A meme in two parts, Part the Second

So hey. Remember this? I never did actually finish that, did I? Does anyone actually care that I didn't finish it? Don't answer that. The old adage says "Better late than never," but in this case, I'm pretty sure "never" would have been just as acceptable as "late." Regardless, here we go!


If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished, anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
See, this is tough, because I'm more a "see lots of different places" kind of girl than a "vacation in the same place every year" one. Can I get a movable house? Yes! An RV! Can't you see me in a thoroughly obnoxious, tripped-out Winnebago that will take me any place where crossing an ocean is not required? I'd like a driver along with this, however, please. I'm not parallel parking that thing.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
For only an hour? How about Africa? I would love to see Africa first hand, but I am also not a fan of being hot and dusty and possibly contracting malaria. An hour sounds about right, I think.

What language do you want to learn?
I keep saying I want to take a French class, if for no other reason than to help me pronounce things on menus correctly. I know myself well enough to know I'd likely not have the stick-to-it-iveness to actually become fluent, however. So now I'm just thinking about Ricky's mom in Better Off Dead, and I want to answer, "The language of loooooove." (Lord knows I'm not fluent in that yet, either.)

What is your favorite color?
For what? Accessories? Red. Shirts? Black. Jeans? Very dark blue. Camping gear? Green. (Not really, but I've noticed that my decades-old duffel bag, my fold-up captain's chair, and my sleeping bag are all green, and I have no explanation for that.) Shall I go on? No, I'll stop now. Let's go with red, I guess.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your wardrobe?
I have said more than once that I might marry my blue yoga pants, so that seems the best answer, I suppose (even if I never actually wear them outside of my house). I really should have bought three pairs of those when I found them. The day they become too threadbare to warrant keeping, I may have to have a memorial service to say farewell.

What is your dream job?
Here is where I prove just what a giant nerd I am, because when I think about places where it would be fun and exciting to work, I always think of Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yes, yes, I realize it is probably not all fun and word games and lively discussions about vocabulary and usage, even at the place where dictionaries live and grow, but I want to believe a dictionary company is a magical place anyway, much like how as a kid, I believed that the people who worked in the toy store had the best job ever because obviously they got to play with all the toys. In truth, I have no idea what my dream job is, and I think it's because my dream job is probably something I don't even know is a job. It probably won't show up in any "What Color is Your Parachute"-type quiz.

What is your favorite magazine?
I don't have one, because I almost never read them. If I want to read in bits and pieces, I have the Internet. If I want to read for real, I grab a book. If I don't want to read at all, I turn on the TV. Pretty much the only time I read magazines is on trips, and I realized a few years ago that I don't leave town often enough to warrant letting several issues of a subscription pile up in between trips. This means that when I'm at my parents' house over holiday weekends, I'm forced to read the Us Weeklys that my sister brings along with her as I have no mindless reading material of my own, but that's fine, really. Someone has to witness the fact that stars really are just like us!

If you had £100 now, what would you spend it on?
This is where it becomes obvious that this meme came to us from across the pond, something you might not have suspected earlier given that I took the liberty of changing all instances of "favourite" to "favorite" on my own. According to Monkey, 100 pounds is currently $163 US, which I do have, and will probably spend either on necessary things that cost too much or things I shouldn't buy but want anyway. My favorite liquor store is having their summer sale, and I am contemplating purchasing a full case of my favorite wine for the first time ever. Would buying a case of wine make me a grown-up or a drunkard? Also, would that fall into the "necessary things that cost too much" category or the "things I shouldn't buy but want anyway" one? I had no idea $163 could be so stressful. I have money issues, obviously.

Describe your personal style.
Most of the things in my closet will never go out of style, because they were never actually in style to begin with. I wear a lot of basics. Solid colors. Simple cuts. I prefer to think of this approach as "classic" rather than "fashion challenged," but I'm not the one to judge that, I suppose.

What are you going to do after this?
Go to bed. On time, maybe? How many more questions are there here? Ack. Maybe not.

What are your favorite films?
Do you remember that episode of Friends where Chandler and Joey faced off against Rachel and Monica in a "who knows who best?" trivia game? One question was, "Rachel claims her favorite movie is this." (Answer: Dangerous Liaisons) The next question was, "Her actual favorite movie is..." (Answer: Weekend at Bernie's) I sort of think everyone has a dual answer like that. On the record, I might say The Philadelphia Story or The Sound of Music. Off the record, I totally love Never Been Kissed.

What's your favorite fruit?
OK, I should really know this, but are avocados a vegetable or a fruit? If they're a fruit, then I'll say avocados. If they're a vegetable, then I'll say nectarines, even though I hardly ever buy them because I'm always missing the seemingly only three-hour window during which they're ripe.

What inspires you?
Really, meme? You're going to make me be introspective and thoughtful when you just asked me about fruit and movies? I don't think so. Sorry.

Do you collect anything?
See, now this is just getting tedious. I collect magnets, from every city I visit. My fridge is getting mighty crowded.

Your favorite animal?
I think I might just start deleting questions I don't feel like answering. Like this one, for instance.

What are you currently reading?
I'm about 100 pages into Cloud Atlas, which I would have given up on nearly immediately if not for Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50 prodding me to stick it out a bit longer. (Also, the fact that David Sedaris once recommended this book enthusiastically at a reading I attended, and I don't want to believe David Sedaris could be wrong.) It's finally getting a bit better, but if I ever meet David Mitchell, I will be sure to ask him why he took what might actually be a brilliant book (verdict uncertain at this point) and stuck a dreadfully tedious 40-some page story at the very start of it.

Go to your book shelf, take down the first book with a red spine you see, turn to page 26 and type out the first line:
I am too lazy to do this, so I am going to decide that the orange spine on the copy of The Thorn Birds that has been sitting on my coffee table since my friend Jenny lent it to me a few weeks ago is close enough. In that case, "sails. When the longboat washed ashore on the wild." Fascinating, no? I'm sure if I'd only taken the time to get up and find an actually red spine, the result would have been far more riveting.

By what criteria do you judge a person?
I'm sure all of you assume I am going to say "their grammar," so I might as well say "their grammar." I live to be predictable, obviously.

What skill would you like to acquire immediately?
The skill to get myself to shut down my computer and get to bed at a reasonable hour on every week night? That's not exactly a skill, is it? Still, best work on that.

A meme in two parts, Part 1

So. Yeah. It seems I've got nothing. Those who can, do. Those who can't, steal. Actually, lifting a meme from Monkey is hardly stealing. The point of a meme is to repeat it. (Seriously, it is pretty much the definition.) But calling it stealing makes me feel much edgier than I actually am, and considering the riskiest thing I have done this week was to eat salad dressing that expired 16 months ago, I have to take my rebel victories where I can.

So then. A meme. Here we go.

What is your current obsession?
The not-very-interesting and yet oft-talked-about Big Dig in my front yard. Actually, that is a lie. If I were truly obsessed with that landscaping project, I would be taking the initiative to research plants and plans myself, rather than simply slogging through the manual labor and relying on my pal Angela to do the design work and idea-ing. So I guess that leaves me with Facebook? I would hardly call that an obsession, however, as such a treasure trove of absurdity fully warrants frequent mention! Consider the most recent evidence...

OK, here is where I was going to tell you three brief Facebook stories. True to my usual form, however, these brief stories ballooned into a post in and of themself, so I shall table those for another day. Or possibly not post them at all. Perhaps my current obsession is simply blogging about Facebook, as it seems to come up in far more posts than I intend or would like. Maybe my current obsession is worrying about which things I've blogged about too often, as recently I scanned some recent entries and realized I had mentioned the same friend in somewhere around five out of seven consecutive posts, and I worried that either A) the Internet would think I have only one friend, or B) all of the other friends who I DO HAVE (really!) would grow jealous that they are not mentioned as often. Does generally absurdity and overanalysis count as an obsession? Maybe I should just move on to the next question...

What is your weirdest obsession?
I played a card game with my friends' daughter on that recent camping trip, and it reminded me that I'm a little bit obsessive about a neat and tidy discard pile. I can't be the only one who compulsively straightens the cards every time someone carelessly tosses a card haphazardly askew atop the deck, though, right? And besides that, I rarely play cards, so if that is a bizarre obsession, it's not one that comes up too often. So instead, I guess I'll go with my need to look under my bed every night before I can climb into it.

I don't even know what I'm looking for; if someone were hiding under my bed, the half-credit self defense class I took in college surely didn't equip me physically or emotionally to deal with it. Besides that, there are plenty of other nooks and crannies in my house where a potential intruder might hide until I'm asleep, and I don't check all of those... I'll admit that I used to, in my old apartment, however. It was like a checklist I had to complete each night when I got home. When I moved into this house, I quickly decided it was simply too time-consuming to search my entire home for imaginary burglars and rapists every single day. I must have kept the under-bed check as some sort of strange compromise. As a sidenote, if any of you ever do decide to break and enter at my place, I guess I've just told you where is and is not a good place to hide.

What are you wearing today?
What am I wearing, or what was I wearing? To work, I wore a navy blue, ruffle-sleeved t-shirt, one of my four pairs of identical Mossimo jeans, and the red Madden Girl platform wedges that continually infuriate me with their simultaneous shoddy workmanship and impossible cuteness. Damn you, Steve Madden; there is no reconciling the two!

That was several hours ago, however. By now, I have switched to a pair of striped pajama pants (source: Target, obviously) and the t-shirt that I proudly earned after downing ten* murky blue-green Delusions at The Grand Illusion in Eau Claire, a bar of which I have many fond memories but which according to my friend Google, still has no web page of its own. (What the heck, GI? Were you not informed that it is currently 2009, and the Internet, as it turns out, is NOT just a fad?)

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* NOT all in the same night. They implemented a handy coupon/ticket system wherein you collected a card each time you purchased said drink and finally, one happy day, you could walk in with your stack of ten turquoise cards and walk out with a t-shirt featuring a sunglass-wearing Uncle Sam and the tagline "We want YOU to be Deluded!" (Message on the back: "The few, the proud, the deluded.") Ah, college.
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What's for dinner?
I had myself a lovely salad of butter lettuce with chicken, raspberries, pecans, blue cheese, and the aforementioned 16-months-expired dressing. It was a raspberry Cabernet vinaigrette. I'm still alive. So far. If you don't hear from me again, kindly direct the emergency personnel to the condiment shelf in my fridge for the possible source of my demise.

What would you eat for your last meal?
I just misread this as "What DID you eat for your last meal" and I was all set to direct you right back to the lovely salad I just described (which might actually BE my last meal, if 16-months-expired dressing turns out to be something worth worrying about). Since that was NOT, in fact, what the question was asking, however, I will go with a fantastically carb-heavy, nutrient-light combination of mac & cheese, pizza, and mashed potatoes, followed by a brownie and a slice of chocolate chip cheesecake for dessert. And red wine, of course. Obviously red wine.

What's the last thing you bought?
The makings for the aforementioned raspberry and blue cheese salad, along with various other grocery items. Obviously I did not buy dressing, however. Also, I promise the expired dressing will not make an appearance in every remaining question in this post.

What are you listening to right now?
I was listening to The Current, but then they played a Laurie Anderson song that was far too distractingly annoying to peacefully serve as background music, and I had to complain loudly to my radio and then shut it off. Now I am listening to nothing but the taps on my keyboard and the clicking of the unusually noisy lamp timer that I rarely use and should really just unplug by now.

What do you think of the person who tagged you?
Well, she didn't actually tag me, but I think Monkey is smart and witty and delightful, and I long for the day that I manage to escape my family over a holiday weekend and enjoy a drink or three with the Rural Zorro instead. By my estimates based on her vague hints as to her whereabouts, the Monkey homestead is approximately an hour away from my parents' house, and given that there seems to be a blizzard or an ice storm every time I go home, this could be tricky to arrange. Is Christmas or Thanksgiving ever scheduled in August? No? Well, I guess we can always rely on global warming to facilitate this plan. (A bonus to catastrophic climate change! Drinks with Monkey! Hurrah!)


Oh MY but this is a long meme. Is anybody going to keep reading if I keep typing here? Besides that, wasn't I supposed to be in bed two hours ago already, after being out entirely too late for a Wednesday at the Bob Schneider show last night? The answers to those questions are "likely no" and "oof; YES," respectively. How about I split this here and give myself blog material on TWO days instead of just one? Sounds like a plan to me. To be continued, then...

Never underestimate the appeal of a good bandwagon

Am I the last one Courtney tagged for the seven things meme to actually comply and post my seven things? Wait. Lemme check if Aaron's on that yet... Nope. Whew. I do hate to be last. (Hey, maybe that could be one of my seven things...)

Anyway, you're probably familiar with this game. I mention and link to the person who tagged me (Courtney, remember?), then I post a bunch of annoyingly demanding rules, type seven random things about myself, and tag seven people to do the same. I won't force any of you to do this, but if you haven't yet and want to, consider yourself tagged!

It is actually harder than it should be to come up with seven random things about myself that I haven't already told you. I have searched for and located the seven things I posted the last time I did this meme to ensure I'm not repeating any of those, but if you notice that any of the following are nestled away someplace else within my three and three-quarter years worth of posting, just give yourself a gold star for reading retention and cut me a break, OK?

All right. Here we go. Seven more random things about yours truly.

1. Sometimes, at stores where the fitting room is manned (e.g., Target, New York & Co.), if I take a whole bunch of stuff into the fitting room and determine that I don't want any of it, I feel guilty for making the fitting room girl restock everything, so I give back all but only one or two items, pretending I'm going to buy those. Then I return them to the appropriate spot on the sales floor myself before I leave.
   
   
2. I buy probably a disproportionate amount of my clothing at Target. I am not ashamed, however, particularly since the only people who know they are Target clothes are people who also buy their clothes at Target. I love being out at a bar or a theater and spotting some other girl in something I own and secretly saying to myself, "Target dress! I have that."
   
   
3. I did not have a library fine for at least 16 years. In the past year, I have incurred three of them. I really want to believe that hording library books isn't the most reckless and irresponsible thing I've done all year, but I'll have to think on that to be sure.
   
   
4. Somewhere in my much-outdated 100 Things list, I mention that my standby drinks are a hard cider or a Captain & Coke. I do not remember the last time I ordered either of those. For a period of at least a year, I tried to decide upon a new standby drink. I never did consciously and resolutely pick one, but in the mean time, I think red wine and gin & tonic became my two new standbys.
   
   
5. My standby bring-along dish for parties is a pan of seven-layer bars. I didn't realize they were my signature until I heard a friend at a party once (who hadn't yet seen me come into the party) spy the seven-layer bars on the food table and say, "Oh! Stefanie must be here!" (Seven-layer bars, by the way, are delicious. They are also ridiculously easy to make. No matter the mild mocking; I don't think I'll be choosing a new standby bring-along any time soon.)
   
   
6. For my entire life (save the five months during college when I lived in Scotland), I have lived in the upper Midwest. You may have heard that it's prone to snow in the upper Midwest. A lot, sometimes. Despite this fact, I have not owned a proper pair of snow boots perhaps since high school. (This will be remedied with my Christmas gifts this year, by the way. It's about damn time.)
   
   
7. I saw a TV show once where a lawyer asked a woman in court what her earliest memory of her father was. "I'm on a bike and he's teaching me to ride," she answered immediately. I thought it was absurdly improbable that anyone would be able to identify their earliest memory so quickly and confidently, without a moment of, "Gee; that's a good question. Let me think on that..." first. Thereafter, I tried to determine what my absolute earliest memory is. For some reason, the one that sticks out is me, at three years old, walking around the play room at my nursery school, looking through a toy magnifier. I have no idea what my earliest memory involving my father is, however. Guess I'd better continue to think on that in case it ever comes up in court.
   
   

When you care enough to right-click and choose "Save Image As"

So by now we all know about Someecards, right? If not, you might not want to click that link unless you have an hour or so to spare. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I have sent many a Someecard to various friends already, but today Erikka and Allie gave me a way to send Someecards to all of you at the same time! Yay! I think this game has now passed itself along to enough people that it is officially a meme, which means that all of you should join in and play, too.

How? Easy. Just find five Someecards that describe yourself in amazingly unflattering ways. Here are mine.

Quirkier than thou

Well then. Blog Share was fun, but it was two days ago. I'd probably best be posting something new on top of my guest writer's fine contribution to the anonymous posting game, right?

Speaking of being behind, I'm a little late to the party on something else, too. My good pal Lara tagged me for a meme-er-roo a few weeks ago already, and I neglected to do anything about that. I am ignoring perfectly reasonable requests and I'm also making up silly words for words that were already silly enough. (Meme-er-roo? Did I really just do that? I did. Let's just move on, shall we?)

For this one, my task is to list six unspectacular quirks about myself. I'm sure I could come up with six quirks in addition to the 106 already spattered elsewhere within this site, but today is Friday, which means I'm going to make this a Friday Five instead. I'm also not tagging anybody to do this after me (though feel free to jump on this bandwagon if you feel so inclined). Look at me, breaking rules left and right. I'm quite the rebel, obviously.

Anyway. Six Five unspectacular quirks about yours truly. Start the drum roll now.

1. Unlike Lara with her errant vertebra, I can do a cartwheel. Yes, even at the creaky old age of 34. I actually make a point to do a cartwheel at least once a year just to make sure I still can. (That last part might actually be more of a quirk than the fact that I can do a cartwheel is.)
   
   
2. I like ice in my milk. The only way I'll drink it is if it's very cold, and ice is the simplest way to ensure that. No, it doesn't taste too watered down (for me). No, I don't think it's weird.
   
   
3. I like cherries, but not anything artificially cherry flavored. Also, I'd throw maraschino cherries into the category of "things artificially cherry flavored." Yuck.
   
   
4. I remember all the words to a song about a tortilla vendor that we learned in Spanish class in 10th grade. Or, I thought I did, anyway. When I sang this song to a guy in Mexico a few years ago, he seemed to have no idea what I was singing, so perhaps my Spanish (and my singing) is even worse than I thought.
   
   
5. Have I already told you about the toe thing? I don't wear flip flops or Tevas in public because I'm self-conscious about my mutant baby toe. Come to think of it, I think I have written about that before. And I should probably just stop mentioning it, lest you think I'm more of a monster than I actually am. I promise it's not anything that would scare a small child. One toe just sort of rests atop the adjacent one is all. On a freak level of 1 to 10, I like to think it rates no higher than a 4.5. No, I will not post a photo to let you judge.

So. What quirks have YOU not yet shared with the Internet at large (body-related, food-related, or otherwise)? Come on, spill 'em.

Everybody's doing it; why can't I?

You may have seen this over at Bleeding Espresso or various other spots in the blog and Flickr 'hood. I'm not one to turn down a good bandwagon, so ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my Flickr "About Me" mosaic:



You should play, too! Here's how it works.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.


I would like to note that I have #5 to thank for my groggy head and burning, red, tired eyes today. (I love you, Rhett, but I would love you more if you could figure out a way to start earlier if you're going to keep your hips swinging and your arm spinning through two encores.) Secondly, I would like to add that Flickr's pool of mashed potato pictures is sadly disappointing.

That is all.

Oh. Except that also, no, the word I typed to describe me was not "thick calved." I'm really not supposed to provide commentary on every one of these, am I? Surely by now you know that's simply not the way I roll.

All right then. That is all. Carry on.

Seven

About a hundred years ago (or maybe only a month ago), 3Carnations tagged me for that "seven things" meme. I was caught up in NaBloPoMo at the time, but in the spirit of "better late than never," let's take care of that now, shall we?

Seven random/weird/miscellaneous facts about Stefanie (you know, in addition to the 327 already buried somewhere in my archives):

1. I have never been anywhere close to fluent in Spanish, and yet, certain Spanish phrases regularly pop into my head in response to various things. "Que ganga," I'll think, when something is particularly a bargain. "Listos?" I'll ask instead of just saying, "We ready?" Possibly the strangest, though, is how often I start an inner dialog with "El eso es..." I'm not examining the rest of my thoughts in Spanish, so I have no idea why my brain begins with, "The thing is..." in Spanish, and yet, for some reason, it often does.
   
   
2. A few weeks ago, in my Stations of the Cross post, I mentioned playing the flute in grade school, and the woman I know as "Vermont Stefanie" left what was one of my favorite comments ever in reply. "I'd have pegged you more as an oboist, or maybe a cellist. Something more mysterious and complicated," she said. Mysterious and complicated. I love it. Again, if I were a tag line sort of girl, "I'm mysterious and complicated" would be another fine tag line for my blog. Anyway, in response to that comment, I thought I should explain exactly why I picked the flute, way back when fifth-grade me signed up for band. I had actually been leaning towards the saxophone, but since several of my friends were taking flute, that seemed like a good choice, too. So how did I pick? Well, I rode the bus to and from school every day, and I thought about carrying a saxophone case on the bus several times a week, and then thought about carrying a much smaller and less cumbersome flute case instead, and flute seemed like the obvious choice. You know, it's memories like those that make me realize I have always been the practical-to-a-fault over-thinker I am today. I didn't grow into this as an adult; even as a kid I was too sensible for my own good.
   
   
3. Somewhere buried in the "100 Things" list I wrote ages ago is a line that says "You will never, ever hear me say 'Let's go dancing!'" This is true. I hate to dance in public. I will attempt to play along and be a good sport on occasion, particularly at weddings or when sufficient alcohol is involved, but I never feel comfortable or confident about it. At home, though? At home, when the right song comes on the radio, I love to dance. Unfortunately, the dancing I do is in no way suitable for public viewing. There is kicking and jumping and side-to-side bopping. There are many wild arm gestures. As far as I'm concerned, this is the only way dancing is fun, but I will not let anyone (except possibly--inadvertently--my across-the-street neighbors) see me do it.
   
   
4. Much as I complain about shoveling when it snows, I actually sort of like shoveling at night. It's so dark and peaceful--the only light is from the streetlights and the only noise is the sound of my shovel scraping against the sidewalk and the similar scrapes from neighbors' shovels down the block. It's almost meditative, and though I have no interest in making time for shoveling every night (You hear that, snow? Don't go getting any ideas, OK??), as a once-in-a-while thing, it's actually sort of calming and nice.
   
   
5. Jingle Bell Rock has long been one of my very least favorite Christmas songs, but at some point in my childhood, I must have actually liked it, because I chose it to play for the Christmas piano recital one year. Our teacher believed in the Suzuki "learn by ear" method, and she instructed us all to pick a Christmas song and learn to play it without any sheet music. Our parents and other guests at the recital were to guess what each song was. My sister won some sort of prize for stumping the audience... not because she wrote her song so poorly it was unrecognizable but because she picked a relatively obscure one--the song the Whos of Whoville sang in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
   
   
6. As a kid I was irrationally afraid of flies. Not even the giant biting kind, but just regular tiny houseflies. My mom still enjoys telling people about the day she came running outside to my blood-curdling scream expecting to see me missing a limb or something, only to find that I was wailing only because a fly had landed on my arm. I cannot explain this; all I can say is thankfully I'm over it by now.
   
   
7. Whenever I'm on an airplane, I order orange juice or ginger ale. Planes are typically the only place I drink either of those.
   

The follow-up to this meme is that I'm to tag five other people to participate, but I think most of you have probably already done this one by now. If you haven't (or if you have but want to do it again), feel free to consider yourself tagged. Leave me a note in the comments if you do it and I'll be sure to stop by to see your list!

The correct answer to #5 is "Teen Spirit"

Many years ago, when I still subscribed to misogynist drivel useful and culturally relevant literature such as Glamour, I remember reading an interview article featuring Gwyneth Paltrow. In the interview, she mentioned that her friends had begun teasing her about her sudden climb to fame. "I only do art films," she apparently insisted, to which they replied, "No way; you're totally a cheesy movie star."

Art films. The woman said she does only art films. Clearly this was before she signed on for View from the Top and Shallow Hal.

I'd have to say it's an unlikely and rare occasion for me to be drawing any comparisons between Gwyneth Paltrow and myself. I mean, sure, I suppose there's a possibility that I'll someday sustain a bothersome head injury and thereafter start speaking in a fake British accent and naming my children Blueberry and Potato, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's a long shot at best.

I am, however, a big ol' hypocrite just like Ms. Paltrow, apparently. When I started this blog, I was somewhat against the "list-about-me" memes. Then I decided to pick and choose which ones I was against and which ones seemed fun or worth doing. Now I'm not just posting a meme, but asking YOU GUYS to fill it out! My word; I know it is summer, but WHERE will the lazy blogging end??

Ahem. With that compelling introduction in place, allow me to tell you about the fun game Sognatrice is playing over at Bleeding Espresso right now. There's a list of twenty questions, or actually, twenty fill-in-the-blank type statements, but rather than Sognatrice completing each one with her answer, she's put it out to commenters instead. This really isn't the cop-out that it might seem to be; aren't you just as curious as I am how well people know you or don't?

So then. If you'd like to play along, copy and paste this list (or whatever portion of it strikes you) into the comments, completing each sentence with the "true" answers if you know them or amusing and absurd ones if you don't. And then go do the same thing on your own blog (if you want, of course) so we can all be lazy summertime bloggers together. Whee! Doesn't that sound like fun? I thought so. Here we go.

Stefanie is.....
Stefanie needs.....
Stefanie's best friend is.....
Stefanie's dog is named.....*
Stefanie smells like.....
Stefanie drives like.....
Stefanie craves......
Stefanie's favorite TV show is.....
Stefanie hates the actor whose name is.....
Stefanie's alcoholic drink of choice is.....
Stefanie's NON alcoholic drink of choice is.....
Stefanie's favorite musical artist is.....
Stefanie's favorite cupcake flavor is.....
Stefanie's hair is.....
Stefanie's celebrity crush is.....
Stefanie's occupation is.....
Stefanie's favorite book is.....
Stefanie's favorite color is.....
Stefanie hates.....
Stefanie wishes.....


Thanks in advance for humoring me (I hope... I could very well be met by crickets on this one, I know). Also, if it's not too much to ask, please make me smile rather than laugh. I promise that none of you are on my nemesis list, so don't be a hater, OK?

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* This is a trick question, of course, but I decided to leave it anyway, rather than replace it with something more appropriate (you know, like "Stefanie's imaginary boyfriend is named..." or "Stefanie likes wine better than..."). So do with this one whatever you like.

Two Friday Fives for the price of one (which granted doesn't mean much, since the price is "free")

So -R- and One Smart Cookie played a fun game yesterday wherein they detailed just what would be deemed splurge-worthy if they suddenly found themselves buried in gobs of superfluous cash. Handily enough, they chose to itemize their choices in five-point form, which makes this topic a perfect fit for my weekly Friday Five thing for today.

Because I love lists but I hate making decisions, I am already stressing out about all the obviously better choices I am undoubtedly forgetting (because, you know, someone is actually going to bequeath upon me ridiculous sums of money and thereafter hold me to precisely what I've written here). To avoid this undue mental agony, I am just going to go with the first five things I thought of and find peace with that somehow.

That said, here are five luxuries I would absolutely think were worth splurging on if money were no concern:

1. Remodeling. First up would be my bathroom, which desperately needs an overhaul for reasons I already detailed once before (see #11 in that post if you're actually curious). After that, I'd refinish my basement and put in a workout room and a retro-swanky bar (where I would thereafter have awesome parties using my new-found mixology skillz). Then I'd build a patio in my backyard and pay someone to landscape my property appropriately (nothing fancy or elaborate--just something prettier and more cohesive than the random shrubs and what-not I've got now). Although, hell, if I'm doing all this and money is truly no concern, I could just say "screw it" to my generic little shoebox and buy a cuter, pricier house that already has amenities such as these. I suppose that's a fine and valid option for this windfall as well.
   
   
2. Snow shoveling and lawn mowing services. I've always firmly believed this is not worth my money, as shoveling and lawn mowing take comparatively so little of my time and are things I am more than fully capable of doing on my own. If I have all the money in the world to toss away as I wish, however, you can bet I wouldn't be wasting even a minute of my free time on annoyances such as this.
   
   
3. A personal shopper. -R- picked this, too, but it would have made my list even if she hadn't mentioned it. I have no idea what to wear anymore and no interest in spending days at the mall trying to figure it out. I lost my love for clothes shopping somewhere around 1998 and haven't found a way rekindle it more than sporadically since then. I want to be cute and stylish; I just have no idea how to make that happen anymore. I would love to pay someone else to help me with that.
   
   
4. Awesome vacations. I would take way more trips than I do now, and I would pony up for lots more fancy meals, souvenirs, and add-on activities when I do.
   
   
5. A trampoline. Yes, this one is ridiculous, particularly since I'd also have to build some sort of cloaking structure around the thing so my neighbors do not think I am a lunatic (33-year-olds playing on trampolines are not the norm in Minneapolis, sadly). I don't care. It's my list, and trampolines will never not be fun.

The other side of this game is to list the five things you would never waste money on, no matter how much of it you had--the five luxuries you think just aren't worth it in any way. Here are mine:

1. Designer purses. I couldn't tell a real Fendi or Kate Spade from a fake one, and I really just do not care. Are Fendi and Kate Spade even the right examples to use here? See? I have no idea about these things. My everyday purse right now is a little red Liz Claiborne one I got for $14 at TJ Maxx, and it suits me just fine.
   
   
2. Music. I know this will be a controversial one, but it makes the list anyway. I love music, and in theory I would love to have a massive collection that I add to regularly. The reality, though, is that I just don't take the time to listen to lots of stuff from new artists. I'm not much of a downloader (I don't even know how to get iTunes tracks on my iFraud*), and most CDs I buy end up spending more time in my CD rack than in the player. It's not that I don't listen to music; on the contrary, in the car or at home something's playing at almost all times. Ever since the Twin Cities got a commercial-free radio station that I actually enjoy, however, I've spent a lot less time picking my own playlist for the day.
   
   * TM The Other Girl. (I miss you already, Regina!)
   
   
   
3. Products. I am fascinated by all the wonders within Sephora, and I love perusing "favorites" lists from true connoisseurs, but having a cupboard and shower full of half-used bottles of impulse buys I just had to try makes me weirdly nervous in some inexplicable way. I think I'm just easily overwhelmed. Perhaps I need a mentor to hone my product love.
   
   
4. A Cabin. Around here, it seems it's everyone's lifelong dream to own lakefront property somewhere up north.** I do enjoy a weekend cabin getaway as much as the next girl, and "Friend with Cabin" and "Cabin in the Family" are useful reference points without a doubt. But my own cabin? No thank you, sir. First, I do not enjoy keeping up with maintenance and repairs on my own primary house. Having to maintain two homes sounds like no fun to me at all. Second, people who have cabins feel compelled to go to the cabin every weekend from May until September. Going to the cabin becomes a task in and of itself. All that packing and unpacking, every single week? Uh-uh. Not for me. Spending summer evenings on a jam-packed freeway traversing between the city and there? No interest, thanks. I'd rather spend lots of summer weekends hanging in town with my friends and spend my cabin money on getaways to different places regularly.
   
   ** "Up north," to Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, is essentially anyplace north of where they live. It could be an hour, it could be three hours, but it must be north in order to count towards the dream.
   
   
   
5. A decorator. I know this sort of goes against what I said about a personal shopper up above, but I always sort of think hiring a decorator for your home is cheating in a way. I would love for my place to look great and I wish I had the knack for effortlessly pulling colors and textures and nick-knacks together to create a homey and cohesive look, but I think my home should be a reflection of me and my tastes, and to have someone pick stuff for me seems phony in some way.

So, want to play? You know you do. What are your picks for "worth it" or "not worth it"? Diamond-encrusted gloves? High-priced champagne? I'm dying to know.

Fives

Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I'd still say I'm not really all about the memes, but I noticed the other day that Poppy tagged me for this one, and since I've never been tagged before, I feel compelled to comply. So here we go. Last week it was fours; this week it's fives; either way, it's random information you may or may not have any interest in learning about me. Enjoy.


What were you doing 10 years ago?
Realizing I'd had enough of drunk 19 year olds vomiting in the community shower, and deciding therefore that it was time to say goodbye to life as a Resident Assistant and move off campus for my final year of school.

What were you doing a year ago?
Turning down a very nice guy who I just wasn't into... something I felt significantly less bad about when he plagiarized the "Dear John" e-mail I sent him and used it to turn down a friend of mine a few months later. This is an excellent story that I sooooo want to tell, but out of a modicum of respect for the people involved, I'll refrain from posting it publicly on the Internet.
(Update: Scratch that. Apparently I decided it was OK to write about this after all.)

Five snacks you enjoy
1. Seven-Layer Burritos from Taco Bell
2. Corn dogs (I know hot dogs are disgusting, but Mmmmm... corn dogs)
3. Kettle corn
4. Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked frozen yogurt
5. Sweet & Salty Honey Nut Chex Mix

Five songs to which you know all the words
1. Galileo, by Indigo Girls (and Closer to Fine, and Least Complicated, and half the rest of their catalog)
2. Open Window, by Sarah Harmer
3. Women & Men, by They Might Be Giants
4. No One is to Blame, by Howard Jones (shut up; it's a great song)
5. The theme from Hill Street Blues (heh heh)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
1. Buy a fancy overpriced condo in a great neighborhood
2. Quit my job without worrying about having another one lined up
3. Book small-venue concerts with my favorite artists, and pre-screen all attendees*
4. Offer to pay the tuition if my little sister would go back to school
5. Donate to various worthy causes and candidates

* I would still let other people attend, to recoup costs of the event, but my friends and I would be guaranteed front-row positioning, and the pre-screening would ensure no one ever has to put up with "That Girl"--the girl who's in front of or behind me at every single show, either having loud conversations with her friend, or flailing her arms about as though there are no personal space issues at play, or shoving herself into my back or arm... You know That Girl. She's not welcome at my shows.

Five bad habits
1. Laziness
2. Procrastination
3. The tendency to pile crap up instead of putting it in its proper place (this is probably covered by #1 & 2, actually...)
4. & 5. A couple other things I don't feel like admitting publicly

Five things you enjoy doing
1. Reading
2. Watching movies
3. Walking
4. Traveling
5. Playing board games

Five things you will never wear again
1. Poufy bangs
2. A bandana as a necklace
3. Culottes (or gauchos, or whatever anyone's calling them in any given year)
4. Turtlenecks with little pictures printed on them
5. Pleated khakis

Five favorite toys
1. Fabrizio, my new not-iPod (it's a Creative Zen Sleek)
2. Knitting needles
3. My computer
4. Electronic Boggle
5. DVD player

As usual, I left off the "who you're tagging" part. If you want to play along, consider yourself "tagged." If not, as you were...