Interview meme
Mar. 16th, 2007 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI accepted this one from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akirlu and the rules of it are simple enough.
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I respond by asking you five questions of a creepily personal nature.
3. You update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.
I don't promise to be speedy with the questions, and I'll probably update later saying, "Enough".
I'm also going to toss in the caveat that, if I don't have some; at least vague, sense, of you as a person, I'm not going to try it, because part of the appeal of this thing (to me) is the effort of tailoring the questions to the, apparent, personality of the subject.
That's not to say we have to be bosom buddies, nor even have frequent interaction, but that somehow I have an individual understanding of you.
So, here are the questions, and my answers; for whatever they are worth in the insight department.
1. If you could acquire one skill or ability (real ones, not super powers) that you do not have now, what would it be?
Blacksmithing. It's always fascinated me, taking something so resistant, so rigid and solid, and making it plastic. It gets put into fire, which doesn't destroy it, but makes it malleable. There are limits to what can be done with it, but inside those limits (Frost's "freedom of yoke in easy harness") the ends are boundless.
2. You've been offered 5 million dollars if you give up recreational reading for a year. Can you do it?
I don't think so. If receational reading includes keeping with current events, and the correspondent aspect of blogging, no. I know that I can no more give up reading than I can give up eating, drinking a breathing. I've been doing it so long (what, 36 years of the past 40?) that it's automatic. I go to bed with books, and rise to blogs. I can't imagine the sense of isolation that not having books to read would cause. When I was deployed, I read drivel, just because it was there.
3. Rural retirement, or urban?
Semi-rural... I want some elbow room, and no one to complain that I have a couple of acres which look semi-feral. That will let me do enough gardening, and keep the dogs and horses (and maybe some guinea pigs again) where we can spend time with them; trivially.
4. You decide you need to do something wacky and out of character to shake up your life -- what do you do?
Hrmn... this is hard... I'm not sure what would be out of character for me. Because the things which immediately spring to mind are just things I do, taken to a ridiculous extreme.
Probably go on a brief hermitage. Find someplace where the weather is decent, and built a shanty, live on dry goods and what I can gather. The big break would be leaving books behind. An Oxford Book of English Verse would probably be all.
5. If you could live in any city on earth and still see your family and friends, where would you live?
I was thinking Seattle, because I did fall in love with it, but on reflection it would be San Luis Obispo. The landscape is beautiful, and it has both mountain and ocean ready to hand. The clincher is the climate, there are too many things I like to have around me, which don't grow well in Seattle. I'd have no aptricots, and my California poppies would be miserable, and so too my grapes.
It's a little isolate (with San Franciso and LA each five hours away), but there are places to keep horses and people enough to feel populated, while still being small enough to have a sense of community. The university keeps the place vibrant, and the farms and locals give it a sense of history and grounding.
But it was a close run thing.
akirlu and the rules of it are simple enough.1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I respond by asking you five questions of a creepily personal nature.
3. You update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.
I don't promise to be speedy with the questions, and I'll probably update later saying, "Enough".
I'm also going to toss in the caveat that, if I don't have some; at least vague, sense, of you as a person, I'm not going to try it, because part of the appeal of this thing (to me) is the effort of tailoring the questions to the, apparent, personality of the subject.
That's not to say we have to be bosom buddies, nor even have frequent interaction, but that somehow I have an individual understanding of you.
So, here are the questions, and my answers; for whatever they are worth in the insight department.
1. If you could acquire one skill or ability (real ones, not super powers) that you do not have now, what would it be?
Blacksmithing. It's always fascinated me, taking something so resistant, so rigid and solid, and making it plastic. It gets put into fire, which doesn't destroy it, but makes it malleable. There are limits to what can be done with it, but inside those limits (Frost's "freedom of yoke in easy harness") the ends are boundless.
2. You've been offered 5 million dollars if you give up recreational reading for a year. Can you do it?
I don't think so. If receational reading includes keeping with current events, and the correspondent aspect of blogging, no. I know that I can no more give up reading than I can give up eating, drinking a breathing. I've been doing it so long (what, 36 years of the past 40?) that it's automatic. I go to bed with books, and rise to blogs. I can't imagine the sense of isolation that not having books to read would cause. When I was deployed, I read drivel, just because it was there.
3. Rural retirement, or urban?
Semi-rural... I want some elbow room, and no one to complain that I have a couple of acres which look semi-feral. That will let me do enough gardening, and keep the dogs and horses (and maybe some guinea pigs again) where we can spend time with them; trivially.
4. You decide you need to do something wacky and out of character to shake up your life -- what do you do?
Hrmn... this is hard... I'm not sure what would be out of character for me. Because the things which immediately spring to mind are just things I do, taken to a ridiculous extreme.
Probably go on a brief hermitage. Find someplace where the weather is decent, and built a shanty, live on dry goods and what I can gather. The big break would be leaving books behind. An Oxford Book of English Verse would probably be all.
5. If you could live in any city on earth and still see your family and friends, where would you live?
I was thinking Seattle, because I did fall in love with it, but on reflection it would be San Luis Obispo. The landscape is beautiful, and it has both mountain and ocean ready to hand. The clincher is the climate, there are too many things I like to have around me, which don't grow well in Seattle. I'd have no aptricots, and my California poppies would be miserable, and so too my grapes.
It's a little isolate (with San Franciso and LA each five hours away), but there are places to keep horses and people enough to feel populated, while still being small enough to have a sense of community. The university keeps the place vibrant, and the farms and locals give it a sense of history and grounding.
But it was a close run thing.
