this come about? One of my first business trips was to a client in Canton, Ohio. I landed on a Sunday night at Canton-Akron Airport and picked up my rental car. I went outside and discovered that it had been snowing pretty heavily all day. So here I am, a relatively new driver (six months), in a city I have never been to, driving a car that I’m not familiar with, on roads that are covered with snow. The directions I got were to drive out of the airport and turn left, so that’s what I did, not realizing it was a divided highway and I was driving the wrong way. I got close to half a mile down the road when I realized I was looking at the backs of all of the signs. Everything turned out all right: there was literally no traffic, so I was able to do a 180° turn, get back to the airport, and get myself on the right side of the highway, all without causing myself bodily harm or having to explain how that happened to the authorities.
As a kid, did you ever decide to run away? Did you have a plan? Take a pet? Sandwiches? I think I threatened a time or two, but never actually got around to it. I remember the kid down the street (whose father had a heart attack and dropped dead in the hardware store not long after my own dad died), who was a friend of my brother’s, showed up at the back door with all of his worldly possessions (including a picture of his dad and a statue of the Blessed Mother) in his wagon and announced that he was leaving home. Mom, who had already been through nutty stuff with all of us (our way of mourning), invited him to dinner, called his mother and told her he was with us. After dinner, he went home, pulling his Radio Flyer behind him.
You suddenly found you have a hidden talent for playing a musical instrument. What musical instrument do you hope that accompanies your talent? Any particular song? I’m assuming you mean besides the guitar, harmonica, and bagpipes, all of which I either play now or have in the past. Having given this some thought already (one of the ways I get myself back to sleep in the middle of the night), I’d say the tenor saxophone, like the guy in Steely Dan’s "Deacon Blues."
Come to think of it, we had a piano around here for years, and I could kick myself that I never taught myself how to play. Oh well…
Do you accessorize with jewelry? No. Mary and I don’t own any, really. We have our wedding rings and her engagement ring, locked away somewhere, but we never wear them. We figure that after almost 43 years people can figure out that we’re married.
And that’s it for the Harry Potter questions. Now for the regularly-scheduled ones…
What ingredients go into YOUR favorite salad? Jell-o, fruit cocktail, and whipped cream. Served on a waffle with chocolate sprinkles.
If you care to, share something that really irritates you. The Liberty Mutual commercials with Limu Emu and Doug. The emu’s fine; it’s Doug I’d like to garotte…
What are your favorite ‘lounging around the house’ items of clothing? A golf shirt, a pair of "workout pants" (for all the working out I do — ha ha), and a pair of New Balance walking shoes. Note that this is what I wear every day, regardless of where we’re going or what we plan to do.
I’m actually grateful for a couple of things:
The weather has been superb.
We lost electricity about 11:00 this morning, and when it came back on, WordPress saved what I was working on.
I won a year’s worth of LastPass Family, and Mary seems pretty excited about learning how to use it, so maybe we can start using more complex passwords (I already do, but she doesn’t).
