AMA, Part III

More questions from readers! Part I and Part II.

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These questions are all from San.

What do you consider your best personal quality?

I'm a great gift giver and I always remember to send birthday cards. 

Do you sleep on the right or left side of the bed? Is it important to you?

I sleep on the left side of the bed, no matter where we are. More than a decade ago, I broke my left leg. It was a spectacular break. Because of this, I like to be able to stick the bottom part of my left leg out of the covers at night because weight (even just the weight of our duvet!) can feel unbearable. 

Prior to the broken leg, I didn't have a preference and I actually slept on the right side when I was sleeping with my husband at home, but we would willy-nilly choose sides if we slept in a hotel or whatever. Now, no matter what the bed, I sleep on the left side.

Did you even know you'd get an answer this in-depth with this question?

Do you have a favorite piece of jewelry? What's the story?

Well...it's obviously my wedding and engagement rings. But I have a confession to make: I rarely wear them. I have terrible eczema on my hands and wearing them exacerbates it. It makes me sad, but there you are. In order to find this photo, I went through my blog archives. No one asked, but here are two fun posts if you'd like to know what our early married lives were like. Also, Suzanne commented on one of those posts! From 2010! What a crazy long blog friendship. 

I really only wear earrings and bracelets on a regular basis. I wear sapphire studs in my bottom holes (to replace the sapphire in my engagement ring that I can't wear) and silver hoops in my second holes, as well as a hoop in my cartilage hole. But the bracelets. The bracelets are where it's at.

I have one "nice" silver bracelet from Twisted Silver that I wear almost daily. It was a present from my husband years ago. It doesn't look like they still make that bracelet, which is too bad because it is fabulous. I also buy cheap bangles with colors on them when I travel. I have maroon and gold from when I went to Minnesota, green and red when I went to the Christmas store with my mom, and so on. My nieces love to wear them when I visit them. And sometimes my nieces make me rubber band bracelets and I love that more than anything. On a regular day in the summer, I will wear ALL of these bracelets. 

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?

I would stay here. I like it here. It's a good location for both our families. We have a great house. We have friends. Our jobs are here.  But I'd definitely get a second home on Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.

The following questions are from Stephany.

What makes a book 5-star for you?

I have written an entire post on my star rating system, so I will try not to be too repetitive. Five stars is an enthusiastic thumbs up from me. I would not hesitate to reread the book, I will recommend it widely, and it has probably become my entire personality for the duration of the time I was reading it. This doesn't necessarily mean I don't have any criticisms of the book, but just that I thought the premise and execution were super well-done. 

These are generally the types of book that are instant favorites. They make me wonder what I'm doing with my life, how such brilliance exists in the world, and if people are born brilliant or if it's something we can all strive for. These are books that go on my shelf in that small section devoted to the utter radiance of the human condition. 

So, yes, I'm somewhat stingy with five star ratings. I'm less stingy with 4 and 4.5 stars, though, but I mean, really. How many books truly are works of genius AND appeal to me?

What is your least favorite holiday?

Interesting question. I basically like any excuse to party, but I struggle with Columbus Day. I also find Father's Day really difficult. I feel like the reasons for this are pretty obvious.

But you know what? I like all the weird special days: National Donut Day? Count me in. National Rescue Dog Day? I will celebrate! National Talk Like a Pirate Day? Argh, matey.  

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And that's a wrap on AMA questions. If you still have burning questions, feel free to ask! 

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What's the last 5-star book you read? What made it five stars for you?

AMA, Part II

 I'm back today with more answers to the questions you asked in October. Part I here. 

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More from Kyria today:
If money was no object, what car would you buy?

Look, I have a confession to make. I don't really care. Is it reliable? Does it have heat, AC, and cruise control? Can I fit it in the tiniest parking spot in the parking garage? Is it an automatic? Then I'll probably take it. 

How did you end up in the city where you live?

We moved to Wisconsin for my husband's job. We had intended on living in the town where the university is. There were a few problems with this. The first is that the grocery store in the town closed a couple of years after we moved there. Not having a grocery store is challenging for us. It looks like an ALDI will be opening in the town next year, but it hasn't had a grocery store for years. Meanwhile, I had a really hard time meeting people in town. The town/gown relationship is testy at best and it was even hard for me to find volunteer opportunities.  We gave up and when we were going to buy a house, we moved to the next town over because it has multiple grocery stores and a much livelier civic life.

Name one thing that you love about yourself.

Wow! I need to interrogate the reasons why this question was so hard for me to answer. I love that when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I am not particularly internally motivated, but if I tell someone that I'm going to get it done, it will get done. 

What are you afraid of?

The usual stuff - dark, enclosed spaces; snakes; heights; death; being buried alive; an underage wizard accidentally turning giant oversized stuffed rabbits into real oversized rabbits; the building falling down when I am on the top floor with no way out; lions and elephants and hippopotamuses just wandering around the world, not enclosed in cages or pens; my husband waking up one day and not knowing who I am; paperwork filled out incorrectly.  

Not relevant to anything in this post, but look at my beautiful, crazy cat. For you non-cat people, those giant pupils mean she's about to attack. 

Taco or burrito? What kind?

Interesting. I mostly eat bean enchiladas for Mexican food, but if forced to pick a taco or burrito, I'd probably go taco. Vegetarian. Soft corn tortilla. Lots of tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream. Guac on the side.

Would you rather swim in a pool, lake, river, or ocean?

I can't swim, so chances are that I'm not getting in further than waist level, but in an ideal world I'd like a beachside pool. That way I can swim in the pool, but walk on the beach. The beach would preferably be near a warm body of water, but I'm not particular if that body of water is a lake or an ocean. 

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What's something you love about yourself?

2024 AMA, Part I

Way back in October, I asked people for questions for an AMA and then I promptly did not answer those questions because it turns out I did not have time for them in my November posting schedule. Well, here I am with a footloose and fancy-free posting schedule, so let's dive into those questions.

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Maya asked:

Can you do a recap of all the places you've lived?

I was born in Europe (Germany) on an Army base. My parents moved around quite a bit when I was a pre-schooler, but eventually we lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is where I started school. Then we moved to a rural area north of Grand Rapids when I was in second grade and that's where I lived until I graduated from high school. When people ask where I'm from, I usually say Michigan.

I did my undergraduate degree at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I also did an internship for a semester where I lived in Arlington, Virginia and worked on P Street in DC. 

For a year after college I worked as a domestic violence victim advocate for a city in southeastern Michigan. I loved having a paycheck. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the cheap, cheap rent. I loved the mission of the organization where I worked. I did not love my job. It was so stressful and it didn't seem like I was making any true impact on the problems of intimate partner violence. I spent this year applying to grad schools and going on school visits with my limited days off.

Then I did my graduate degree at Minnesota and lived in Minneapolis for the vast majority of my 20s. My husband got his doctorate in the very bad year of 2008 and took a visiting position at Winona State University for a year, so we lived in Winona for a very bad, sad year. The town was fine, but I broke my leg early on, our apartment was depressing as hell, and my husband's department wasn't exceptionally welcoming, so I found it hard to meet people. (As an academic, Maya might be interested in knowing that this was a visiting position with the understanding that it would turn into a tenure track position, but that was not going to happen in the time we were there. This meant my husband was on the job market during this time, while ALSO teaching all brand new preps for the first time. In the end, it did turn into a tenure track line, but that didn't happen until a couple of years after we left. If it had been tenure track, my husband would have stayed there and we would still probably be there.)

So then we moved to the small college town in Wisconsin that houses the university where my husband and I work when he got a tenure track gig. It's tough living in a college town (and ours doesn't even have a grocery store!), so we bought a house in the next town over in 2017 and that's where we live now.

TL;DR - Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Minnesota, Wisconsin

Kyria asked: 

You just started a new job. What were you doing before?

Oh, boy, my work history is spotty. My husband and I made a deal that I would move anywhere he got a job (he's a political theorist and those jobs are few and far between), but that meant he could not complain about what job I was doing.

So when we first moved to Wisconsin, I had a lot of part-time work. I worked part-time teaching test prep and working as an adjunct as the university where he was full-time. Then, in March 2020, I got a full-time job working as a project coordinator for a big federally funded grant project. That project was a disaster from the get-to. The employees were only 25-35% and the lead actually left the university after a year. The funding ended in November 2022 and I was unemployed until October 2023. 

What is your favorite type of tree?

Hm. This is an excellent, but hard question. I love the look of a weeping willow, but would never want one in my yard (invasive root system!). I love the solidness of an oak. But I will admit to you that right now my favorite tree is a hawthorn tree that's in our backyard. Yes, the thorns are intense and make yardwork a nightmare, but the birds LOVE it and it's always filled with juncos, chickadees, jays, cardinals, and finches. 

Would you rather skydive or scuba dive (and why)? 

I'd LOVE to scuba dive. I'd love to see the fish under the water! But I am also a super annoying person with chronic allergies and it's never been safe for me to actual do so. No to skydiving because I am a scared of heights person. I'm happy to just watch the drone footage.

If you could speak a language with no effort in learning it, what would it be?

Not to brag, but according to Duolingo, I'm a World Champion in learning Spanish, so I would definitely love to be fluent in Spanish. It just makes so much sense to know Spanish in the United States, since we have so many native and heritage speakers around.  

I would also love to learn Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and German, but look, now is not the time to talk about how I wish I had all the time in the world to just take classes and talk to people. 

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That's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow with more answers to the burning questions!

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What's your favorite tree?

2022 NaBloPoMo Q&A, Part II

If you're new here, I did a 20 Questions post last year that discusses some basics of who I am, so that's a good place to start if you don't know much about me. Last month, I asked you for questions and now I'm here to answer them. I got a lot of questions, so I broke this up into two parts. Part I is here. 

Stephany asked:

13) What are some of your best marriage tips?

I feel unqualified to answer this question because while I am an expert on my own marriage, I am hardly an expert on marriage overall.  Here are a handful of things I have to say, but I stress that this works for us, but I make no guarantees about other people's relationships.

a) It's all luck. I met someone who was single when I was single who shared my values, found my quirks tolerable, and there was physical attraction.  The timing worked and we both wanted a long-term relationship at that moment.

b) Learn to use the following phrases with reckless abandon: You're right, that's a good idea, thank you, I notice you did...and I appreciate it, please, and I'm sorry.  

c) People change over time. What was a quirk when you were dating will become a neuroticism years later.  Get used to it and get over it. 

d) Marriage isn't actually all that difficult (*if you have lucky timing and find the right person who shares your values and goals*), but when life gets hard, so does marriage. When life is moving along and all is going well, you generally spend time focusing on your relationship. When life gets hard, it's easy to focus on what's making it hard (jobs, finances, kids, illnesses, whatever) and forget to prioritize your relationship. When life gets hard, lean in to your relationship, don't lean into the hard stuff.

e) Laugh with your partner every day. Dance with them every day. Buy them gifts when you see things you think they'll like, even if it's not a holiday. Update a shared calendar and look at it regularly. Do the dishes. Don't leave the cap off the toothpaste. Be considerate.  Remember you love them, even when they piss you off. And when they piss you off, fight fair. Don't keep score in love.

14) What are some of the books you recommend over and over?

What a great question! I might steal this one to start asking people. It's so revealing.

For me, it really depends on the reader. I recommend A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  and quite a few Sarah Dessen books, most especially Just Listen for teenage girls; Ender's Game and Ready Player One for teenage boys;  Love Lettering and Perfect for romance novels; the Realm of the Elderlings saga for fantasy; Murderbot and Wayfarers for sci-fi; and the Neapolitan quartet for contemporary fiction. There are other books I'd recommend here and there based on what I've read recently, but these are books I've recommended over and over and over again.

15) Do you like to travel? What are some places you'd like to travel to?

I don't like to travel with my husband (see question #5 from Part I). So that basically means I don't actually like to travel.  Ha. That's not true. I do like to see new places and do new things, but I don't like the actual plane/car/train part of the journey and, more importantly, I despise vacation planning. I am terrible at managing calendars AND visualizing things like how far away spot #1 is from spot #2.  So basically that means I would be a travel agent's dream if travel agents were still a thing. 

I'd like to visit the Maldives, Ireland, and the Alps someday, but not in a real "I'm going to sit down and plan a vacation" way. 

Diane asked:

16) What is your ideal environment to write/blog in?

Ideally, I have some quiet time at my desk at home, a cup of hot tea at my side, no street noise, and no pet interference. This rarely happens, as you might imagine. Ha!

17) What is your ideal environment to read in?

I'll basically read anywhere - on the couch with the television blaring, in the car waiting for an appointment, in line at the grocery store - but my ideal is to be tucked up in bed with my Kindle. I have a great setup so that I can recline and lean my Kindle on the pillow and be 100% cozy. I love being in bed, I love reading, and I love being cozy, so this is the best version of reading I can imagine. 

18) How do you organize and keep track of all the details about a book that end up in your blog posts?

Well, this is a two-part answer. It depends on if I'm reading a paper book or an ebook. 

If I'm reading a paper book, I keep a piece of paper in the book and jot down page numbers and a word or two to remind me of what I found noteworthy. Sometimes it's literally the word/person/historical event I had to look up and sometimes it's a direct quotation. I'll also use this piece of paper to take notes if there's a super complicated plot, family structure, geography, or timeline. Most of the time this paper is the checkout slip from the library, although I also have a series of small notepads that charities send me in the mail that I sometimes use if it's not a library book or I didn't get a checkout slip.

If I'm reading a Kindle, I just highlight what I want to take note of. You can look those notes up on your Kindle, or you can access those notes and highlights at a website from Amazon even if you return the ebook library book. It's a really cool feature. You can also transport those notes directly to Goodreads, if that's your jam. 

Otherwise, I try to write up my reviews within three days of finishing a book. I don't like to do it right away because I want to think about a book a bit. It's telling to me if I'm trying to write a book review and it's two days later and I can't remember the name of the lead character - that's probably not a memorable book! But I also don't want to wait too long. I'll sometimes look books up after I've finished them to see if there's controversy around the book I was unaware of or if my thoughts align with other people's, but I try not to read too much about a book before I write it up because I don't want to go in with a biased opinion.  

19) My ten year old wants to read a romance novel with "just kissing" - what do you recommend?

I am, sadly, not an expert on this age group. I asked my librarian friend and she said she recommends these "clean" romances for the tween set - Operation Pucker Up by Rachele Alpine, Playing the Field by Janette Rallison, and Never Evers by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison. 

Lisa asked:

20) If you could live anywhere, where would you live?

I think I'd stay here. I like where it is in relation to our families and I really like our town. I'd also love a house on Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. Maybe someday when I win the lottery I never play.

21) What is the best vacation you've ever taken?

When I was in high school, my family did an epic road trip. We drove from Michigan to Arizona (Petrified National Forest = awesome, Grand Canyon = oddly boring), up through California and to Yellowstone (awesome) and across the Dakotas (Badlands = desolate, but interesting). It was absolutely amazing, but I could never do it again because that much car time would probably kill me.

22) What does your husband teach?

My husband teaches political theory in a political science department at a small state university. He's practically a genius. I just hang on, hoping my brain won't leak out my ears when I have to think hard to keep up. As you can imagine, he finds it *charming* that I mostly want to talk about books with dragons in them. (See My Marriage Rule c.)

San asked:

23) When do you usually blog? Do you write drafts or sit down and knock it out in one sitting?

I usually blog after dinner in the brief window after everything has been cleaned up and I'm not yet walking the dog.  My husband is generally watching television at this point and I don't watch with him very much. I just sit down and write entire posts without much editing, which is obvious based on the number of  typos you find here. 

24) What's your favorite movie of all time?

I'm not a huge movie watcher, but the movies I always talk about are Babe, Dirty Dancing, and Shawshank Redemption. 

25) Who's your girl crush and why?

Nicole Kidman is gorgeous and that is why she remains the sole woman on my top five list. Forget Keith, Nicole, I'm here for you.

Thanks for all the questions, my friends. If you have any remaining queries, please let me know!

2022 NaBloPoMo Q&A, Part I

If you're new here, I did a 20 Questions post last year that discusses some basics of who I am, so that's a good place to start if you don't know much about me. Last month I asked you for questions and now I'm here to answer them. I got a lot of questions, so I'm breaking this up into two parts. This is part I. 

Elisabeth asked:

1) Have you always had pets?

I definitely grew up in a household with pets. We moved around a lot when I was little, but we settled down in Michigan when I was seven and pretty immediately got a cat to help control the rodent population. She was a mean cat, Penny was, and I still have a scar on my right wrist from her claws. We had a selection of dogs and cats as I grew up and by the time I left for college, we'd settled in that two cats and three dogs were a good number for our family. We had Loudmouth and Heinz for cats and Dusty, Midnight, and Gizmo for dogs when I left for college.

In college and grad school, I pet sat a fair amount and occasionally had roommates with pets, but didn't have furry pets of my own. I did have a succession of fish, frogs, and lizards, though. When I met Dr. BB, I made sure the he knew that having pets was a priority for me. For a few months after we were first married, we did a long-term catsitting gig when we had some friends who were overseas for a bit and Dr. BB fell in love with that cat (oh, Dae) and I knew that I had sold him that pets were important.

Right before we moved out of Minneapolis in 2011, I was visiting some friends in Michigan who had rescued a litter of teeny tiny barn kittens. Zelda was the last kitten available and my friends who had three rambunctious children were making noises about taking her; I scooped her up and said I'd take her home because I was worried for her life in that household (they are all three lovely young adults now, but eleven years ago was a different story). Note that I agreed to take the cat before consulting my husband, but let's not dwell on that. She was little and cute and became Zelda the Cat.

We had Zelda for years and years before we bought a house. Part of me agreeing to buy the house was that we could get a dog. What really happened was that we moved into our house, I went to visit my mom and sister, and my sister's dog bit me. That put off our dog search for a year. We adopted Hannah the Dog in the summer of 2019.

Since Dr. BB grew up in a home without pets, I think he still sort of thinks it's weird that he lives with a cat and a dog now. I, however feel like a house is not a home without a pet. I will make some allowances for people with allergies, but even then I think you should have a fish or a bird or something.

2) Do the people that you send snail mail to every month also respond via the postal service?

Ha. Rarely. I love it when people DO mail me back, but I mostly send mail so my loved ones know I'm thinking about them, even if they are far away. I have no expectation of reciprocation. 

Anne asked:

3) Who are the people you write to every month? 

The three people I write to are my mom, Aunt Debbie, and Uncle Kevin. I used to write my Grandmother and Aunt Jean, too, before they passed away. 

Back to questions from Elizabeth:

4) How/where do you store scarves?

I store them in my downstairs clothes closet. I have two special scarf hanger/organizer things and one regular hanger that I use. They actually don't take up much room at all and they're quick at hand whenever I need them.

5) What's your ideal vacation?

For a variety of reasons having to do with food and control, I'm going to leave my husband at home. I'm renting an Air BnB with my best friend and hiring a caterer to handle all the cooking for our vacation. We mostly sit around around a pool or at a beach with books in our hands. Maybe, just maybe, once a day we'll leave for some sort of activity like a hike, museum visit, or shopping at an adorable downtown area, but let's not get carried away with things we need to plan. And we read books, nap, and eat delicious food we haven't prepared. That's basically the ideal version for me.

6) What's your favorite meal - start to finish?

Interesting and hard question. I am going to follow the format of the Off Menu podcast. 

Water: Grapefruit Perrier
Bread: Seedy white bread with lots of room temp butter
Appetizer: Caesar salad with extra croutons
Main dish: Lasagna
Drink: Diet Coke (this is a dream - I don't have caffeine any more, but this would not be a problem in my dream world)
Dessert: Tiramisu. I wouldn't be mad if it came with a scoop of vanilla or coffee ice cream on the side
After-dinner: A lovely cheese plate and coffee with cream

Interestingly enough, as I read through this, it seems like you could buy me some Perrier and take me the Olive Garden and I will be your girl.

7) What's your dream job (like dream-dream; money is no object and you can snap your fingers and acquire all the necessary skills immediately)?

I always wanted to be a translator at someplace like the United Nations or the International Court of Justice. I like the idea of being involved in international politics and the fight for human rights. Unfortunately, I am just not as good at languages as I'd like to be. I am too literal and don't understand nuances of languages, which would make me a terrible translator in real life.

Nicole asked:

8) What is your degree in?

My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in political science. I have a heavy emphasis on math and stats, though, with an undergrad minor in math and an emphasis on research methods in grad school. I'm your all around basic liberal arts bitch.

Birchwood Pie asked:

9) Why did you choose the field you chose to study?

I choose political science because government is the heart of everything we do. There's not a choice you make that the government doesn't have a hand in and I like to think about structures and institutions of power and how they work. I also like that this it focuses on something really complex and challenging like figuring out human behavior (how will voters vote? judges decide? governments act? non-governmental entities interfere?), but also allows me to flex my math chops. It's a field that takes the best from math/stats, psychology, economics, and law and mixes it up into the most delicious stew.

(Also, anyone who thinks people in the STEM field have the hardest jobs? You are wrong. It's just plugging numbers into equations. Gravity is predictable. Drag is predictable. People are not. The social sciences are the most complex because people are unpredictable.)

10) How did you meet Dr. BB?

We met in grad school. He was a cohort ahead of me. He was a better grad student than me and had a crush on my roommate. Some of the early entries on this web log are from early dates with him. (Don't read those. The me of 2005 apparently didn't know what a paragraph break was.) We actually study completely different subfields and we don't really understand what the other does.

I remember Dr. BB getting a new cell phone and refusing to give me or my roommate his number because he only had limited minutes. Do you remember those days? He claims that this is clearly untrue because he would never deny a pretty woman his number. I guess I eventually did get his number.  

Anne asked:

11) How did you end up where you live?

We moved to Wisconsin because my husband got a tenure track job at a small state school here. This was quite a coup since political theory jobs are few and far between, so we moved to the town where the school is. We lived there in an apartment until Dr. BB actually got tenure and then we bought a house in the next town over. The advantages to where we live now are that this town has an actual grocery store (two of them, as a matter of fact!) and the houses next door are a million times less likely to be turned into student housing. We also don't literally live next door to my husband's students.

12) What's your favorite childhood memory?

I used to spend summers with my Uncle Lenny and Aunt Debbie. I wrote about it a tiny bit before when Uncle Lenny died, but let me expand on an all-time legendary story. Lenny and Debbie didn't have children of their own, but every summer they'd take some of their tween/teen nieces and nephews for weeks on end. We'd go camping, traveling, and just generally goof off with them. At one point, there was a big group of us and we decided to go floating/canoeing down a river. It was me, my sister, my cousins Rachel, Jessica, Greg, and Melanie, and my Aunt Debbie's nephew on her side, Johnny.  We had a blast. We got sunburned, overturned the canoe, and Melanie and Johnny may have done some hanky panky under the cover of the river water.

When we got back to the car, it turned out that Uncle Lenny had somehow LOST THE CAR KEYS in the river. Apparently, this happens with some regularity. Ha!  We were able to break into the car, so we could change into somewhat dry clothes, but we didn't really have anyplace to stay and so all nine of us ended up spending the night in someone's random backyard shed (maybe? my memory is fuzzy). We basically relied on the kindness of strangers to get us food. Aunt Debbie's dad drove a spare set of car keys to us the next day. He got a speeding ticket. It was calamity after calamity. It's a great, classic family story.

Stay tuned for more questions tomorrow! In the meantime, please regale me with stories from your childhood.

20 Questions

I haven't done an list of questions in a very long time, so I pulled some off of this website and we'll see how this works out.

1. Where do you live?
I live in a small town in southeastern Wisconsin.  I grew up in a rural area in Michigan and when my husband got a job in rural Wisconsin, I insisted we live somewhere with sidewalks.  So here we are, in a town with just over 12,000 people in it. 

2. Who do you live with?
I live with my husband of thirteen years, Dr. BB and our cat Zelda and our dog Hannah.  I love them all so much it hurts my soul.  I don't often write about what an amazing husband I have, but do know that he tolerates a lot from me and his unending patience and humor are what keep me getting up every morning.  

3. What do you do for a living?
I work at a small state university in a non-teaching role.  

4. What shows are you into?
The only television shows I am watching weekly right now are Taskmaster and The Great British Bake-Off.  Taskmaster is available on YouTube - do yourself a favor and click on the link above and watch the first episode. You will be hooked. GBBO is, of course, on Netflix. I do not enjoy the Noel/Matt dynamic as much as I enjoyed Noel/Sandi or Mel/Sue, but I guess the world does move on from its moments of perfection.

5. What's your claim to fame?
I was valedictorian of my high school graduating class and was a National Merit Finalist. I made the front page of the Turnertown Gazette (also, I am paraphrasing a Miranda Lambert song). I peaked in high school, my friends. 

6. How often do you play sports?
Never. I don't like competition. I regularly exercise, but I never participate in activities in which scores are kept.  At the family reunion over Labor Day, I was throwing the bocce ball around with my younger nephews and one of my older nephews came up to tell me that he'd never even seen me hold a ball!

7. Are you usually early or usually late?
I am always early. Being late stresses me out too much.

8. What quirks do you have?
I'm a neurotic mess. I overthink everything, question myself to the extreme, and am basically obsessed with my dog and cat.

9. How often do you people watch?
Almost never. Honestly, since the start of the pandemic, I am never around large groups of people. I live in a small town and rarely see more than a handful of people at a time. I work in a giant building where I am regularly the only person present on the rare occasions that I go in.  It's just not a thing I do.  

10. What's your favorite drink?
Right now I'm obsessed with Fresca. I also really like a good lemon-lime Gatorade Zero.

11. What songs have you completely memorized?
Basically the entire oeuvres of Garth Brooks and Bon Jovi. Hannah the Dog hates getting baths and when I am bathing her, you'll frequently hear me singing "Livin' on a Prayer" or "I'll Be There for You" to calm her. 

I also have a running playlist and it's getting a bit stale because I know these songs inside and out, but here are some of the best hits from that list:

"Stuck Like Glue" by Sugarland

"Mean" by Taylor Swift

"Undo It" by Carrie Underwood

"Not Ready to Make Nice" by The Chicks

"Downtown" by Petula Clark

"American Kids" by Kenny Chesney

"Small Town Saturday Night" by Hal Ketchum

"What Kinda Gone" by Chris Cagle

"Big Deal" by LeAnn Rimes

"If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)" by Joe Diffie

"Norma Jean Riley" by Diamond Rio

12. What would you rate 10/10?
The Murderbot series from Martha Wells and the Wayfarers series from Becky Chambers. I am trying to read my way through the subreddit r/Fantasy's top books by women authors and Chambers and Wells are such great finds. 

13. What skill would you like to master?
I wish I were multilingual. 

14. What website do you visit the most?
Reddit. It's shameful how much time I spend on Reddit.

15. What's your favorite genre of book?
I love books with dragons. I also love a good romance novel.  

16. When was the last time you climbed a tree just for fun?
At the family reunion on Labor Day, I climbed a tree with some of the kids. It's a short tree, fortunately.

17. What fictional place would you most like to go to?
Obviously, it would be Stars Hollow, the fictional locale of Gilmore Girls. 

18. Who has impressed you most with what they've accomplished? 
I went to grad school with a woman who got her PhD, went on to found a successful non-profit, and then took a job with the United Nations. She did all this while maintaining her marriage and giving birth to two children.  She seems to have figured out life and I can't figure out how to change the margins on my resume. 

19. How do you relax after a hard day?
I am a fan of the couch, a book and the cat on my lap. If that's not a recipe for relaxation, I don't know what is.

20. What is a small thing that makes you life better?
Because I work from home, I'm able to take Hannah the Dog out for a 1-2 mile walk every afternoon. I wish I could tell you just how much this clears my mind and allows me to  go back to work with a better attitude. These daily walks mean so much to me.

Things About Birds

By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

1) Canadian geese generally fly at about 3,000 feet for migration, but have been seen at heights up to 29,000 feet.  I want to be a Canadian goose.

Actually, I kind of don't because I always think about how horrible the time seemed to be when the characters from The Magicians were flying to Brakebills as geese. Also, I really don't do well with heights, so disregard that sentence.

By Rudraksha Chodankar (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

2) The Alpine swift can fly for SIX MONTHS straight without touching land. That's incredible. Scientists have known for some time that swifts spend most of their time in the air, but these tiny birds were hard to study until they developed these lightweight sensors that didn't weigh the swifts down.  And now we learned that they basically only land to nest and they sleep awing.  Crazy swifts.

Think you can tell them apart? Try it yourself.

3. Crows can tell people apart, but people can't tell crows apart. Scientists did this fun sounding study in which they put on masks and had the people in masks do mean things to the birds. The birds remembered those masks for years and even somehow taught successive generations about the bad masks, so more crows than just those who originally saw the mask knew to be wary. But humans can't tell crows apart.  Because we are inferior species.

Interesting Trivia: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Before my freshman year at college, there was an orientation held for students and parents.  One of the sessions split us up and sent parents to one lecture and students to another. Joy of joys, I was split up into a session for students of the Honors Program (a program I am quite happy I was a part of overall, but that didn't quite GET me) where this tiny little woman with a strangely mesmerizing haircut and a squeaky voice talked to me about the Imposter Syndrome, which is a term that describes the tendency of accomplished individuals to downplay their accomplishments because they either think they are frauds and/or that they are undeserving of their successes. Squeaky Voice Lady (REAL NAME Dr. Darrow) told us, I'm paraphrasing here, to get the fuck over it.

Cut to me running to the bathroom sobbing where I ran into my mother who was similarly crying.

(Tangent #1: The student union of this school has since been redesigned, so I don't know if this amazing bathroom still exists, but from 1997 - 2001, the women's bathroom next to the ballroom in the union had a gorgeous sitting area. Sometimes I would study there.)

We looked at each other, laughed, and after a few minutes we went back to our respective meetings.

None of this Imposter Syndrome stuff made sense to me, honestly. I was a fraud. I was going to college on an academic scholarship that I got because I was lucky. I was lucky I was born to American citizens. I was lucky I was born white. I was lucky I was born with a brain that worked typically enough to pass through school. I was lucky that I had mentors who helped me develop that brain. I was lucky I had parents who, although not particularly well-educated or well-financed, were involved and supportive. I was lucky. I was not deserving.

(Tangent #2: I still think this. But now I'm even luckier because I have my sackful of education, a wonderful husband, and a great(ish) cat. I got out of poverty and it was due to luck. Yes, there was hard work that went into it, but there are plenty of people who work as hard as me and won't succeed because they aren't as lucky as I was and continue to be.)

At some point in the last year or so,  I was introduced to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a bias that people have in determining how difficult a task is. Unskilled people tend to overestimate their own abilities at particular tasks because they don't recognize their own ineptitude and underestimate how hard a task is. On the other hand, highly skilled individuals frequently underestimate how hard a task is because it's so easy for them (and, therefore, underestimate their own abilities because they think everyone has those abilities.)

Source: Indexed

This has a name! This explains why my C students honestly don't understand why their work is inferior to A students. It's why my A students honestly don't understand why everyone doesn't get an A in my classes. It's why I don't understand why everyone doesn't get an A in my classes.  It's why I genuinely don't understand why Peggy Hill can't figure out the area of a circle or why Jimmy Pesto Jr. thinks he's a good dancer. It explains all those bad auditions on American Idol (who's pumped for the last season starting on Wednesday and is going to watch it for nostalgic purposes?!?!). It explains why my stupid cousin-in-law, who has over $300,000 in student loan debt, but just had her fourth child and works at Walmart twenty hours a week, can sleep at night, but I stay up at night worrying about what how my nieces and nephews will make it in an endless future of war and famine.  It explains the world.

Now go forth and do with that information what you will.