Friday 5 x 3

(Link in meme-roll)
How Do You Do That?

1. When you draw a five-pointed star, which point do you begin with, and where do you go from there?

   Bottom left to upper right.

2. On a typical day, in what order do you put your clothes on?

   Underwear, pants, shirt, socks, shoes.

3. When packing for an overnighter, what are you likely to pack too much of?

   This last trip I took FAR too many socks. But usually it's stuff like toothpaste or Q-tips that I go overboard on. And Tylenol.

4. How particular are you with laundry chores?

   I guess I'm fussy about some stuff. Beast does most of our laundry, but I do all the "hand-wash" or "delicate" stuff separately usually. He's fussy about which direction the hangers go, and (mostly) I don't care, and he's positively WEIRD about his collars.

5. How are your bookshelves organized?

   The cookbooks are all together. The "religious books" (i.e., Bibles and hymnals) are all together. Everything else is kind of wherever it landed.

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The Middle

1. What’s something you’re in the middle of?

   I seem to be in the middle of losing my mind on a semi-regular basis. The difference right now is that I've given up caring about it.

2. What’s in the middle of you?

   My ... solar plexus ...?

3. What is your residence in the middle of?

   This week it's been in the middle of a dandelion field.

4. What’s a great food that features something in its middle?

   Chicken Cordon Bleu, which sounds really yummy right about now.

5. What’s the nearest you’ve been to the middle of nowhere?

   Almost every place in Wyoming and South Dakota rank right up there, but the absolute true middle of nowhere is the Gobi Desert in January.

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Happy Birthday to the Upstart Crow
Tomorrow is the generally assumed birthday of William Shakespeare, based on records of his baptism and the traditions of the time. We celebrated the Bard’s birthday last yearand six years ago, so if you find these questions less than satisfying, try those instead. Links in the questions go to attributions in Barlett’s Familiar Quotations*. Shout-out to Kimberly, who six years ago answered her questions in (rhymed!) iambic pentameter.

1. If brevity is the soul of wit, how witty are you?

   At times, very.

2. When did you last play fast and loose with the truth?

   I promised Beast that he would feel better in the morning when I tucked him into bed an hour ago. I have no idea if it's true.

3. When did the green-eyed monster last rear its head?

   I don't really do jealousy very often, but I do occasionally feel a great deal of envy of other people and have to remind myself that I only know 10% of their life at best.

4. What has often required you to screw your courage to the sticking place?

   Going through with our vacation took a bit of self-conviction after the way it started.

5. What’s a custom that you have found more honor’d in the breach than the observance? **

   Politics and honesty. I'll let you decide which way (or neither or both) I mean that.

Thank you for participating, and may your weekend be as merry as the day is long!

* For those disinclined to link-clicking (I don’t blame you!): Hamlet, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet (questions 1 through 5 in that order). Shout-out to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on question 4!

** This phrase is often misused, according to this enlightening piece in the NYT. Hamlet was saying that it was more honorable to breach (that is, violate) the local custom of carousing than to follow it. It’s usually used to mean “more often broken than followed” or something like that. Answer the question whichever way works for you, but I like Hamlet’s meaning.