Let's pretend it's February and call it Sweeps Week, 'cause here's a Friday Fourteen

Wow. You guys really came through on the questions this time. Thank you all for saving my poor topic-less self today. And saving I apparently need, because let me tell you just how lame I am. 3Carnations came through right away with five questions for me, but I decided to wait for ten more and make it a Friday Fifteen instead. (I am all about the alliteration, it seems. Friday Nine just wouldn't have worked.) At thirteen, I was starting to think I might need to make up two more questions to ask myself, but when number fourteen came in (with a question from L Sass) it finally occurred to me to realize, "Um, fourteen starts with F as well. I could just stop right here." I'm quick, you know. Rhodes Scholars clearly have nothin' on me.

Anyway, here you are: the answers to all your burning questions. Or, more likely, the answers to the questions you've actually never wondered about before but asked just to humor me and appease my lame plea. Either way works for me. Away we go.


1. What is the most shallow reason you ever didn't want to date a particular guy?
I am pretty sure "his looks" is the only answer I can come up with here. I am remembering in particular the guy I referred to as "Jody," because of his uncanny resemblance to Johnny Whitaker, who played one half of the twin-team "Buffy and Jody" on TV's Family Affair. Jody (whose real name was Russ, actually) was very nice and smart and seemed to like me a great deal, but I can't just will chemistry to happen. Attraction can grow, yes, if important other attributes are there. With him, though, I just didn't see it happening.

2. Have you ever had to almost literally bite your tongue to keep from correcting somone's terrible grammar faux-pas?
Come on, of course not. What kind of nit-picky grammar geek do you think I am? Oh. Right. This is me you're talking to. OK, fine. Maybe once or twice. Three times, tops. Um, I'm just going to move along to the next question now, all right?

3. What's the worst thing you've ever done/said to get out of a date?
Well, with "Jody," I told him I was just really busy with work for the next few months. It was sort of true, really; I was traveling a lot at the time and was home only a few days a week. Still, he wouldn't have been out of line to give me a disappointed, disbelieving look and say, as Lloyd Dobler did, "So, you're... monumentally busy?" The truth is, if I'd wanted to see him again, I could have found the time. I was just too lame to tell him that.

As I was typing that, though, I realized that is not actually the worst thing I have ever done to avoid a date. Probably worse was the time I agreed to have drinks with a guy I met on a canoe trip, who was going to be in the Twin Cities visiting his sister for the weekend. Initially, he seemed nice, but after a few more phone calls, I got more and more creeped out and annoyed by him, and when the night of the date came and he still hadn't confirmed any definite meeting plans (place and time and such), I left to go shopping so I would deliberately miss his call. I know. Bad. But wait. It gets worse. He finally did call, when he got into town, and he left a message on my machine rightfully wondering where I was and what happened to our plans. At that point, I felt guilty, but not guilty enough to call the local number he had given me. No, I called his home number, back in Milwaukee, where I knew he would not answer, and I left a half-assed apology and wholly improbable excuse as to my whereabouts. I'm not proud. Don't hate me. Moving on, OK?...

4. What is the last movie you saw (theater or DVD)?
The last movie I saw in the theater was The Holiday, right before Christmas. Last one on DVD was Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Or maybe it was Kids. I had both from Netflix last weekend, and I don't really remember which I watched first.

5. What is your absolute favorite food?
This is way too hard to narrow down without any sort of category or qualifications. I refer you to question 6, which lists several favorite foods.

6. What would your last meal be, if you were allowed to choose? And if you were allowed a dining companion for that meal, anyone living or dead, who would you choose?
I'm assuming you mean this is my last meal because I'm going to be prematurely put to death, right? Not just that I'm old and gray and it's my natural time to go? Because if it's the latter, I'm guessing I'll be toothless and have weak, old taste buds, so some strawberry Jello will likely suffice. If it's the former, I would like to know what I did that resulted in my death sentence, but then I would like some combination of the following: mashed potatoes (definitely mashed potatoes), pasta, pizza (preferably the Siciliana from Pizza Nea in Minneapolis), cheesecake, fudge brownies, and wine. Mustn't forget the wine.

As for who my companion would be? Oh, I don't know. I suppose whoever is my best friend or partner at the time. Or maybe Jon Stewart or David Sedaris, because it'd be best to go out laughing.

7. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
The first thing I ever remember really wanting to be was a children's book illustrator. Oddly enough, I came back to that and thought that's what I wanted to be when I graduated high school and went off to college, too. And then I decided I would never make it as an artist and didn't take even a single art class (aside from Art History, as a general education course) while in college. Go figure.

8. Do you have any recurring dreams/nightmares?
For some reason, I often dream that I'm in high school or college and can't remember my schedule, so I keep ending up late to class or in the wrong class or in class with the wrong book or notebook. I also frequently dream I've forgotten my locker combination, which is weird because for some inexplicable reason my brain actually has retained that number sequence.

9. Is there one specific personality trait that you wish you could adopt?
I sometimes wish I were more of a risk-taker and a more frequent adventure-seeker. I also could stand to deal with change a lot better than I do.

10. If someone was going to give you a whopping gift certificate, what store would you want it to be to?
Easy. Target. They have everything, after all. Or wait. Amazon. They have even more "everything"! Ooh! Or Overstock.com. Everything, but cheaper, so, more stuff for the money. Decisions, decisions.

11. If you could change one thing about your house, what would it be?
Just one? I'd redo my bathroom. Every element in it seems to be falling apart day by day, and I have this terrible fear that so much water has creeped into the walls through the cracks in the sub-par fake shower tile that the whole stall is going to give way and fall into the basement some day and I'll end up standing naked in my furnace room, wet and covered in plaster. (I have mentioned my overactive imagination before, right? Oh good. I thought so.)

If I could pick more than one thing, I'd request more closet space. Particularly on the ground floor. Do you know I have only one closet on my main level? That's just wrong, I say. I don't know what they were thinking in the '50s.

12. What is your favorite alcoholic drink?
Lately I've been on a gin and tonic kick (I started drinking those when I decided I had outgrown my previous standby drink, Captain and Coke). I am also, however, partial to White Russians, Cosmopolitans, Vodka and Cranberry, and of course wine. Usually red.

13. What is your ideal cake/frosting combo?
Chocolate on chocolate, of course. Runners-up would be yellow cake with chocolate frosting, followed by carrot cake (or, hell, any cake) with cream cheese frosting. Mmmm... cream cheese frosting. Maybe I should reconsider and bump that up to first place.

14. What is your favorite bar in Minneapolis?
L Sass is looking for some ideas for when she's home visiting the 'rents. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much I can help, as I suspect that if she's from here, she already knows about any place I might suggest. I am actually trying to discover just where the 30-somethings in my town go myself. The places I went in my 20s are not so appealing anymore, and I don't know where the people my age are hiding out. My guess is "at home in the suburbs with their kids," which does not really help me a whole lot. Anyway, my answer... I do still like Nye's on occasion (it is, after all, the Best Bar in America, according to Esquire), and I've already decided that Psycho Suzi's (with its tiki drinks and all-season cheese curds and fake wood-printed carpet) will be the official place-to-take-visiting-bloggers (should any visiting bloggers actually ever venture to the frigid north). So there are two suggestions. Do with them what you will.

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Thanks again for playing along, everyone (and for helping me avoid a default on today's Friday Five). What I should have done, of course, was ask for topics for Friday Fives from each of you! But if you have topics to spare, you likely want them for your own blog, so that would be just plain selfish, wouldn't it?