Straight No Chaser

Fine

because i'm procrastinating on some homework, and terribly bored, i finally broke down and did this. let me know if we have anything in common. also, like i said, i don't have much writerly self-control, so excuse, please, the long-windedness.

1. what color pants are you wearing right now?
faded calvin klein boot-cuts from ninth grade (embarrassing not because they still fit after six years, but because i still wear them in spite of the obscene quantity of rips and tears in all the wrong places).

2. what are you listening to right now?
"daffy duck's quackbusters," my favorite looney tunes compendium, is playing in the background. a confession: daffy's voice gives me pleasant shivers, and has since i was six or seven years old. my guilty pleasure is kicking back with this tape; i'll queue it up to one of his monologues, rewind and play, rewind and play, rewind and play, over and over and over. brrr (there, i killed two birds with one stone).

3. soup or salad?
salad; i love vegetables and i'm big on texture. what a banal question though.

4. what was the last thing you ate?
a fortune cookie. my fortune said "your patience will bring you much success." such lies, those fortunes.

5. if you were a crayon, what color would you be?
forest green, hopefully; it's my favorite color and forests (jewel-encrusted and otherwise) really speak to me.

6. weather right now?
in atlanta: seventy-two degrees and raining intermittently, a jarring change from maryland, where it was frosty during the day and frigid at night, all through my spring break.

7. last person you talked to on the phone?
marcus.

8. do you like the person who sent you this?
no one sent it to me. i don't really know the person whose journal i copied it from, but i tend to like all writers by default, just because we share something so significant in common. also i've read a few entries of mariposa's journal, and we seem to see eye to eye on quite a few things. so i'll give it a pretty confident yes.

9. how are you today?
optimistic but cranky, and i'm sorely missing my bed back at home. also my hip is killing me, which has been the inexplicable case for about two weeks, and i'm strongly considering walking across the street in the rain to get it massaged.

10. favorite drink?
apple juice. when i was little my brother and i drank it in such vast quantities that our pediatrician put us on an apple juice embargo; it lasted for a year and was notably excruciating (as proven by the fact that i still remember it, more than fifteen years later).

11. favorite alcohol drink?
i don't drink so i guess i like rum when it comes in cake form, or sherry when it's used to make duck a l'orange.

12. hair color?
dark brown with dark reddish streaks.

13. eye color?
dark dark brown, basically black.

14. do you wear contacts?
when i have to, but in two years i haven't gotten used to the whole sticking my finger in my eye thing. does it ever get easier? my basic objection is, what is the guarantee that whatever bacteria that winds up in my eye won't permanently blind me? and also, why do they flatten and get sticky when i fall asleep with them in by accident? these and other unsolved mysteries make them thoroughly unpleasurable; still, they're not optional since i'm blind without them (and owlish in glasses).

15. siblings and their ages?
chad turned seventeen last saturday, the day i got home for spring break.

16. children and their ages?
definitely none.

17. favorite food?
i'm partial to thai shrimp fried rice, but really all asian food so long as it's not too spicy, and cavatappi with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes.

18. last movie you watched?
boys don't cry, over and over and over for like two weeks.

19. favorite day of the year?
i would say my birthday but it always shares a shitty weekend with valentine's day. but maybe the kisses and the presents make up for that. okay, february tenth--my birthday.

20. are you too shy to ask someone out?
yes, and not only that, after a string of (two) significant failures, i'd never do it again anyway, just on pain of threefold humiliation.

21. summer or winter?
definitely winter, because of the holidays and my birthday and the weather. i love snow, couldn't live without it (one reason atlanta is so frustrating) and would take shivering blanket-covered cuddling over the sticky summertime variety anyday.

22. relationships or one-night stands?
relationships by a wide margin. i hate temporariness and value loyalty; the kind of love a healthy relationship promotes runs circles around any kind of meaningless physical release.

23. chocolate or vanilla?
vanilla. this question is literal, right? yeah, vanilla.

24. do you want your friends and family to write back?
feel free to drop me a line if we have anything in common.

25. who is most likely to respond to the survey?
christina, and i love her for it.

26. least likely?
ummm...everyone who never reads my journal?

27. living arrangement?
i share a room with krystle, my best girlfriend in atlanta...i'm messy and she's reasonably neat, so the room is partitioned off in the middle, which is good when we have private company but a hindrance when we're trying to enjoy a movie or our soap opera together.

28. what book are you reading?
i just finished "winner of the national book award" by jincey willett. i picked it up at the train station because of the title--awfully deceptive, don't you think? the selection was pretty big and i was only giving each book cursory consideration, but i clearly thought i was about to read an actual national book award winner, not a mediocre novel ABOUT one. i was mad but it gave me something to do on the train.

29. there seems to be no question #29. if i'd written this survey it would probably have been "what do you hate more than anything right now?"
water. i spilled a glass on my desk and it soaked everything. that's what i get for having my whole life in piles on a limited surface.

30. favorite board game?
scrabble; i always win at home but rarely beat anyone outside my immediate family.

31. what did you do last night?
went to my brother's last varsity basketball game (they made it to the state finals but lost); visited some middle school friends; frantically finished doing laundry; packed to return to school; waited all night for a phone call that never came; slept in my own bed (momentous because now i'm back here).

no 32 or 33. i'm out of homemade questions so i'll skip to...

34. what inspires you?
just about everything. plane rides spring most readily to mind.

35. buttered, plain, or salted popcorn?
another dumb one. buttered; does that provide some mystical insight i don't know about? i guess it could indicate body type but that's a stretch; the question never asked whether i liked popcorn at all. and actually, i don't, and i get really antsy at movie theaters when people in neighboring seats are chewing it really loudly. but salt is gross and plain popcorn is really just corn, so buttered it is.

36. favorite car?
my 1997 nissan altima (stefan). he's teal green and completely unglamorous but has never failed me (except once this past week), we've made lots of memories together and he doesn't tell my secrets (like the fender bender hit-and-run of 2002).

37. favorite flower?
violets, i guess. they are the flower of february (the purple thing, i guess, goes with having amethyst for a birthstone). i'm not a flower person, though, because i am terrible at keeping them healthy and hate to watch them die.

38. how many keys on your key ring?
two each, but i have about seven of them.

39. can you juggle?
not balls, not boys and not immediate responsibilities (i'm one of those can't-walk-and-chew-gum folks), but i'm good with big picture stuff, and i've been known to successfully read four or five books at a time.

40. who would you hate to be trapped in a room with?
a convicted or suspected felon, or, honestly, someone with a hygiene problem.

41. 7-up or sprite?
sprite.

42. pepsi or coke?
i don't drink brown sodas but i guess the latter, since i live in the land of coca-cola products.

43. coffee?
only in ice cream form; otherwise it goes right through me and gives me the shakes for longer than it even keeps me alert. at my job last summer they more or less forced me (oh peer pressure), but i slid through without getting addicted.

44. favorite perfume?
don't have one but i like body splashes that smell like fruit. that is an embarrassingly youthful answer. but it's true; really strong perfumes detract considerably from one's aura and social marketability.

45. favorite band?
too complicated to even begin to try to answer.

46. dogs or cats?
i behave like a cat but i like what dogs stand for.

47. last place you traveled to?
home for spring break and then back here. and, during spring break, new york, which was experiencing seven-degree temperatures when we arrived and had only risen to fifteen by the time we left. and to philadelphia on the way home, to see my favorite aunt.

48. favorite dog?
when i was younger i could identify most breeds; now the only one i can think of is a bichon frise, but i guess generally my favorites are the small, portable ones.

49. organized or unorganized?
see earlier descriptions of the state of my room. i've been back for twelve hours and haven't unpacked, i can't find the matches to any of six different shoes, and my desk is stacked high with drenched papers. but i try (ha).

sooo...the end. these things always leave me wanting a little bit more.