5 April 2020

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. This feature originated and published on WTIT: The Blog. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. (Past hosts include: Our first - Judd Corizan, Mr. L, Kwizgiver and Bud) Cheers to all of us thieves!

 

 

 

Stolen from Gratitude Journal on Pinterest

 

 

1. Name a highlight of your day.
These days the highlight is when Ned and I watch movies together.  We have seen several, while Marta is working from home upstairs. 

2. What made you smile today?
The squirrels in the back yard always make me smile.  Now two of them come and seem to play on the patio and only beg for food in the morning and at dinnertime.  We realized that the one we have been calling "Dexter" is really a girl, but we are keeping the name and her partner is now "Deb" (the TV character Dexter's sister was named Deborah).

3. What made you laugh today?
Same as what made me smile.  Watching the two squirrels chasing each other across the grass and up the trees is my entertainment in the afternoon.

4. Recall a time when you needed encouragement.
I think when I got the greatest encouragement is when I was making the transition from "typist" to "medical transcriptionist."  It took a couple of years and endless time looking through medical dictionaries, but I did eventually become pretty good at it.  It was my boss, who tossed me a tape and a dictionary and said "ask me if you have questions" who made me a transcriptionist.

I am also grateful to my co-author Alison Lewis, for her encouragement when we were writing Book 2 of the Lamplighters history.

5. What is a luxury you are thankful for
These days of confinement, the internet and DISH net work with hundreds of choices of things to watch on TV. 

6. Favorite childhood memory
Actually, listening to my father play the piano.  The only time he was really happy, I think, was when he was at the piano.

7. Favorite song–and why?
"For Good" from Wicked.  There are a handful of people in my life for whom these lyrics are so spot on:

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...
I have been changed for good.

8. Where is your favorite place? Why?
San Francisco.  Isn't it great that my favorite place is my home town?  I am a bigger tourist in SF than tourists I take to visit.  Any spot that has a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge is...well...golden.

9. What is your favorite scent
Freshly brewed coffee (how lucky I am that I wake up to it every day since Ned moved in!).  Puppy breath, the smell of the ocean, and freshly baked bread are close seconds.

10. What is your favorite topic to talk about?
The topic I seem to talk about most these days is the president, though I don't get much of a "conversation" about it since no one really wants to discuss it.     

11. What do you like doing so much that you lose track of time?
I can sit down here at the computer to do just one little thing and be amazed when I check the clock and realize I've been here two hours.  Or more.

12. If you had 5 minutes and the whole world was forced to listen, what would you say?
There is no point in wasting 5 minutes trying to convince Trump fans about what a terrible president he is because nobody listens, so I'd have to use my five minutes talking about how if everyone did one little thing, how much better we could make life for all of the children in the world.

13. Whose life do you envy the most, and why?
It sounds gruesome, but right now I am glad that our friends Nancianne and Ellen died before they had to deal with all this Coronavirus deal and the mishandling of everything by the president.  (Of course since they are both dead I guess I can't actually envy their LIVES, can I?)

14. What would you different with your education if you got a chance to start over?
Finish college. Though, when I look at my life and what has happened because I didn't finish, I'm not sure finishing was something I would choose to do. 

15. What would you do with your life if you had no fear?
I think I'm too old for a question like this.  When I was younger there were a lot of things I would have done but didn't because of fear (moving to France and working as an au pair in college, for example).  But these days, I'm satisfied where I am and doing what I'm doing.  And I don't even mind being quarantined.