1. Strawberries or blueberries? Strawberries, every time.

2. “Legally Blonde 2” or “Terminator 3”? Pirates of the Caribbean 🙂

3. Hamburgers or hot dogs? Hamburgers.

4. Boating or hiking? Hiking.

5. Suntan lotion or sunblock? Sunscreen.

6. “Big Brother” or “The Amazing Race”? Neither.

7. Beach Boys or Jimmy Buffett? Beach Boys.

8. Grow your own produce or buy from supermarket/greengrocer/farm stand? Wish I could grow my own. Supermarket.

9. Drive with car windows/top down, or with air-conditioning on? Windows if it’s not heinously hot. Which, in St. Louis, is rare. I usually dislike air conditioning.

10. Go away for vacation, or stay at home? What vacation? Comic-Con is the first vacation I’ve had in years.

Which Fanfiction Term Are You?
a quiz from pot and staffs

Rotten Tomatoes’ review of Pirates. Read it. It’s funny. Thus:

yearning for the rash and the adventurous and the romantic that you — okay, I — let out a little gasp of frustration every time Orlando Bloom fails to kiss Keira Knightly, or Johnny Depp fails to kiss Keira Knightley, or Johnny Depp fails to kiss Orlando Bloom. God, somebody kiss anybody, I just can’t stand the anticipation anymore.

Monday Mission 3.27

1. A theme you may notice in the MM more often than others is “the road not taken.” It fascinates me to no end the way one single decision can change the course of one’s life. To think, if I hadn’t gone there that day I’d never met her, or if I had only waited for the phone call, or I am so glad I didn’t get on that plane that day. Can you think of one single decision you made that changed the course of your life. A decision where if you had done something else, everything would be different now? If I hadn’t gone to that Women in Engineering Day at Wash U for extra credit in Physics class, I never would have learned that Wash U had Biomedical engineering and that BME could be used as a starting point for tissue engineering and I wouldn’t have spent four years cursing my classes in college. I most likely would have gone to Mizzou or another state school in biology or even art.

2. Or maybe you think “the fates” have it all planned out for us. Do you think every life has a pre-determined course, that we will wind up at point X regardless of the decisions we make? I think everything happens for a reason. We won’t always understand those reasons, but I do think we have some control over our fate. A man can change his stars.

3. This train of thought leads, of course, to relationships. I personally do not believe in “soul mates,” but many do. I can’t deny that some people are just right for each other. However, there are plenty of other relationships that crash and burn because it is not a good fit. Do you think that it is that left up to us and random chance to decide who we are with? Are we are guided to the person we were meant to be with or could you be with the wrong person while “the one” is still somewhere out there? I think there probably is a soulmate for everyone out there. Now, *finding* the soulmate is the problem. I could just be dealing with romantic denial, but I gotta think the reason I haven’t found anyone yet is that God is waiting to reveal the perfect one to me 🙂

4. At the 4th of July parade, I saw this fella with a HUGE beer belly. That right there is enough to make me swear off beer! I am not a beer drinker. I’ve never liked the flavor. As a college kid I drank my share, but I had to learn to tolerate the flavor, and only could if the beer was icy cold. It was never refreshing, it was always a means to an end. It used to be fun, or what I thought was fun then. Things have changed a lot, and as I’ve aged my tolerance has lowered and it doesn’t take much to make me drunk, so I just avoid it. Do you like to drink and get drunk? When was the last time you were drunk or hung over? What was the occasion? How did it feel at the time? How did it feel the next day? I don’t like getting drunk regularly. When I know it can’t hurt me and I don’t have to be anywhere the next day and I’m with friends, it’s alright. I have had a (mostly) very good time the three times I’ve been really well and truly drunk. The last time was at Alex’s birthday party, and while the evening was very fun, the early morning hours weren’t so great. I didn’t end up sleeping until about 5 am on Saturday morning, and let me tell you, driving home when the sun is coming up is just wrong. I have to say that was probably the longest time I’ve been drunk. And it won’t happen again anytime soon. Unless we go wild and crazy at Comic-Con, which I can’t really imagine…

5. On the same topic, have you ever done anything you regret while “under the influence?” What happened? Do you remember it or did you have to be told? I’ve never blacked out when drunk. Sort of a mixed blessing. I did tell Ross I loved him when he took me out for my 21st birthday…I figured what the hell. I lied and said I didn’t remember the next day. I felt bad. But I was so embarassed that I’d actually said that. I said it in french, which he didn’t know, then I said it in spanish, which he did…needless to say we didn’t talk so much after that. Even though he lived in the apartments next to me. I could literally see into his room from mine. He kept his blinds closed most of the time, though.

6. I am guessing many out there won’t have answers to the above two questions. I wish I could say the same, but I thought it was “cool” to drink and do all those things because all of my so-called “friends” were doing them too. Were you/are you able to resist peer pressure in school/college? How? If not, what did you do that you wish you hadn’t? There wasn’t much reason to drink in college because I was running, and everyone knows that alcohol is bad for athletes…and alcohol is expensive. I’d rather buy books. Which I did. I never really got into the party scene, and sometimes I wish I had, but I don’t know how I’d have done it. I had a hard enough time managing college sober, so I don’t think it would have helped to be drunk.

7. What things are better left unsaid? You look fat, I’m bored, life sucks.

BONUS: Isn’t this world a crazy place? It sure is, when you consider things like Comic-Con 🙂

The Friday Five

1. What were your favorite childhood stories? You want me to pick one out of thousands? I could be trite and say the chronicles of narnia, and they were among my favorites, but nothing stands out as a bona-fide favorite or repeat reading. Although just about any Golden Book I loved.

2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children? Most of them. Especially since I’ll still have them.

3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything? Not by Golden Books, but some of the young adult novels. But pre-Harry Potter, children’s books were pretty much that…they didn’t have too much for older readers.

4. How old were you when you first learned to read? I’m not sure, but it was pretty early. I was precocious as a child. I remember sitting at my fifth birthday and reading a new book someone had given me instead of socializing 😉 a bookworm even then.

5. Do you remember the first ‘grown-up’ book you read? How old were you? I have no clue, but I was reading illustration-less books much much earlier than my friends. It was easy for me cause I have such a great imagination that I could visualize the story with no need for pictures. Go me.

Happy Independence Day!