a quiz, part 1

Miriam (fauxklore  on Dreamwidth) posted a set of prompts - what I usually call a quiz - and I always used to like doing these back in the Livejournal days so I thought I would tackle them. There were more than this, but this is as far as I've gotten. If I get further later there will be more!

(Note that I made the font color gray because my Dreamwidth journal has a black background. If you can't read it, try changing the font color.)

1. Have you ever been caught outdoors away from shelter during a thunderstorm?

Hmm. I want to say yes, but I don’t remember ever being seriously afraid of being struck by lightning, if that’s what this is meant to be asking about. Just getting wet was common enough that I took it for granted.

2. Did you ever build furniture forts as a child?

I remember using the dining room table as some kind of fort, but moving furniture around to make a fort? Not that I recall. I don’t think my mom would have let us. (We were two girls. We didn’t have boys around the house to come up with really serious troublemaking.) 

3. Do you use any medicines daily?

Of course. I’m 61 and I am a cancer survivor, among other issues. I have one of those AM/PM pill things and I use it.

4. When was the last time you used a disposable camera? 

Long ago. I think maybe the last time was at somebody’s wedding, long enough ago that their children are now teenagers.

5. When was the last time you flew on a plane?

I’m honestly not sure, but it was some years ago, 2014, maybe? I just decided at some point around then that I wasn’t going to fly any more. I’m claustrophobic and flying just has gotten too triggery for me. Back in the old days when It wasn’t a cattle car I could deal with it, but not any more. My husband flies to Ohio once a year or so and I just make the reservations for him and wave goodbye.

6. How many first cousins do you have?

I’m counting my parents' siblings and their children - my dad grew up in a fairly big family, that's the issue - and I come up with six first cousins (3 of whom were adopted, not that that makes any real difference. Family is family).

7. What’s the longest period of time you’ve gone without sleep?

I’m not sure. More than 24 hours, for sure. But at some point I just pass out, even though I’m a bad sleeper in general.

8. Did the house you grew up in have a big yard?

Well, we moved around a good bit when I was a kid, but the house we lived in longest was a suburban corner lot that’s far bigger than most houses have nowadays. My sister's new house has a tiny back yard, and the front yard isn't much bigger.

9. What has been the most difficult class you’ve ever taken?

I had issues with math as a teenager, algebra in particular. I think it was mostly that I didn’t have the patience to sit and work it all out. I think now that I had undiagnosed ADD, because I never had a lot of trouble with anything I was interested in. (I also think nobody ever bothered to explain what algebra was actually good for.)

10. What’s something that’s much more difficult than a lot of people realize?

I can’t think of anything in particular, although I don’t think most people are very good judges of things like that. I think they tend to overestimate or underestimate. (“Well, I did it so you should be able to, too!”)

Reading material

The last Expanse book* came out last week, and I had pre-ordered it so I already have it, but I haven't started it yet. I decided I need to read the two books before it first.

(*so the authors say, apparently they have a contract to do some new series after this!)

For those of you who don't read these, this new book is the ninth book in the series, and they fall loosely into three trilogies. (Or, I don't know, book 4 always feels sort of like a semi-standalone to me, but 1-3 definitely more or less go together and so do 5 and 6.) I re-read the earlier ones this year already (1-6, that is) but I decided to stop there and wait until closer to time for the new one. I got through #7 a few days ago - that one's called Persepolis Rising - and I'm still in the early part of book 8 - Tiamat's Wrath. I don't really know why I feel like I must read the new one the minute it comes out, anyway, but I keep feeling like I'm "late" - it's silly, really. Besides, I actually had pre-orders for two books that came out that same day, it turned out, and I did read the other one practically on the spot, because it was a romance novel and I knew it'd go fast. (Mary Balogh, Someone Perfect, if you want to know!)

At work the other day, I read a chapter or two of a book I found on Kindle Unlimited - something called The Dublin Trilogy and the first book was The Man With One of Those Faces (I may be capitalizing that all wrong, sorry). I think that's a hilarious title, and the book is pretty funny. We'll see if I manage to finish it. Actually I have a rule - which I was obviously breaking - that I'm only allowed to re-read things I've already read at work, and not read anything new, on the theory that I'm less likely to get heavily involved with something I've read before. My work involves a lot of interruptions, but we're allowed to do other stuff when it's slow. I've been re-reading Shelby Foote - The Civil War: a narrative, which is three big volumes. That seemed to be something I was less likely to get too involved with - I know how it ends, after all. I have actually gotten through the first volume and on to the second one, although actually the second one might be more dangerous at that because I'm to the point in 1863 where the big stuff is coming up - The WildernessChancellorsville** and Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

I've also been reading more hard sci-fi, which is the Foreigner series by Cherryh. I have read a bunch of those before, but it had been at least a couple of years. I'm probably only reading 1-6. This one also falls into loose trilogies, as far as I've read, but I got bored with it after the third or fourth trilogy where it quit being hard sci-fi at all, really, and became stuff about atevi politics. I think I looked on Amazon and there's something like 17 books now, and I think I just can't, unless somebody who's read them wants to make a case that they get better again at some point!

(I really bounce around between multiple genres - I like hard sci-fi and I like fairy tales and I like at least some romance - particularly Regency romances, if they're well-written. I went on a big kick of reading mysteries earlier this year and I've even read some contemporary romance, which I normally rarely do. I've read some police procedurals lately as well.)


**I just caught myself on this mistake several days late. The Wilderness and Chancellorsville were two Civil War battles that happened about a year apart, in Virginia in 1863 and 1864. I should have thought to check, really - they were fought on basically the same ground, or at least overlapping ground. The one in 1863 is called Chancellorsville (which is a town) and the one in 1864 is called The Wilderness, which was literally a wild area near Chancellorsville. (The South won the battle both times, but Hooker was in charge in 1863, and the army retreated afterwards. By 1864 Grant was in charge, and he did not retreat afterwards, but kept his troops moving forward.)