#random askmeme

[linnealurks]

I was tagged by @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad. I haven’t participated in any memes in a long time, but I’m procrastinating on packing for a trip and trying to control my anxiety about the child who is not coming with me on this trip but instead going on one of his own. So why not?

1. How tall are you? 5′5″. Dead average for a ciswoman of European descent.

2. What color and style is your hair? Blonde with increasing grey. Parted in the middle, all one length, about six inches below my shoulders. Often worn in two braids.

3. What color are your eyes? Blue.

4. Do you wear glasses? Yes.

5. Do you wear braces? No, never have.

6. What’s your fashion style? Unadorned and comfortable.

7. Name? Linnea, for internet purposes.

8. Birthday? Feb. 15.

9. Where are you from? Where do you live now? I was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, grew up mostly in upstate New York, now live in Iowa.

10. What kind of school do you go to? . Um, I’ve been out of school about as long as the average Tumblr user has been alive.

11. What kind of student are you? not applicable 

12. Do you like school? I usually did..

13. Favorite subjects? Languages.

14. Favorite TV shows? Doctor Who (RTD era), Orphan Black, El Ministerio del Tiempo (I’m still working on the first season), Northern Exposure

15. Favorite movies? Revengers Tragedy, Strumpet, any Marx Brothers movie, The Falls, Prospero’s Books, Withnail and I

16. Favorite books? One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ghostwritten, The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace

17. Favorite pastime? Music (listening to or making)

18. Any regrets? Yes. But you can never be sure how taking the other path would have worked out. I get misty for a couple of previous signficant others, lately. 

19. Dream job? I’d love to be gainfully unemployed.

20. Do you want to marry? I already have, twice, and gotten divorced once. So not at the moment.

21. Do you want kids? I have two of them, and I don’t want to get rid of them, so I guess that’s a yes.

22. How many? See above question.

23. Do you like shopping? No. 

24. Scariest nightmare? I’ve had this one since long before I had kids, and even before I ever had sex: I suddenly find out that I am six months pregnant and I don’t know how I’m going to cope.

25. Do you have an s/o? Yes.

26. Do you believe in miracles? No. There’s always a logical explanation. Sometimes very unlikely things happen, but unlikely =/= miraculous.

27. What color is your soul? Green.

I tag @nosaythyskies, @throwspeare, @von--gelmini, @forbiddenarchives, @rundalek, @chiarosuroverse, @tlaloc, @tuffetu, and anyone else who feels like it.

[linnealurks]

1, 11

1. Favorite color - green. It’s no contest.

11. Favorite time of day - that’s hard to decide, for some reason. In the summer, I would say early evening. The rest of the year, mid-morning.

Get Wet askmeme

[linnealurks]

Happiness Tag

I was tagged by pinchtheprincess to do the happiness tag. You write 5 things that make you happy (no particular order) and tag the last 10 people you have notes from.

Music. Lately, a lot of the Watersons and Waterson:Carthy

Homegrown tomatoes

Watching or listening to Christopher Eccleston

Homemade pesto.

Swimming

Actually, #2 combined with #4 could almost be its own separate entry.

I tag alez-on-mars, buttons-with-strawberry-lemonade, chatnoir16, gotmydoctorate, fuckyeahecclesex, thewitchway, nxfertiri, elissan43, lady-belletrix, and sarcastic-enigma

[linnealurks]

Rule 1: Write down the rules.
 Rule 2: Answer the questions from the person who tagged you. 
 Rule 3: Make up 10 new questions and tag 10 people.

I was tagged by fleurdeneuf

1. Favorite movie when you were a kid?

Um, that’s hard. Growing up in the pre-video age, there aren’t that many movies I saw more than once. One movie that stuck with me when I saw it was Little Big Man. It made me realize that there was another side to the cowboys-and-Indians narrative I’d seen on tv.

2. Best movie you’ve seen in the past year?

I haven’t seen many new movies, so I’ll just go with Revengers Tragedy.

3. If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?

The Lake District, England.

4. Favorite place you’ve ever been?

The Shawangunk mountains of New York 

5. How many tabs are open in your browser right now?

22. And I closed eight or ten a little while ago.

6. What’s the last fic you read?

Honeybee, by FarDareisMai (a/k/a asthewheelwills)

7. Have you ever dyed your hair?

Yes. Green (temporarily, with food coloring, several times).

8. Favorite/least favorite season?

I absolutely can’t decide. I think I slightly favor spring and fall over summer. As I get older, winter is becoming my least favorite.

9. What’s your favorite thing to cook?

Lazy omelets: stirfry garlic, onions, and whatever else is up in the garden, then add beaten egg. 

10. If you were going to learn a new language, what would it be?

Hmm. Hungarian or Greek, maybe. But I’d really like to properly learn Finnish before I go on to any other languages.

New questions:

1. How many houses/apartments did you live in before age 18?

2. Describe your ideal dwelling-place.

3. What do you see out of the nearest window right now?

4. Describe someone who used to be part of your daily life but isn’t any more, and you wish that they could be again.

5. How many siblings do you have?

6. What is your favorite thing to cook?

7. What do you wish you had learned sooner?

8. What skill are you most proud of?

9. What book have you read the most times?

10. What is greener than the grass?

I tag technicolordreamgoat, von--gelmini, forbiddenarchives, fleurdeneuf, swingria, tuffetu, pygmy-of-triviality, throwspeare, rundalek, sansacakes

[linnealurks]

Talk about 5, 15, 24, 33, 38 (or if that's too much, just pick a few).

Just remembered that this was in my inbox.  Look, an excuse to procrastinate!

"talk about" rather than "ask me" is a great meme.

5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.

I think I’ve done this one before - it was, I don’t know, ninth grade, tenth grade? My friend R. invited me to spend the night at her house, and when I got there it was a surprise party, and I was totally surprised, and felt very loved. We all stayed up most of the night and reminisced about our earlier lives, which now kind of makes me laugh, because we were, what, 14 or so? and that seems really young to me now. We’d mostly known each other since elementary school, so there were a lot of shared memories. It was also an experience in sleep deprivation as a kind of intoxication.

15: Talk about the time you were most content in life.

That’s really hard to say, because my current mood colors the way I look back at other periods of my life, so my assessment of them changes all the time.  I think in general I get more content as I get older, or at least more able to handle discontent.

24: Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot.

I was over 30 when I moved to the midwest.  It was my first full-time “career”-type job, though.  My father drove out with me and stayed for a few days helping me get my house set up and stuff.  When he was leaving, he told me he was very impressed with the way I navigated my new environment and the way I was handling my life.  I barely answered because I was trying so hard not to cry. On the one hand, I really appreciated getting validation from him.  On the other hand, I felt like I’d been that competent grown-up person for years at that point, only he hadn’t noticed, and had been treating me like I was still a teenager.

33: Talk about what you do when you are sad.

Eat too much and sleep too little.  Also listen to sad music and watch sad shows, which paradoxically makes me feel less sad.

[linnealurks]

Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan :)

Little Red Riding Hood: Do you trust strangers easily?

I think that most people are basically honest, so in that sense, I usually trust that people will do the right thing (although I think my bullshit detector works fairly well, when someone actually is trying to scam me).  As far as opening up and telling strangers personal information, no.  I’m a typical Finn in that respect.  Except in my Tumblr tags.

Beauty and the Beast: What makes a person beautiful in your eyes?

I like people who look interesting, and a little outside the conventional norms of attractiveness.  I also like people who tend toward the androgynous.

Peter Pan: What is your (mental) age?

I have no idea.  I’m probably mentally middle-aged, but when I hear certain kinds of jokes, I’m twelve.

Inbox me a fairy tale.

[linnealurks]

happy to help with your time wasting efforts: 2, 32, 36, 79, 82

2, 32 - already answered

36) Define Art.

Something that forms a pattern and means more than the sum of its parts.  Something made by humans that can cause other humans to have a transcendent experience. (I think I may have just defined sex as Art. This is not necessarily a problem.)

79) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

Moving to Iowa? That’s the most far-reaching decision I’ve made, anyway. I can’t really evaluate it (and for that matter, no one can really evaluate any decision) because it’s impossible to tell how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t done it.

82) What is your favorite word?

One of my favorites is the Finnish word “sirkka”, which means “grasshopper” or “cricket” and is also a woman’s name. Also “tietokone”, which is Finnish for computer but literally means “knowledge-machine”.

"Pharmicological" is one of my favorite words in English.

[linnealurks]

2, 32, 35. Is that too many?

2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

Christopher Eccleston.  (Is anyone surprised?) Second choice, Margaret Atwood.

32) What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

A semester I spent in Houston. Part of it had to do with other circumstances in my life, but Houston is not my kind of place, for lots of reasons.

35) To you, what is the meaning of life?

Meaning? Or purpose? Those are slightly different things. I don’t think I can answer meaning, but the purpose of life is to appreciate the pleasures it offers and to help the rest of the human community get along.