underdogishere

And Wen tagged me for this Fiver meme a while back:

• Five favorite days of the year:
  
  As I've mentioned before, I really don't do favorites. I have no favorite color, song (or even musical genre), movie, or... pretty much anything. Well, there's an exception or two, but I won't go there ;). So I'm going to fudge this one:
  
  
  1. Any day spent on an island in the Caribbean
  
  
  2. Any day spent on a cruise ship, at sea, especially if the cruise ship is the Queen Mary 2, and more especially if it's a formal evening and the band will be playing in the Grand Ballroom
  
  
  3. Any day spent in Venice, which surely must be the most magical city on Earth
  
  
  4. Any day I get to stay in bed all day
  
  
  5. Any day I can drive my convertible with the top down


• Five things you watched this week:
  
  I don't watch television, so this is a tough one:
  
  
  1. A squadron of dragonflies swooping and moving in impossible directions -- straight sideways, straight up, and straight backwards -- as they feasted on invisible insects (probably mosquitos) above the green grass
  
  
  2. The sun rise
  
  
  3. An absolutely collosal -- and awe-inspriring -- electrical storm, even by Florida standards (took out the transformer on the pole behind my house -- I was without power from early afternoon until 1:00 am)
  
  
  4. Over the entire week, day by day, a family of five closely-spaced, tiny mushrooms materialize out of the earth, spread their caps, then turn their caps up and dry, then grow old and shrivel back to the Earth, together
  
  
  5. Sweat splash onto the insides of my glasses when I blinked


• Five things you don't want to do, but should:
  
  
  1. Go to the dentist
  
  
  2. Go to the doctor (copied these from Wen, but it's true)
  
  
  3. Clean my house
  
  
  4. Wash the dishes
  
  
  5. Return all that mail-order stuff that didn't work out, that's sitting in the knee-hole under my desk


• Five things you want to learn:
  
  
  1. To dance
  
  
  2. To play the cello
  
  
  3. To speak Spanish
  
  
  4. To commmunicate with animals
  
  
  5. The mystery behind the painting of the large bird that hangs in my living room, that I bought from an estate sale before I knew that the estate was that of the then-recently deceased famous witch, Sybil Leek


• Five animals you've had as pets or who have impacted you:
  
  
  1. First, foremost, and forever, my BJ
  
  
  2. Missy
  
  
  3. Andrea, my current three-legged beagle
  
  
  4. Barkley, my current big boy, who is sweet and loving and at the same time a burden and a responsibility
  
  
  5. I'm going to combine Judi's two beagles, Skye and Princess Sunni, together for my last entry


• Five favorite pieces of clothing:
  
  
  1. Ah, here I have do a favorite, and that's to be unclothed!
  
  
  2. My slippers from the QM2 (they were supposed to be disposable, but we took ours home and I wear mine every day, as raggedy as they've become
  
  
  3. The Birks that Judi gave to me
  
  
  4. Either my robe from the Renaissance Vinoy Hotel in St. Pete (if it's cold out), or the robe that I got on the SS Norway (if it's warm out)
  
  
  5. Um... any of my Hawaiian shirts


• Five things you enjoy in the summer:
  
  
  1. Sun
  
  
  2. Beach
  
  
  3. Top-down convertible (thought I can often do this in the winter, too)
  
  
  4. Bikinis
  
  
  5. Short skirts


• Five foods you don't like:
  
  There aren't a lot of foods I don't like, so this may be tough:
  
  
  1. Chocolate
  
  
  2. Coffee
  
  
  3. Sweetened ice tea (or, as they call it here in the South, "Sweettea" -- all one word)
  
  
  4. Sweetened soy milk (which almost all soy milk is -- I have to search out the unsweetened stuff)
  
  
  5. Artificial cheese
  
  There! I made five! I guess there are more things I don't like than I realized.
  


• You are given $50,000 to pass out to 5 people in $10,000 cash gifts. Who do you give it to, and why?
  
  
  1. My brother, because who couldn't use $10,000?
  
  
  2. My sister, because who couldn't use $10,000?
  
  
  3. The old man that I describe in this story, if I could find him again, because that was, like, 2003 -- and as for why, if you read the story, you'll know
  
  
  4. Judi, because I'm running out of people to name
  
  
  5. The first person to leave a comment on this post :)


• Five things that are not where they belong:
  
  I am sorely tempted to follow Wen's lead and include Dubya in this list, but that's hardly being creative:
  
  
  1. Me (I belong in Venice)
  
  
  2. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes that Judi gave me (it belongs on a podium that I don't have yet)
  
  
  3. The dining room set in my garage (it belongs in someone else's dining room)
  
  
  4. My stories (here, too) (they belong in print)
  
  
  5. You! (because I'm sure you have something better to do than read this blog :)

Five, Ten or Fifteen People you want to complete this:

Sorry, the Meme stops here.

Labels: Memes

As I have said before, I'm not big on memes, but I've been tagged for a couple lately, including by Linshaolin for the Seven Things About Me meme, so here goes:

1. I like to wear Hawaiian shirts. A lot.


2. I think the most beautiful word in the English language is "serendipity." I freely admit that the meaning of the word contributes to my perception.


3. I don't know how to swim.


4. I can't resist calendars with pictures of beautiful tropical places. And doesn't everyone need five or six calendars every year?


5. I think South Beach in Miami qualifies as a "beautiful tropical place."


6. There are a lot of awesome things to do in Manhattan, but I think the most awesome is to simply walk.


7. And while we're speaking of "seven," in (Catholic) High School I had a math teacher who gave the class a speech on the first day of school, explaining that she loved the number seven because it affirmed her faith in God. She was a brand new teacher -- we were her first class. She didn't even last until Christmas.

As far as tagging someone else, goes, I don't go there. The meme, as the old saying goes, stops here.

Labels: Memes

Now that I think about it, I believe that this is the really busy time of year for my brother in Vermont: Town Meeting.

The discussion of Rex Stout's Might As Well Be Dead is going pretty well, but, in the interest of not letting this blog stagnate, I'd like to mention a fascinating quiz that I took over at The Political Compass. The premise is that, as The Political Compass says, "The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape." The quiz allows you to see where you stand, politically, in a more meaningful way. That's all I'm going to say, because the quizmasters don't want you to know too much until after you've taken the quiz. But I recommend giving it a try.

If you'd let me know how you score, by leaving a comment, by sending me a message (link to the right), or by posting on your own blog and sending me the link, I'd appreciate it. For the record, I scored -4.88, -5.44, which put me a hair to the right of and a hair below Gandhi. You'll know what I mean by "to the right of and below" when you take the quiz.

Labels: Dubya, Memes

These things are hard.

5 Pet "People Peeves"

1. People who walk slow and also block the way so you can't get past them.


2. People who drive slow in the left-hand lane.


3. Cashiers who continue to hold personal conversations with customers even though they've finished checking them out and there's a line waiting.


4. Doctors and veterinarians who make you wait long past the time for your appointment.


5. People who work ineffectively or inefficiently, and in doing so waste your time while you wait for them to get something done.

Anyone notice a theme here? ;-)

5 Drink I Like (in no particular order)

1. Ice tea, and that's unsweetened and with lemon or lime. (Sweetened tea is just gross.)


2. Virgil's root beer.


3. Orange juice.


4. Grgich Hills Fume Blanc ($25 a bottle at the winery)


5. Yellowtail Shiraz ($6 a bottle or less at Walmart -- hey, I have cheap tastes, too)

5 Board or Card Games I Enjoy

Sorry, I'm not going to be able to answer this one. I'm not very competitive by nature. I don't enjoy competing against people, I don't get any pleasure when I win, and I'm not disappointed when I lose. I guess when it comes to social interaction I'm more of a Socialist than a Capitalist. It's not that I shirk conflict and struggle -- Lord knows I have plenty of both at work -- it's just that I don't enjoy them, so I'm not really into games. When I was young I enjoyed playing chess, but I never got very good at it, and now I'm so rusty that the freeware chess program on my Palm Pilot can routinely beat me. But I do like puzzles, and I guess there's one game I like:

1. Trivial Pursuit

But before I leave the topic, I'd like to offer an observation about very competitive people. By "very competitive" people I don't mean those of you who simply enjoy playing games -- there's nothing wrong with that. I mean those who are obsessed with winning, and can't stand to lose. Me, I just don't get it. I know one person (not Judi) who throws temper tantrums when she loses card games, and has sometimes insisted that we rotate seats at the table while playing bridge, because we-who-are-winning are in the "lucky chairs" and that's unfair to she-who-is-losing. Once her eleven-year-old grandson caught her cheating at Monopoly -- I ask you, what kind of person so has to win that she cheats on her eleven-year-old grandson? There have been times when I've deliberately thrown a game just so she could win and we would avoid a scene. And it seems to me that people who are very poor losers are also very poor winners. "Poor winners" as in gloaters. To me, it's just not worth it.

5 Things in my Bag/Purse/Briefcase

I carry neither bag nor purse nor briefcase, so you'll have to settle for my pockets:

1. Small pocket knife (a gift from Judi).


2. Miniature pen.


3. A keyring with that multitude of little plastic cards you have to carry so you can get the discounts at grocery stores, pet supply stores, etc.


4. Lip balm (perpetually dry lips).


5. My drivers license, credit card, insurance card, id cards, etc., all bound together by a rubber band (I don't carry a wallet).

5 Qualities I Possess

This is a little too subjective for my taste. I'm just going to stick to the one quality that I know everyone will agree with:

1. Disorganized

5 Friends/Family members who each possess one of the above qualities

Well, I'm not going to call someone disorganized on the Internets tubes, and besides, I have a thing about mentioning people by name unless they also have blogs and can defend themselves. Or at least are dead. Privacy, you know. So I'll list just one quality that my brother possesses, since he can post a rebuttal here if he so chooses:

1. My brother, Glenn, is very funny. As in, comedian-type funny. Not weird-type funny.

5 Things I Ate This Week

1. Fried pickles (yum)


2. Bacon cheese fries (yum)


3. Macaroni and cheese (yum)


4. Oranges fresh from the tree (yum)


5. Yesterday I had to eat my workplace cafeteria food for lunch (yuck)

5 Places I Would Like to Visit in the Next Year

I'm limiting this to places I actually have a chance of visiting:

1. Bonaire (again)


2. Curacao (hopefully part of the same trip as Bonaire)


3. Miami Beach (for Spring Break)


4. New Hampshire (for the Pumpkin Festival in Keene)


5. Um... if I make all the previous trips, I don't know if I'll be able to afford a fifth one. How about a trip to an Orlando theme park, maybe in September?

Labels: Memes

Heather tapped me for this "five secrets" meme a while back. Personally, I'm not big on memes, and I tried to wiggle out of it, but she wouldn't let me. So now that I'm back, I'm giving it a whirl.

This was a really hard meme! I did not find it at all easy to come up with five secrets (or at least things very few people know), without resorting to things I really don't want anyone to know. But anyway, here goes:

1. When I was very young -- I don't know, maybe six -- I was playing outside by myself and became intrigued with the feeling and smell of inserting small pebbles in my nose. The problem is, I inserted so many that we (my mother and I) couldn't get all of them out. So I had to make a trip to the doctor to have pebbles extracted from my nose. I wasn't embarressed, but I suspect my mother was.

Parenting tip: Make sure your children know that there's a one-pebble-per-nostril limit.

2. When I was a teenager, I fractured (not a complete break, just a crack) my collarbone in an accident that can be directly attributed to my bicycle not having any brakes.

Parenting tip: If you know your children's bicycles do not have brakes, for God's sake don't let them ride, no matter how bone-headed they are about it. Children believe they are invincible. They almost are. But only almost.

3. I didn't get chicken pox until I was seventeen. The doctor said that, having chicken pox at that relatively late age, the symptoms would be much worse. He knew what he was talking about.

Parenting tip: If you can, make sure your children have all their childhood diseases in their childhood.

4. Again, when I was very young, I enjoyed eating dirt. In fact, I was something of a dirt gourmand, being able to appreciate the difference between, say, the rich earthy taste of the dirt under the back porch and the damp deep taste of the dirt from the bank of the brook at the end of our yard. People reported to my mother that I ate dirt, but she was unmoved, answering that "Everyone needs to eat a peck of dirt before they die." Looking back on it, it seems odd that if my mother really believed this she would allow me to continue to eat dirt. After all, if she prevented me from eating dirt, and as I grew older I washed my salad ingredients thoroughly, I could avoid making my quota of a peck of dirt and thus live indefinitely. It was almost as thought she wanted me to die young. Or perhaps not.

Parenting tip: On the off chance that my mother was right, you might want to consider preventing your children from eating dirt. On the other hand, I don't think it did me any lasting harm.

5. I was born with a tail. Really. But I don't have it anymore.

No parenting tip available.

There! That's five, and I don't think I confessed to anything actionable or criminal. Next up: Another meme tag, this one from Wen, and then at some point back to our regular schedule of boring posts about things like words and wars.

Labels: Memes

Two posts in one day. I don't know what's coming over me.

Heather's blog had links to a couple of those online tests, which I almost never take, but today I did two of them, I don't know why. One was supposed to measure my "lust quotient." This was the result:

***Your Lust Quotient: 48%***

You are definitely a lustful person, but you do a good job of hiding it.
Your friends would be surprised to know that your secretly very wild!

The second was to measure my nerd/geek/dork index. This is the result of that one:

Pure Nerd
56 % Nerd, 39% Geek, 39% Dork
For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

I guess it's the nerd in me that caused me to notice that in the results of the lust quotient test, "your" is spelled wrong.

Labels: Inner Geek, Memes

I have a bit of a problem with memes, because, whether you believe it or not, I'm actually kind of a private person, and revealing stuff about myself does not come easy. But Wen tagged me, so how can I refuse? Here I go!

5 Nicknames you've had (or have):

When I was a kid, I was called "Ears," because I had big ones that stuck out. I didn't like it. But that's another story. As I grew up, they stayed big, but somehow flattened back against my skull, like normal people's, so now they aren't as noticeable.

Other than that, I don't think I've ever been called by any nickname other than Greg. Not to my face, anyway.

5 Sweet Treats You Like to Eat:

I'm not much on sweets, so I'll fudge (pun intended) on this one a little:

1. Plain vanilla ice cream


2. Plain cake donuts


3. Plain potato chips


4. Plain cheesecake


5. Lime-flavored Tostilla chips in refried bean dip

5 Things People Would Be Surprised You Have:

1. Beagle socks!


2. A pith helmet (don't ask)


3. A blog (most people know me as a very private person, and would be surprised that I post any of my thoughts on the Internet)


4. Reiki Master certification (most people think of me as a Spock-like geek, and are surprised when they find I'm involved with something "weird")


5. Four cases of Forest Glen Chardonnay stacked in my living room (hey, it's good stuff -- when it goes on super-duper sale, you have to stock up!)

5 Fabulous Celebrations:

The last five holidays -- Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Independence Day, or Memorial Day -- that Judi held one of her fabulous cookouts, stirring up her gourmet food in quantities that exceeded by four or five times the capacity of those present to consume it. Leftovers! Yay!

5 Things You'd Like to Have:

1. A beachfront condo in Miami Beach. South Beach.


2. Wealth (kinda goes with #1)


3. A chance to relive the last few years of my mother's life, so that I could treat her better than I did the first time around


4. A picture of Missy's face in the window, greeting me as I came home


5. Love

5 Cool Presents You've Received:

1. A ring


2. Thirty years ago my brother gave me a sweater. I'm not kidding -- it was so long ago that he doesn't even remember anymore. It's a cable knit, and buttons up the front, kind of like a Mr. Rogers sweater. After all this time, I still have it. It's missing a couple of buttons, and has a couple of holes, but I still keep it at work, where I need it because although my company preaches conservation and environmentalism up one side and down the other, they also over-air-condition my building so it's as cold as heck.


3. When I was a child -- I don't know how old, maybe ten or so -- my parents gave us a sleeps-four tent for Christmas. It was meant for camping, of course, but in the mountains of New Hampshire in December with I-don't-know-how-many-feet of snow on the ground, putting it to use right away didn't seem to be in the cards. It was a disappointment. But then my father decided that it would be alright put the tent up in our living room. We had solid wood floors. He got a hammer, and nails took the place of tent stakes. That Christmas night, and I don't know how many nights after, my brother and sister and I slept in sleeping bags in our tent in our living room. We camped in our living room. It was way cool. I can't tell you how great it was. I have lots of great memories of growing up, but this is among the greatest. Since then, my life has taken such a course that I didn't have children of my own, but if I had, I would have wanted them to have memories like this. Like my parents, I wouldn't have worried about the nail holes in the floor. Memories mean so much more. (The cool present, in case you're wondering, wasn't the tent, it was the memory.)


4. A pair of Birkenstock Wicklow shoes. These are awesome shoes. They are so comfortable. I love these shoes. And this is coming from someone who doesn't even like to wear shoes. When I die, these are the shoes I would want to be buried in, except I don't want to be buried, I want to be cremated, and why incinerate a wonderful pair of shoes? Nope, cook me naked, and give these shoes to someone else who has small feet.


5. Love

5 Things You've Collected:

1. Orchids


2. The Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout


3. The Brandstetter stories by Joseph Hansen


4. Maybe I should just say books. Did I mention books?


5. Love, not "collected" in the sense that I've displayed it on poster board attached with a pin, but collected in the sense that it adhered to me some, like dust. Magic dust.

5 Books you've read in the past 5 years:

This is easy. I've been slowly plowing through Joseph Hansen's Brandstetter mysteries, in the order they were written, and so here are the last five that I've finished:

1. The Boy Who Was Buried Yesterday


2. The Little Dog Laughed


3. Early Graves


4. Skinflick


5. Fadeout

Some of Hansen's works are better than others, but always he forms words into structures that are like perfectly clear and cut crystals, even when the passage itself is relating a mundane matter. This is a quote from the opening page of The Boy Who Was Buried Yesterday. Enid and Roy are co-owners of a "paintball park" near Los Angeles. One of their customers was recently killed by a for-real gun, and Enid is worried that it will scare other customers away:

He [Roy] said proudly, "Only the Combat Zome gives you ground fog for your action pursuit games."

"Paintball," Enid Saddler said. She had a flat, prairie face, crinkled around the eyes, a flat, prairie voice. She wore a plaid cotton shirt and blue jeans. Her hips were skinny. She crossed her arms over flat breasts. "Paintball games," she told Dave [Brandstetter]. "That's what we'll be calling them from here on."

"Maybe you," Roy grunted. "Not me. Fancy-ass word. Shaves all the hair off. Men don't play 'paintball.'" He sneered. "Men play action pursuit. Search and destroy. That's what men play." He coughed, hard, racked by cough, bloated face turning red. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it. "'Paintball games.'" He wheezed. "Shit."

"Shaves all the hair off." Isn't that such a great turn of words?

5 slang terms you use regularly:

Strictly speaking, I think these are jargon, not slang, but I'm going to bend the rules a little bit. You may not get these if you aren't a geek:

1. Strike


2. Under


3. Whack


4. Pipe


5. Splat

Labels: Memes