Erin Interviews Me.
Erin did this Interview meme thing. I’m not usually all about memes, but I wanted in on it. Thus, I had her interview me, here’s how it works:
- Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
- I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
- You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
- You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
- When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
And here are Erin’s questions and my answers:
You recently started blogging again after a bit of a hiatus. What made you decide to come back?
In one sentence: I missed it.
I stopped blogging in the spring of last year. At that point in my life, I wasn’t really doing much of interest. I had just moved to Hamilton and started my job, which is in Guelph. This made for a commute of about an hour, twice a day, plus the nine hour day at work. It didn’t leave me with much energy at the end of the day to do anything other than sleep, which is what I usually did about an hour or two after getting home each night, and the weekends were spent recovering from the week that had just passed. It was a pretty boring existence that didn’t really necessitate blogging.
It took me until probably the middle of the summer to start fitting the rest of my life back into my schedule and getting into the swing of things. I’m doing more at night, and there’s barely a weekend that passes where I don’t do something ‘exciting’. I think the return was partially motivated by an ability to share some of my ‘exciting’ moments with others that I know.
I’m sure there’s other motivations as well. I feel that there’s a little bit of a need to feel hooked into my online friends, most of whom were at one point mostly offline friends. I haven’t really met a ton of people since the move, and as such, staying connected with the people I already know is quite important to me.
I know you’re a pretty big music lover, if you had to choose only one band to listen to forever, what would it be and why?
Well, let’s look at the criteria:
- The band or artist needs to have a fairly large catalog. One CD just isn’t going to cut it.
- They need to have depth and range. I get bored really easy, so different styles are a must.
- Lyrics shouldn’t be overly simple.
- Not too angsty. Angst is good in small doses, but if I’m stuck with one band forever, I expect a whole range of emotional content.
Because I’m currently sorting my music collection, and I’m currently at E, my mind immediately went to Emm Gryner, Elvis Costello, and Dar Williams, followed quickly by other favourites like MxPx and the Juliana Theory. But despite their fabulousness, they’re not who I picked. Emm Gryner and Dar Williams, despite wonderful lyrics and beautiful songs, don’t have a love song between them, or a lot of stylistic range (although Emm Gryner’s cover of Crazy Train is totally badass). Elvis Costello’s got a lot of stylistic range throughout the years, but I find that his music bores me really quickly. MxPx, despite their good coverage of emotions, does not have very good lyrics. Fun lyrics, but not much depth to them. The Juliana Theory has quality but not quantity. Who is it then?Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam
Seattle’s finest. The one and only, Pearl Jam. I know it’s no surprise to those closest to me. I’ve seen them four times now, and I’d go again tomorrow with no hesitation. Let’s go through the criteria:
- Large Catalog: Check. Even if you don’t count the live bootlegs, they have eight studio albums spanning fifteen years of rock music. That’s pretty great, especially considering the longevity of most bands these days.
- Depth and range in styles. Hells yeah. Ten is all grunged out, and on Riot Act, Eddie plays the ukulale on a number of tracks. They kick ass plugged in and cranked to eleven, or all acousticy. And they are incredible live, and I’ve decided that since this is a hypothetical island, the band I pick gets to hang out with me on said island. And thus, I add to the criteria: must be hot. Check.
- Awesome lyrics. Indeed, their lyrics are awesome. And they cover some excellent songs, which just adds to the collection. Ever hear their cover of Harvest Moon? Pretty. Also, they have this one song called Bugs which is just completely cracked out.
- Not too much angst. Well, there is a lot of angst in the Pearl Jam catalog, I will admit… but I don’t care. And there are certainly exceptions. Also, have you heard Crazy Mary? When you can do angst that well, who cares?
Also, since Pearl Jam covers so many different songs, and since they’re now stuck on the hypothetical island due to my being a maverick and changing the question, they can cover whatever songs I want them to. Like Almighty Love by Emm Gryner
You’re getting married!! If cost and other real life things were not issues, what would your dream wedding look like?
Honestly, I was never one of those girls who dreamed of the perfect wedding. Instead, let me act all mavericky by changing the question again, and tell you about my wedding plans.
I’m going to marry this guy. We’ve been together for a little over five years, and we totally rock. We have a date set, March 13, 2010, which is in about a year. We picked the thirteenth because we wanted to get married on pi day, which is actually march 14th, but the 13th is really close. Also, it’s a prime number and Alan likes primes, and thirteen is my favourite number and it’s exactly six months before my birthday.
The ceremony will be in the newly constructed Camlachie United Church, where I went as a child. The minister is picked, and she is a young woman who works at Five Oaks and is a lot of fun. I’m going to have three bridesmaids, my friends Kathryn, Courtney and Melissa. March 13th, incidentally, is Kathryn’s birthday.
We don’t know for certain where the reception will be, but it will either be in Camlachie or Forest.
This is the dress I currently want. We’re going to get a knock-off of the style from China through eBay, which will save us about $700. It will be a base colour of ivory and the sash thing will be either Cherry red or a deep blue. We’re going to probably get the UCW or a similar group to serve the dinner, and there will probably be between 100 and 150 people at the reception. We’re still figuring that part out. The reception will be a fairly standard one, but there will be no Macarena. Because that would make my ears bleed, and nobody wants to see a bride with bleeding ears. We will not be having a wedding cake, we will be having pie, since it is Pi day eve and all… Since it is Kathryn’s birthday, we will have birthday cake for her.That’s all we’ve got. Ideally, I would prefer no wedding showers because I think it’s a ritual that it past its time, and feels a little greedy. The most stressful part of the process to this point has been dealing with my mom, who is very enthusiastic about planning things and wanting to help.
We still have a lot of plans to make, but I think we have a good framework.
Show me your favourite picture photographed by you.
OK.
Fence Railing and Creek above Tew's Falls
I took it this fall. I don’t have a lot to say about the picture, but I really like that there’s water and leaves in it.
What is the #1 thing you would do with a paradox free time machine?
The thing with regular time travel, is that it’s fraught with so many bad television and film references, not to mention peril. I would not want to be like Marty McFly and start to fade away when Griff gets all handsy. Nor would I want to be like Rose Tyler, who rips a wound in time by holding herself. The Doctor also had to decide whether or not to cause the eruption of Vesuvius and bury the city of Pompeii in volcanic ash. Despite these threats, it’s okay to change your own diapers, like Claire Bennet does when she goes back to the 80s. Philip J Fry does the ‘nasty in the pasty’ and becomes his own grandfather, and Dave Lister one-ups that by making himself his own father. There’s also a new CBC show called Being Erica, which explores one woman’s trips to the past to right her wrong mistakes, inhabiting her future self in the attempts to fix her current situations.
Paradox-free time travel takes care of all these issues. No worries about killing your own grandfather, no worries about causing something worse than Hitler to come into the world. I think, given the chance, I would like to create some kind of ridiculous dinosaur turducken. Why? Because it would sure confuse the archaeologists.
There you have it, folks. Hope you got through it all. Now, if you want me to interview you, let me know by leaving a comment.
