1. What is your relationship status?

2. Who is your celebrity crush?

3. Who is your favorite band?

4. What is your favorite movie?

5. What kind of pet do you have?

6. Where do you live?

7. Where do you work?

8. What do you look like?

9. What do you drive?

10. What’s your favorite tv show?

11. Describe yourself.

12. What’s your name?

13. What’s your favorite candy?

* NOTE: I did grow up the daughter of a restaurant / bar manager, served tables, etc. Knowledge, my friends, not just experience thankyouverymuch.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36.Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

I’m quiet, smart, sensitive, and I’m judging you. (via hakeber)

So, an interview, yes, because maybe she thinks I’m smart and funny, too? Ha, have I got her FOOLED! But her questions are pretty interesting and it’s a little different from the standard meme since they’re specifically related to me. And as the blogosphere is a lovely, caring and sharing space, YOU can participate and have me interview you. Plus, you get a post idea out of it. And I’m all for that, right? Right.

1. What is something that can really get on your nerves?
People who contradict themselves. I know so many people who complain about others doing the same. exact. things. that they do, and it drives me nuts and makes me want to shove a mirror into their faces. Phew! That was cathartic. Next…

2. If money and logistics were no object, where would you want to live and why?
Maui. Hands down. I went there for my honeymoon with the exhusband and it is the most lush, beautiful place I’ve ever been. The weather is perfect year-round. The people are so warm and inviting, the culture is rich in history, and the ocean… my god the ocean. I literally still have dreams about snorkeling off the beaches in the deep, clear blue water. Sigh.

3. What was your most awkward phase?
I only get to pick one?! I guess the very-typical-answer of my teens. I was pretty introverted and didn’t really find my “voice” until years and years later. It’s just such a horrible time in your life when you’re extremely insecure, struggling to find your identity, and are (way too) heavily influenced by peers. I was always frustrated and emotional, running around the house screaming OH MY GOD WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND?! Ugh, I would never want to re-live those years again. Did I mention the bad hair? Yeah.

4. Which movie genre would best fit as the format for a movie about your life?
Comedy. Not the “ha-ha” Robbin Williams kind of comedy, but the clumsy, awkward “The Office” kind of comedy. My life has had its ups and downs, but thankfully I’m used to making an ass out of myself and it’s always funny enough to laugh about it.

5. How do you care for your gorgeous hair?
The easy one! My hair is totally no fuss. I shampoo and condition and blowdry (sometimes straightening with my Chi). I try not to use any products, but come summer the humidity necessitates some sort of goop to prevent a ‘fro from beginning. A tried and true remedy is Frizz-Ease Secret Weapon. This stuff stood the test of many Florida summers!

Okay, so do you want to play? You can leave a comment saying, “Interview me.” I will email you 5 questions (and yes, I get to pick the questions. Ha ha, sucker!). You will update your blog with the answers to the questions, as well as include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. Wash, rinse, repeat. Voila!

Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, books you’ve read that you wished you used a 10 foot pole to avoid are both BOLD AND STRICKEN, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) (this was the answer to my grad school application essay as well as which is my favorite book of all time)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. *The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible – I’ve read parts, but not back to back or even in order
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. +The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. +Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams) (read this in 9th grade and hated it. re-read later and loved it)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

The Peach Random Gentle Love Master (RGLMf)           Playful, kind, and well-loved, you are The Peach.          For such a warm-hearted, generous person, you’re surprisingly experienced in both love and sex. We credit your spontaneous side; you tend to live in the moment, and you don’t get bogged down by inhibitions like most women your age. If you see something  wonderful, you confidently embrace it.  You are a fun flirt and an instant sweetheart, but our guess is you’re becoming more selective about long-term love. It’s getting tougher for you to become permanently attached; and a guy who’s in a different place emotionally might misunderstand your early enthusiasm. You can wreck someone simply by enjoying him.                             Your exact opposite: The Nymph                        Deliberate Brutal Sex Dreamer                           Your ideal mate is adventurous and giving, like you. But not overly intense. DREAD: The False Messiah          CONSIDER: The Loverboy, The Playboy, or The Boy Next Door

Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid – Free Online Dating.

I grew up overseas and over in the Phillipines or Taiwan (or wherever the hell I was that year), and we didn’t have Saturday morning cartoons.  Y’all heard me right – NO CARTOONS.  But my various family members and friends of my parents back in the states took pity on us.  They taped them on VHS and shipped them to me so I didn’t miss out on the adventures of the Smurfs or Shirt Tales, etc.

However, my favorite part of watching these tapes over and over again were the commercials.  The commercials would almost always feature kids getting off of their yellow schoolbus and walking home from a bus stop.  Now, let me state that I never saw a yellow schoolbus until I moved to the US.  Ours was always a government bus, painted black on the outside and mint green on the inside.  And there was no such thing as a "bus stop."  We were all dropped of at our individual homes due to, um, security measures, so obviously the yellow schoolbus was FASCINATING to me.

Once these kids got home, they’d all run straight into the kitchen and this is where all the glory began.  Their mom would turn around with a tray of cookies fresh from the oven, and the kids would pour themselves a pitcher of kool-aid from a Kool-aid Man pitcher!  Most of the time my mom was either  volunteering or going to dances and things at the base.  The only person I came home to was Nenna, our maid, who always fed me american cheese & mayo sandwiches on white bread.  Yes, I just typed that.

But the most memorable commercial to me was the Sweet Pickles commercial.  These were a set of books that were advertised via tv.  The commercial always showed them arriving at the lucky kid’s house via the Sweet Pickles Bus, hand
delivered by the Sweet Pickles characters (giant costumed animals).  Their jingle went something like "Smart moms know how kids’ minds grow….upon Sweet Pickles!"  I begged and begged my parents to bring the Sweet Pickles bus to our door, but they just weren’t having it.  I’d get other books (ie. OTHER BOOKS NOT HAND DELIVERED BY A BUNCH OF FURRIES RIDING IN A GREEN PICKLE), but I was always disappointed.  I just couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just come to me.  ME!  I was good, I liked to read… in fact, I had no friends so I could devote myself to reading all the time.  Wouldn’t the citizens of Sweet Pickle find me to be most worthy of a delivery?!

So there I was, enduring the bitter disappointment of youth.  Soon we moved to the US and I realized that suburbia wasn’t entirely Sunny Delight commercials or Norman Rockwell paintings.  I became immune to all the temptations of a far away land via VHS, and indulged in some things that made me forget the feeling of want.