Wednesday Hodgepodge

(Link in meme-roll)

1. What's your worst food memory? How about one of your best?

Worst is being forced to eat mom's version of liver and onions. OMG, just kill me!
Bests...too many to pick one: the first time I tried cheesecake, blood oranges in winter in Rome, feeding Sparky his first round of rice cereal when he was a baby (which devolved into him wearing at least 50% of it), pleeeeeading with my surgeon for a burger the day I had emergency abdominal surgery (he said no)...and then not being able to face meat for a week after the surgery....
I like food so I guess I have more good memories than bad ones.

2. Do you appreciate people telling it like it is, or would you rather a speaker temper his/her words and maybe beat around the bush a little? How about when you're the one communicating...which type are you?

I try to be tactful around people I know who are sensitive, but overall I'm pretty blunt, and I appreciate the same. I don't mind bluntness; I do mind hurtfulness or chit-chat going nowhere.

3. What's your favorite place to hang out?

Here. Or a mountain.

4. When do you most feel like you're a slave to time?

About 20 minutes before it's time for me to go home from work.

5. What was the last concert you attended? Who'd you go with? Was it any good?

I can't even remember, so I'll go with a Boston concert with Starship opening for them; this was about two years ago. Quite weird. Great people-watching, though.

6. Reality TV...harmful or harmless? What's your guilty pleasure when it comes to reality TV?

I used to love Survivor. I used to always watch The Amazing Race. Both have fallen off the radar. We are faithful Deadliest Catch watchers, however. There are ways of doing reality TV well, and then there's the majority of the shows.

7. What's something you think is overrated?

Since we're kind of in the vicinity ... network TV, especially sitcoms. What does it mean that I don't find anyone on current sit-coms at all amusing?

8. Insert your own random thought here.

In the past four days, I've...: had about 6 hours of full-time facetime with my newest great-nephew, spent several hours in our local ER waiting room, had unexpected overnight company for two nights (my sister), eaten out 80% of my meals, Beast left on a 56-hour driving trip out of state, missed five hours of work and had to cancel attendance at a meeting to make up those hours, spent one day fighting back against my allergies due to being outside for two hours (!! yes, just two hours), came within three seconds of murdering an extended-family member in his hospital room, run the dishwasher, done a load of laundry for my sister, taken her to the pharmacy to get an emergency supply of meds to cover her stay here, put about 100 extra miles on my car, sat waiting for road construction vehicles to move, lost 2.5 lbs. (according to Weight Watchers), cataloged 130 books, been awakened multiple times in one night because of the 8 or 9 mosquito bites on my feet, and attended Bible Study.

Meanwhile, this was a coworker's Facebook status update this morning: "Trans changed [two of her kids]' bus schedule without telling me from 8:31 to 8:11, so had to drive them to school; [her oldest] called & needed me to drop off meds she forgot to take this morning; car did not have enough gas to get to work (I swear it did last night!); phone was out of minutes; had to take alternate route to work due to construction; there was a tractor!; lost call in middle of topping up minutes so that I could call work to tell them I was going to be late. I CRIED. How was YOUR morning?!"

And another friend posted this earlier today (in another state several hundred miles from here): "[Son] and I just had a guy pull a gun on us while driving home. I've lived here for over 17 years and have never had anything like this happen. We're fine but a bit shaken up. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see his plates."

We all need a do-over this week.