29 posts tagged “qotd”

What's your favorite time of day and why?

Well, that’s such an easy question, it hardly bears answering.  My favorite time of the day is: Happy Hour!!

Tonight, the Beloved is enjoying a zanahorita, and I’m prepared to enjoy a tall, cool tequila sunrise, which I think is an incredibly under-rated drink.  It’s also a great, easy drink to make and perfect for summer:

Sunrise at Sunset

Tequila Sunrise

Fill tall glass with ice:
Add tequila to there (first row of blue dots)
Add orange juice to there (second row of blue dots)
Top with club soda

Mix with spoon, and drizzle in grenadine (or maraschino cherry juice).  They heavier syrup will collect at the bottom producing the “sunrise” effect.

Happy Friday!

If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words, what would you write?
Submitted by mitzie.

I left this as a comment the first time ancora impara did this, but I'll recycle it here...(and I don't even need six words)

True to myself.  Finally.

What are your top five break-up songs?
Submitted by gt.

I don't really know about five, but this song is really one of my favorites -- full of snarky goodness.  The Beloved says I like it so much because I used to treat women like this, but we all know that's not true.

Someday (You Will Be Loved)

Death Cab for Cutie

Also notable because Death Cab just released their latest album, Narrow Stairs, yesterday -- so I've been all DCFC today.

What was your first car?

My first car was a 1980 Datsun-210 (back before we called them Nissans here…)

Datsun 210

This picture is a reasonable representation, except mine was a four-door.    Oh, and I didn’t have any hubcaps (back before we called them wheel covers…).  And the paint didn’t look that good – there were some serious rust spots.  The suspension wasn’t nearly as  good as the one in this picture, either.  And don’t forget the rusted out floor panel (back before we called them safety hazards...) beneath the passenger’s feet – yeah, don’t step down too hard.

I bought that car during my junior year of college so that I could drive back and forth to my internship at DuPont.  I kept it all the way through graduate school.  It couldn’t really go over 70 mph (it would literally start to shake), and didn’t have air conditioning.  It would also tend to overheat in the summer – for which the solution was to run with the HEAT on (it would dissipate the heat from the engine).

Despite its “eccentricities”, I loved that car.  I bought it with 56,000 miles on it, and turned it in eight years later with 186,000.

Constitution

What is your favorite quote and why?

The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.
P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - )

What is your favorite movie that was released in the 1980s?

C'mon -- a scientist is the hero --- he's handsome, smart, resourceful, deals with the supernatural, beats up Nazis AND gets the girl.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Special Collector's Edition)

What is the worst date you've ever been on?

Really?   Do we have to go there?

Alright, rewind the clock all the way back to the Spring of 1985 – Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was big and I was a sophomore in college.  I lived in a co-ed hall and I was friends with this cute pair of sorority sisters named Risa and Diane.  They had a spring dance in which they were supposed to set up one of their sisters with someone they personally knew but the sister didn’t.  R & D asked me if I wanted to take their friend Doreen to this dance.  Figuring that it would score me some points with Diane (who I was interested in), I said sure.

Now rewind a bit more to the Fall of 1983, when cuts from “Thriller” were still ruling the airwaves.  I was a freshman in an all-guys floor.  Most of us got along pretty well.  Except for one of us.  My randomly-assigned roommate Erik.  Erik was ok, but he was a loner and chose not to partake in the dubious male sub-culture that was emerging on our floor.  At first, we tried to bring Erik in, and after being ignored repeatedly, I guess you could say we sought to teach him the error of his ways… you know, “pennying” him in so that he’d be late for class, “liberating” some of the cookies from his care packages, hiding an occasional textbook and the like.  Not surprisingly, Erik moved out at the end of the semester to a different dorm.  Mission accomplished. (In retrospect, my friends and I were real jerks to him, but we were 18, our moral centers were still somewhat under construction…)

Anyway, forward back to 1985 and the day of the dance.  I send my new roommate (Roomie) to Doreen’s with flowers that have a note from me saying that I’m looking forward to meeting her that night – a nice touch (I thought) with two objectives:  1) convey a sense of excitement for the evening, and 2) have Roomie report back as to whether Doreen was hot.  She was definitely excited and pleased by the flowers, but Doreen was determined to be “o-k”.  Ah well.

Anyway, I pick her up and we go to the dance.  I thought she was nice enough.  A little dull, not very outgoing.  The evening progresses…we dance, we mingle, we chat.  It’s going fine.  During one break, we discussed our freshman year.

Doreen: Where did you live last year?
Steve:  I lived in Dickinson B.
Doreen: Oh, so did my good friend Erik <lastname>.
<Steve being not so swift>
Steve: Ooooh!  Erik was my roommate 1st semester.  How’s he doing?
<Doreen’s smile fades, her brow furrows, face reddens>
Doreen:  YOU!!
Steve: ummmm…
Doreen:  That was YOU?!?! YOU. WERE. HIS. ROOMATE!?!?
Steve:  eerrrrrr…
Doreen: YOU #$&$#!!!

At this point, Doreen throws her drink in my face (the only time that’s happened to me) and storms off leaving me the center of attention of the crowd that’s overheard and seen the escalation.  I quickly slunk away.

So … how’s that for karma?

Oh, and I never got the date with Diane, either.

2008 is the Year of the Rat.  Which animal year were you born in?

Funny, how this stuff works out.  I am a snake.  I'm pretty sure I've had several ex-girlfriends refer to me as such -- who knew they were all into Chinese astrology?

Positive Traits: Wise, profound, clever, logical, practical, intelligent, creative, compassionate, discreet, cautious
Negative Traits: Judgmental, anxious, lazy, secretive, manipulative, indifferent, naive, fussy

I might be lazy and secrative, but I don’t think I’m fussy… ;)

Me

The person born in the year of snake is the wisest and most enchanting of all (I like the way this is starting). He or she can become an Ambassador, a Mediator, a restaurant owner or a talented musician (we'll just settle for marginal musician). Such a person is a thinker who also likes to live well: affluence (YAY FOR MONEY!!). The snake-person loves books (check), music (check), clothes (check), fine food and wine (check); but with all their fondness for the finer things in life, their innate grace and elegance gives them a dislike for frivolities, small minds (check) and foolish talk (well, I do have a blog).

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

I know...I know...the whole “musical horoscope” idea has been done before (and before that a few more times) and like most QotD’s I was willing to let it go.  But I thought that this morning I would track what songs came from my iPod as I drove to work and decide what it meant for me today:

God Has Put A Smile Upon Your Face – Coldplay
Yes, He has.  In fact, with Thanksgiving last week, I even posted about it.  I’m assuming that this is a gentle reminder to always be thankful, not just during holidays with turkey and football.  That’s fairly heavy philosophy for rubbing-sleep-from-my-eyes-pulling-out-of-the-garage time.

The Burnt-Over District – Hem
Given last month’s terrible fires here in San Diego County, this seemed a little mean-spirited of the horoscopic muse.  And then I remembered that I have to leave early today to meet some workmen that are going to convert our wood-burning fireplace into a gas-burning one.  Hopefully that does not suggest that our family room will qualify as a burnt-over anything.

Wildflower – Sheryl Crow
Apparently, while I’m home with the fireplace people, I’m supposed to cut the grass.  I wonder how the HOA got that one in there?

405 (acoustic) – Death Cab For Cutie
Hmm… this one’s tougher.  I haven’t been in Orange County or LA for a bit and have no plans on going there anytime soon.  But I DO travel CA-56 every morning on my commute (was on it when this song came on, in fact) and I decided that “fif-ty six” has as many syllables as “four-oh-five” and that I could substitute...
“Misguided by the 56 'cause it lead me to an alcoholic summer” – yeah, that still works.

Heels!

Ohio – Over the Rhine
Also a bit of a mystery, since I haven’t been to Ohio in years, but as I was listening to this moving, almost mournful, song I tried to think of why people in the Buckeye State should be so sad today.  And then I remembered --- last night UNC beat Ohio State in Columbus, helping the ACC to comfortably win (7-3) the ACC Big-10 Challenge.  Again.  Go Tar Heels!

Not bad, iPod.  Not bad.

Which person from your past, who you've lost touch with, do you wonder about the most? 
Submitted by ancora impara.

I thought this was a very thought-provoking question – pretty fitting because ancora-impara often has posts that make me think.

I’ve gotten old enough and lived in enough places that there have been scores of people that have moved in and out of my life.  In moving so often (college, grad school, post-doc, various jobs), you realize that when you leave a place that many relationships don’t really transfer to the new locale.  I’ve come to accept that.  Still, there are usually a couple of folks that stay with you from each era.

There are a number of ex-girlfriends from the grad-school days that I’d like the opportunity to apologize to (I didn’t always prioritize treating people respectfully, I think) – but I don’t really “wonder” how they are doing – so I don’t think that applies to the question.

The Learning Curve

The person that I think of most and wonder where life how they’ve ended up, was one of my first teen-age friends, Jim.  We went to the same grade school and became fast friends around 5th grade. We attended the same church, figured out how to drink (often the hard way), and generally spent our teen years pushing authority (both parental and legal) together.  I had recounted one of my favorite stories of us not too long ago.

After high school, we attended different colleges, but still got together when we would come home.  Jim steered towards a more-partying lifestyle about the time I was steering away from one, and we lost most of the commonality between us.  Around our junior year, his family relocated down to Southern New Jersey (which seemed SO FAR away at the time, and now seems absurdly close) and that effectively put the end to our friendship.

Having left the Delaware Valley early in my career, I never went back to any high school reunions, though if I knew he would be at one, I might fly back across the country just to hear his story.  I’d hope he’d want to hear mine.