Day 155/365: Caturday + Meme

[nanila]

Telstar: “Thank you for giving me this lovely dirt bed to roll around in. I touch your radish with my foot. See my gratitude? See?”

Meme taken from spiffikins and hamsterwoman.

Have you ever had a pen pal? If so, are you still writing with them?
Yes, from back in the days when handwritten letters were still a common thing. I’m still in touch with said pen pals (one from Australia), but now we’re connected on Instagram.

I also consider DW/LJ people to be a modern form of “pen pals”, as we’re communicating in long form text, and it sometimes takes us forever to reply to one another. :P

Do you prefer writing by hand or typing?
I don’t do much hand-writing these days, apart from on postcards and thank-you notes. I’ve even given up on keeping a handwritten notebook at work. I type quite quickly, so it’s just more efficient.

Think of one of the biggest decisions you've had to make in your life. If you made a different choice, how different would your life be now?

I choose three:

1. Going to university before completing high school. I was 16 when I left home. I think my university experience would have been a lot less chaotic and traumatic, particularly the first two years, if I’d waited until I was older. But OTOH, I might not have been able to go to a private university on a full scholarship if I had. I don’t think I would have ended up studying different subjects, as I had already determined I liked science best. But I would probably have ended up being more confident, more mature and less...emotionally damaged.
   
2. Keeping an online journal. It was an off-hand remark from a friend that caused me to sign up for LJ. I had no idea how integral it would become when I joined seventeen years ago. I doubt I would have chosen differently, simply because I didn’t recognise the significance of the choice at the time.
   
3. Moving to the UK. I have difficulty imagining the shape of my life if I had decided to stay in California.

I find it interesting that “having children” didn’t immediately spring to mind when I wrote this list, as I was pretty well convinced I’d never have them for the better part of three decades.

Have you ever taken a course on CPR?
No.

What's your favorite thing to have as a snack?
Arare (rice crackers). Always and forever.

What is the best thing about the internet?
Being able to form long-lasting, stable communities of lovely people with whom you’d never otherwise have been able to maintain contact.

Is there a person you know who seems to surround themselves with drama?
Yes. I find that people who frequently say, “I have no time for drama”, are usually the ones who somehow have the most drama going on in their lives...

What's the best thing you've made with your own hands?
Probably this painting, which hangs in a friend's home.


Which social media platforms do you frequent the most?
Dreamwidth and Livejournal, hands down. Instagram is a distant third.

What makes you laugh most effortlessly?
The antics of my cat.

What makes you cry most effortlessly?
I don’t cry very often because of things happening in real life. But films and television shows can make me weep at the drop of a hat. This is probably backwards.

What is the best smell in the whole world?
Popcorn popping. My children's heads.

Do you wear a watch? If so, what kind of a watch?
No. I wore a Fitbit for a year or so but I have given it up as it did its job (made me get more active on a regular basis). I don’t much like having things on my wrists as a general rule.

Is there a number or a combination of numbers that feels important to you?
This question sounds like an underhanded way of winkling people’s pin numbers out of them. Nice try, meme.

What is the most socially awkward thing you've done?
I don’t know. I probably do socially awkward things all the time, but British people are generally too polite to tell me so in a straightforward manner.

What is in the top drawer of your desk?
Depends on whether you’re talking about home or work. At work, it’s pens, batteries, paper clips, bits of string, random cables, etc. At home, it’s camera lenses.

What is a topic you could give a talk on without preparation?
The history of the Cassini mission from an engineering perspective, the Cluster mission magnetic field measurements, the JUICE mission soldering qualification process (this would be a rant rather than a talk), things that are wrong and dysfunctional about academia (also a rant, also about 3 hours long), potty training: the horror.

What's the silliest thing you own?
If by “silliest” you mean “most useless/obsolete”, it’s probably some floppy disks for a Word processor on which I wrote some terrible fiction as a teen.

What do you think of people who wear lensless glasses?
As someone who’s had to wear glasses with lenses in for most of her adult life, I don’t understand why you’d want to.

What is your favourite accessory?
My rings, both of which are from my mother. They’re the only accessories I wear on a regular basis.

Do you enjoy cooking?
No. I like baking, though.

Which piece of technology do you use the most every day?
Desktop computer and phone.

How do you handle pressure?
Like a duck.

What makes you feel good about yourself?
Completing all the tasks on my to-do list.

If you could have absolutely anything to eat right now, what would it be?
Arare.

What is the strangest book in your bookshelf?
Which bookshelf? Strange according to whom? A lot of people would probably find “The Wordsworth Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence” a peculiar choice of bedtime reading material.

Do you like cheese? If so, what's your favorite kind?
I love cheese. You can’t make me choose. A short list would include manchego, Cornish yarg, pont l’eveque, and gruyere.

If you could dress up as someone, who would you dress up as?
Morticia from the Addams Family.

Do you ever feel like dancing in public, when you're listening to music?
Yes, all the time. Sometime I do.

When are you at your most energetic?
First thing in the morning. Yes, I’m one of those irritating people.

Do you prefer cold or warm drinks?
Tea, forever.

Is your computer decorated in any way?
My monitors at work have little figurines stuck to the top: Nightmare Before Christmas, the Simpsons from the episode where Homer become an astronaut, and Lilo and Stitch.

Do you enjoy the birds' singing in the morning?
Yes. I hear it every morning, living in the countryside.

What is a chore you enjoy doing?
I’m not sure “enjoy” is the right word, but I do find doing the laundry deeply satisfying.

What was your favorite toy when you were growing up?
Rubber ducks, as discussed in the answer to this Friday Five meme.

Do you like playing cards? If so, what's your favorite game?
I used to love poker (with my dad) and solitaire. At the moment, I enjoy playing Snap with Humuhumu, and look forward to teaching her some more complicated games.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

I was 16 when I left home.

I didn't realize you'd done the early graduation thing! I know (at a remove) a couple of people who did early college, and it sounds to have been chaotic and traumatic for them as well. It definitely made me think that skipping grades and such was not a good idea. And now that I have a 17-year-old, hell, I have a hard time seeing how she'll be mature enough to be on her own at 18, let alone early...

I find it interesting that “having children” didn’t immediately spring to mind when I wrote this list, as I was pretty well convinced I’d never have them for the better part of three decades.\

Oh, interesting! That had not occurred for me to consider as a decision (because I pretty much always expected to have kids, despite not being at all a maternal person or having any interest in babies, generically). But it would almost certainly be a bigger change than anything I did consider, given how much of my previous 18 years have been involved in/affected by parenting, one way or another...

Speaking of which:

potty training: the horror.

Ha, oh man! I can also extemporize on this topic, and have, to my friend whose kids are ~10 years younger than mine, but oh man, potty training O was sufficiently traumatic that I still have very, VERY vivid memories of it. It was this perfect sotrm of stubborness and grossness, and oh my god, I still get flashbacks, even though it's been 12 years now.

What a cool painting!

I have some 5.25" floppies and zip disks with my writing as well.

It was only on reread that I noticed the juxtaposition of this:

A lot of people would probably find “The Wordsworth Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence” a peculiar choice of bedtime reading material.

and

If you could dress up as someone, who would you dress up as?
Morticia from the Addams Family.

Seems legit! XD

Mmm, rice crackers! I went in the pantry hoping we still had some, but nope, L has eaten them all...

[nanila]

I know (at a remove) a couple of people who did early college, and it sounds to have been chaotic and traumatic for them as well.

Yeah, I think the programme I attended wasn't quite as clued up as is could have been about the kind of support a group of 15 and 16 year olds would need at university. I believe it got better some years later. As in, the managers didn't just dump them in a dorm with a bunch of freshmen of the usual age and a couple of woefully under-prepared dorm monitors, and expect the kids to get on with it. Which most of us did, eventually, but not without some absolutely awful experiences along the way.

It was this perfect sotrm of stubborness and grossness...

OH YEAH. That has been Keiki alllll over. It took Humuhumu 2.5 weeks to be potty trained. It has taken him more than a year.

Must go to Asian market in London tomorrow, buy rice crackers.

[hamsterwoman]

but not without some absolutely awful experiences along the way.


I'm sorry you and your cohort had to go through that :(

It took Humuhumu 2.5 weeks to be potty trained. It has taken him more than a year.

I was wondering if that would be the breakdown, because we had a similar one. L became potty trained (except for nights) over a single unusually warm weekend when we let her run around without diapers for a couple of days when she was ~25-26 months old. With O, it was a struggle of well over a year, and an added maddening thing was that he clearly had control over this business -- he knew when he needed to go, he had been able to hold in pee since he was tiny -- it seemed to be sheer stubborness, whatever we did, aim-for-the-Cheerios, bribery, what have you. He only learned when he started preschool and started following an older boy around, including to the bathroom, and then -- POOF! -- he was potty-trained overnight and never had an accident. (As you can see, I'm still worked up about it a dozen years later.)

I hope you were able to achiever rice crackers! :D