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I was tagged for this meme, and here it is:

A) People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs & replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

B) Tag 8 people to do this quiz. These people must state who they were tagged by & cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people.

I tag (and apologies if you've been tagged already; I tried to pick people from my flist who recently posted):edawn , kazdreamer , meredith_wood , lillpluta , pixiechick_sw , jenny_moss, and tinaya .


I was tagged by:fabulousfrock.

1. What are your nicknames?
Mom? I don't have a lot of other nicknames these days, not with a one-syllable name.

2. What do you do before bedtime?
Check my e-mail, feed my Lap Baby, and often collapse with a book in hand that DH has to then remove.

3. What fandom(s) are you most into at the moment?
Er, pop culture isn't something I've ever been much into?

4. What is your favorite scent?
Jeffrey pines and hot mountain granite, honeysuckle, roses, wysteria, and boldo, as well as cinnamon and linseed oil.

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it? First, pay off my debts, then maintain a residence in Germany, travel all over, buy a zillion books, do genealogy, go to the writing conferences or educational events I can never afford, and fund literacy in Afghanistan. And buy a horse.

6. What is your theme song?
Das Wandern ist des Muellers Lust? Or any other song that has to do with wandering from place to place.

7. Do you trust easily?
I trust that most people are what they represent themselves to be on a personal level; however, I generally mistrust people when they put on the hat to sell me something.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think?
Think first.

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?
Leaving Germany, finding unpleasant finance-related surprises (well, some weren't surprises, I guess) at the other end, and being misinterpreted as meaning the opposite of what I'd intended. In general life is pretty happy, which makes these things bite.

10. Do you have a good body-image?
Yes.

11.  What is your favorite fruit?
raspberries and watermelon

12. What websites do you visit daily?
Livejournal, Verla Kay's, and wunderground.com (weather)

13. What have you been seriously addicted to lately?
chocolate (alas, switching from German to American chocolate is going to cure that one real fast), and books

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
fabulousfrock  is someone I'd love to do food with! She's adventurous and very knowledgeable, in a real way and not a fad way. Also, she's so interested in cultures, even though I think she's mostly lived in one place, that it would be fun to people watch with her. And, she's an awesome writer (watch for her upcoming books!!)

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?
The song in the closing credits of Prince Caspian (The Call, maybe? by Regina Spektor) because of having to leave my castle-filled portal world. :(

16. What’s your favorite item of clothing?
It's been *cough* a long time since I thought much about clothing, other than something you have to wash and somehow dry under unpleasant conditions. But there was once a shirt my roommates and I all shared that we all really liked. And I got it in the end, when we all graduated. (I also ended up with the boy in the triangle? Quadrangle?)

17. Do you think Rice Crispies are yummy?
I  cautiously admit to liking Rice Crispie treats, but I'm sure there is Evil Corn Syrup lurking in there somewhere, which dampens my enthusiasm somewhat.

18. What would you do if you see saw $100 lying on the ground?
Try to find its owner.

19. What items could you not go without during the day?
My contacts. I can't see anything without them! Also, electricity. (Yes, I've gone without both, but it wasn't a pretty sight!)

20. What should you be doing right now?
Unpacking my living room.

More books

Do you know what's weird? We live in NW Arkansas now, right? Far from any coasts or borders (unless you count the Mason-Dixon line). Well, this area has a sizeable hispanic and Marshallese population. I think it's related to Tyson chicken, but I'm not sure (this is Tyson and Walmartland). Today we went to stake conference (biannual area church conference) and you had the option of listening in English, Spanish, or Marshallese. If I hadn't been holding an extremely wiggly child, I would have been tempted to try out the Marshallese. I mean, how often do you meet that?

My poor #2 son. He's lamenting the loss of things that he could do in Deutschland and not here, like going to the Schullandheim (a youth hostel where they went for a week for school), and other such fun things. He told me on Friday that he thinks American students don't learn as much in a day as German students do. In a way he likes it because it's less pressure, but I think he's realizing the possibility of boredom as well.

So, we've noticed that everyone's done more reading lately, not just me with the English. Son #2 has until now read NF and Donald Duck comic books (Lustige Taschenbuecher--although the language isn't completely simple in those). We've tried to get him interested in novels, but not luck. But wow, since we've been here, he's just exploded in reading booklength stories in English, even though he's been mostly reading in German until now. He just finished Smekday today, and really liked it. He's reading something called Cryptid Hunters, as well as a lot of MG scary books. He hung around to listen to the first chapter of Prince Caspian. We just realized why:

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!

Yes, Mr. Dahl is right. Tonight I sat here and had five kids crawling on me, pushing books at me or reading their own. It was kind of nice, actually.

So far I can add The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, to my list of books I've read, as well as Bringing the Boy Home, by N.A. Nelson (really liked this one!), and also The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, which I read in August and forgot to mention. I loved this one! I think I might need to own it some day.

Next up: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, by Jasper Fforde. Fforde is really funny, but his books are kind of hard to translate, so I've had a hard time getting hold of his stuff while I was gone.

I hope you're having a lovely, book-filled evening!

More on the Marshall Islands

Okay, so I started googling and found that something like 10% of all Marshallese live in NW Arkansas. I'm not kidding. Some guy came over in 1986 to work for Tyson chicken, and people decided that this was a great place to get jobs. Wild.

Also, this is from the wikipedia entry on the Marshallese language:

"One Marshallese word is yokwe, which means both hello and good-bye. It also means love. The literal (although outdated) translation means "you are a rainbow." It is also used as a term to show sympathy. (Compare Hawaiian aloha.) This word may also be written iakwe and io̧kwe."

And the example of the Hail Mary actually starts out with that word. Mary, you are a rainbow?

So, uh, yokwe to you all!