19 posts tagged “qotd”
How have people mispronounced your name? How is it supposed to sound?
Submitted by Lorie.
My name is sort of like it looks: jess - uh - min. People who don't know me and haven't seen or heard the name before seem to have a hard time with it. Either they say Jasmine, which makes sense, or they say Jezz-uh-min or Jess-uh-mine. The thing I always find weird is that when I say it out loud to them, like over the phone, often they'll pronounce it back wrong. So I'll say jess-uh-min and they'll say "Jasmine?" like maybe I'm pronouncing my own name wrong.
People called me Jess until college, but I never liked "Jess West" much. Then I had a college boyfriend who called me Jessamyn in that college-y way and it sort of stuck. I answer to both. The only name I really dislike is Jesse because I had an evil English teacher who would call me that to get my goat, I have no idea why.
Jessamyn Charity West, it's not a bad name really.
When do you start your holiday shopping?
Submitted by Murphy.
Never. Or always.
I make postcards, write letters to friends and sometimes do some baking and special meal-making during the holidays. I have a collection of kids' books that I've picked up here and there that go to my younger friends. My biggest expense is stamps. I'm not a churchgoer, but Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday idea always resonated with me.
If I'm spending the holidays with family Kate and I will often make something out of stuff we have around the house, hers or mine. It's a little hand-made-ashtray-ish but we're pretty talented and everyone knows we're like this. Otherwise I'm an impulse "Hey this thing just screamed your name at me" shopper, and that can happen at any time, but most frequently at the library booksale and not today, because today is a holiday.
Sorry friends and family, it's books again this year. When you're done with them, would you please pass them along to someone else who might like them? Thanks.
How many computers do you have in your house?
Submitted by Foomper.
All of them! Except the one that is here on my lap in the hotel room. (where "all" equals something between six and nine. do you count CPUs or cases?)
I checked into the Sheraton Hotel in Burlington so that I could be fresh as a daisy to give my talk at the New England Library Association Conference tomorrow. Since it's just about an hour from my house, and even less far from where I was staying in Barre, I just brought my pjs, swimsuit and toiletries in my messenger bag... and my pillow. I've had bad luck with hotel pillows historically, even though Sheratons are usually okay. I love my own pillow, and I love flannel pillowcases. I left my pillow at my cousin's place once after staying with him when I was driving cross-country. I got a cryptic email from him whenI got home "We have The Woobie." So yeah, it's like that. I have testy sleep mojo lately, so I try to stick with what I know.
Judging from the looks I got on the way in, I am fully expecting to be introduced at my talk tomorrow and have some librarian in the audience gasp "That's that girl from the elevator, the one with the pillow!"
What food or drink do you love when it's cold out? (Recipes and recommendations, please!)
I did have to go down the street from my current housesit to the Trow Hill Grocery to get eggs. Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I didn't really need more than two, but I'd decided to settle for six. The store sold dozens, but with the help of a big butcher knife (theirs, not mine) they managed to sell me a half dozen for half the price of a full dozen. Imagine!
The soup was amazing.
Which cartoon character best represents you?
Submitted by Know It All.
...except for the "not good at math" part. I even have those shoes!
What's the most memorable building you've lived in?
Submitted by Shelly.
I lived in the Odd Fellows Hall, on Market Street in Ballard (Seattle) for almost three years, rent free, in a weird basement apartment. It wasn't just a place to live, it was my job. I was the caretaker. Now, having free rent (no bills, not even phone) and a small salary in the 90's in Seattle was sort of awesome, but not as awesome as having costumes in the basement, or something that looked like a real-life skeleton, in a coffin!
I would mop the floor and clean the bathrooms and keep the schedule and open the doors for groups with names like the Loyal Order of the Golden North and the Daughters of Pocohontas. Because the other Odd Fellows Hall was in Capitol Hill, the gayer part of the city, somehow we got a few alternative groups there such as Girth and Mirth (chubbies and chubby chasers) and the Northwest Bears. All these people were, to a fault, nice and interesting and totally different from me.
The apartment was a railroad apartment where only the kitchen on the end has windows that faced the outside. Two more rooms had windows that faced a narrow hallway and one room had just a door with a mysterious ice cream type window and no other windows at all. I moved in their with my then-husband and moved out on my own a few years later. I don't think he ever loved the place as much as I did. Once he moved out, I slept on the couch for a while, and later moved the bed into the living room where it was like perpetual twilight.
Since I was the caretaker, I could also rent the place for free, and so we, and then later I, would have big parties almost monthly. Called the Rent is Theft series, the big feature was the open mike night we'd call Odd Stock. People could do whatever they wanted on stage as long as it was seven minutes or less. The last time I heard from my ex he was emailing me to say that he's still in Seattle and was having another open mike night and I was invited to come if I was in the area.
Now I live in a town with about 15 times as many people as would come to my biggest parties then. A big party here is getting a few couples together for a BBQ. I still put the job on my resume if I'm looking at doing something involving scheduling or maintenance or living in a hidden hobbit hole in the middle of the big city for free free free. Now I live in a creaky Victorian house in my small town, for free, and wonder if things have changed much after all.
What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?
I usually lie on my back for a long time waiting to totally unwind before I fall asleep. I do all the stuff -- turn off the computer early, don't watch tv, drink tea or read a book, keep the lights low -- but sleep is slow in coming, it always has been. So I lie on my back and fold my hands in what's not too corpselike a position and go over what happened in my day.
Sometimes if I need to force something out of my mind, I'll touch type in my head. I have this weird visualization thing I do where I read words as if I was tracking them letter by letter over a keyboard. It's a little complex but also not too brain-intensive and it's like a radiator flush for whatever was clogging my thoughts. It's hard to concentrate on that and also worry about whatever I may have been worrying around.
The last thing I usually think is "oh hey I think I'm dreaming..."
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) Inspired by Stephanie.
I lost my whole music collection in a tragic asshated deletion moment. I've been rebuilding it from the collection of friends and strangers, so it skews towards banjo currently, apparently.
- Sea Lion Woman - Crooked Jades - nice acapella sounding. I wish this wasn't all DRMed
- I Can See Clearly Now - The Deighton Family - awesome cover, from a mix cd I think I imported but never listened to
- Off to Sea Once More - pretty sure it's Grisman/Garcia - from the sea shanty mix "These are the wails of a hundred years" made for me by good old whatshisname back when he and my sister had a good thing going.
- Golden Ring - Dry Branch Fire Squad - excellent cover [why are these all covers? how non-random is that? what does that say about my horoscope? damn this song is long]
- Lost John - Woody Guthrie
- Letter From an Occupant - New Pornographers
- Barefoot Marmlish Blues - B. Sam Firk - I see a theme here
- Charles Giteau - Kelly Harrell And The Virginia String Band
- Drink to Me Babe, Then - AC Newman - one of the things I'd lost that was in the "hipster stuff that the ex listened to all the time" that I went ahead and replaced anyhow
- Take me Into Your Embrace - Marika Kanaropoulou - Ah the lovely Women of Rembetica!
I really wish last.fm's redesign didn't suck so hard, otherwise I'd have more excitement about teling you to go check out what else I listen to. What a weird group of stuff? What have I learned?
How many languages can you speak? Which languages can you read or understand?
1. I speak English okay.
2. I can swear in Spanish and otherwise speak Sesame Street Spanish (count to eleven, know how to say water, open, closed, &c.).
3. When my roommate was talking to his parents in French about the skunks that live under the house, I knew roughly what he was talking about, but not exactly what he was saying.
4. I spoke Romanian for a year when I lived in Romania. I have a great accent but a small vocabulary.
5. Malcolm X's daughter once spoke about the importance of being able to say "Thank You" in the language of any country you visited, so I can say thank you in a few more languages like Turkish, Hungarian, Czeck and maybe, if I remember, Bulgarian.
How many places have you lived in your life?
Places like cities/towns? Parentheses indicate how many different places I lived within those places where live is anyplace I slept for more than a few weeks, kept clothes/toothbrush there.
Acton, MA (1)
Boxboro, MA (1)
Amherst, MA (4)
Westford, MA (1)
Seattle, WA (7)
Sanibel, FL (2)
Cluj-Napoca, Romania (1)
West Topsham, VT (1)
Bethel, VT (1)
