Questions are from , and again, are double posted to the blog.

1. What is your favourite food (and drink) to have at lunch?
The drink part is easy: my favorite cold beverage in life is unsweetened iced tea. I like the sweetened kind, as well, but only when made in a very specific fashion, and since there are only two people EVER who could make it that way, and one of them is now dead, it's easier to go with unsweetened. It has to be regular tea, too, and not raspberry or anything. Plain. Lipton. Brisk.

Food's harder. If I'm working, I'm happy with anything that isn't drippy or messy or can't be eaten with one hand. I love the Satay Chicken appetizer from Krung Thai – it comes with it's own salad, even, and toast – and I love the chicken ultimo burritos from Baja Fresh. And sushi's never a bad idea.

When I'm home for lunch, I resort to comfort food as taught to me by my mother: tuna salad with still-warm hard-boiled egg mixed in. In a bowl, with a fork. No onion or funky vegetables, just the tuna and mayo and egg, and some pepper and garlic powder. It sounds gross, but it's actually quite tasty.

2. Have you ever broken anything (ex: arm, leg, nose, toe)? If so, how did it happen? If not, what are your top three favourite shampoos? I've sprained my ankles numerous times, and sliced a nerve in my hand, and torn cartilage in my knee, but never broken anything, so I'm answering the shampoo question:

1) Aveda: Clove Shampoo. It's a warm honey brown color, and smells vaguely sweet. It's not thick or sticky, and it supposedly helps encourage highlights in brown hair.

2) Essential Elements: Rosemary & Mint Shampoo. I survived many many hot days in South Dakots because this stuff is so cool and tingly it's like a breath mint for your hair. I love mint scented things in general, but…oooh, this is just too good to describe. Sadly, it's difficult to find in my neigborhood.

3) Aussie Mega Shampoo. It's not horribly expensive, it smells nice, and it works on my insufferably thick hair. What's not to love?

3. You have one day to live. What do you do?First, I'd reformat my hard drive, so that if Fuzzy wanted to sell my computer, he could. Second, I'd make sure all the accounts were moved to his name only, because if you have a joint account and one half of the partnership dies, and they freeze the account, it's not good. I'd call all the people I love, and tell them so. And I'd spend the day surrounded by as many of them as possible, at the beach, with the dogs.

4. It is time for you to tell me the history of your hair. What major cuts happened to it? What colour is it, did you dye it, how has your daily 'hair routine' changed over the years, is there another colour you would dye it and why (or why not)? (For example, I would start off saying that when I was really really little, I had golden blonde hair that darkened to brown. I had a mushroom cut when I was maybe seven or eight, blah blah blah, shaved head, blah blah.)
For the first year of my life I was bald. Bald, bald, bald. They had to tape bows to the top of my head, and people kept asking if I was a boy. The nerve!
But my Sinead O'Conner days ended, and by the time I was two I had thick, but still babyish, strawberry blonde hair that gradually darkened to a decidedly wheaten color by the time I was six. It was long, until then, and I wore it staight, because my hair has NO curl. During the year I was in kindergarden, my friend Terrie and I used to try coordinate our hairstyles (via mental telepathy, so it wasn't always terribly effective) so we'd both have braids one day or pony tails the other. Stuff like that.

When I was seven, I got my first short haircut, a wedge a la Dorothy Hamil, who'd won the gold medal in '76. A pixie cut and no front teeth. Damn, I was adorable :)

By the time I was nine, my hair had grown out again and Mork and Mindy was a popular show. I had those rubberbands with the smilie faces on them, and would pull just the front sections on either side into “Mindy” style ponytails.

I cut my hair to a long bob when I was eleven, for the move from Colorado to California, then let it grow longer until I was 15. I got my first perm at 12- do you know how long it takes to perm hair this thick? It's scary.

I dyed my hair for the first time at fifteen – from medium light brown to ash blonde, but when it grew out, I didn't keep dying it, because by the end it was turning a bit too orange. When I turned eighteen, dyed it red for the first time, and it's been some color other than it's own ever since. (I turn 33 in a few months. You do the math).

The last week of my Freshman year of college, I dyed my hair BLACK. This is not a color that suited me. In order to get it UN BLACK I had to bleach it all the way out to almost clear. I kind of liked being a platinum blonde for 48 hours, really. Once I'd had the melted ends cut off, I stuck with nice coppery reds, and merely maintained the color, though every so often I'd go brighter, or darker, just for a slight change.

I had a twist-perm in SoDak, which was like long long spirally curls. Ouch. I had another spiral perm in CA in 98, and then again in 1999. I haven't permed it since, and won't.

In 2000 I cut it really really short, but I didn't keep it that way. Though I loved it – so /easy/ it required trips to the salon too often.

But I still kept it red until last July when I was in Minneapolis for a wedding, and went to Joot, and said, “Just, make it all one color.” They dyed it darker than my real color (which has darkened to a warm dark brown by now) to hide all the red, and it's taken most of the last year to get the red completely out. As to cuts, right now it's in a basic blunt-cut bob, just brushing my shoulders, with bangs just above my eyebrows, and the color's Aveda brown #3, which has some red and gold highlighting, but just enough for depth. I might perm it again, some day, because I miss curls, and I might not.

5. Do you have a favourite Muppet? If so, why? If not… why the heck not? While it's no secret that I'm anti-animation, and I generally avoid kids shows, I have a special place in my heart for Sesame Street, which was made moreso when I met Sonia (who plays Maria) a couple of years ago, while I was staying with her RL mother and sister. As a fan of the show, I'm therefore torn between all of the classic muppets, but I'd probably have to pick Kermit, because he's such a Zen little bit of felt, wrapped around Jim Henson's soul.

1. Tell me five of your favorite websites, and explanations as to why they are your favorite to visit.
Aside from OD and LJ, and the blogs of individuals (all of which are available on my blogroll) the websites I frequent most, or at least are most prominent in my brain at this moment, are, in random order:

1) The Pern Forum – because even though I rarely post there, I find a lot of the ranting extremely entertaining, and I sometimes am inspired with new ideas.

2) Lessons Learned – Lisa writes about her life in a 24/7 TPE relationship with such candor that even if the concept of BDSM is totally revolting, her story is compelling. For me, the stuff about her kids, and her gardening and her taste in music and books and politics is made more interesting because of the juxtaposition with the rest of her life. (NOT work_ok, and NOT kid_safe)

3) Lori's Trek Fic – I admit that I'm a Trek Geek, and further that I like fanfic. One of Lori's series, “The Captain and the Counselor” involves Picard and Troi as a couple, and she writes the tale in a such a fashion that I can buy it as a possiblity.

4) Illusions of Motion: Babblings of a Beach Baby My own blog, which doesn't have anything that isn't here or on LJ, most of the time, but I love that it's MY space and even though it's technically MORE accessible to others, I feel less inhibited there. But I wish people would comment. Comments are good.

5) Fannie Mae Online I go here every day, a zillion times a day, because I'm paid to, and because there's nothing cooler than automated underwriting, and…oh, only sites for personal reasons? Well, then, my last pick is, DayDreaming on Paper A blog topic prompting site.

2. What constitutes a great friend to you?
I have to be able to disagree on individual items without the friendship ending. If I wanted friends without opinions, I'd have more dogs. Actually, even my dogs have opinions. I have to be able to contact friends at 4 in the morning, if need be. Not that I ever have, mind you, but, the ability to do that is crucial. I like friends who poke me when I get all reclusive, but I know that many of my friends also share my habit of doing so, or share some degree of shyness, so we're all kind of enabling each other. Other attributes: a sense of humor, some degree of honesty, reasonable use of language – these are my a-list. And while a penchant for wearing hats and drinking fancy coffee is appreciated, it is not actually required.

3. Have you written, or do you write, in a paper journal? If yes, do you ever doodle in the margins? If no, what would it take to get you to write in one?
I had one of those kid-diaries when I was little. You know, the leatherette books with the gilded pages and “My Diary” inscibed on the front in loopy gold lettering that peeled off when scratched, and a cute little silver key. But I was more interested, then, in getting responses to what I wrote, and I guess that's still true, because while I do noodle on paper, sometimes, and have had many other “blank books for writing,” and while I LOVE the feeling of writing in ink on paper, I just think better composing at the keyboard, and I censor less. With my hands bothering me as much as they are, also, the physical act of writing has become less than pleasurable, and my handwriting, which was once pretty, has completely degenerated. So, getting me to write in a paper journal again wouldn't be likely, right now. If I did start again, the truth is, I like college-ruled spiral notebooks, the really thick ones with the squared corners, and the slightly off-white paper with greenish (as opposed to bluish) lines. I do doodle, kind of, but I'm not an artist, so it's pretty embarrassing. And then, there's that feedback thing. I really LOVE feedback. (No, I'm not hinting. It's just a statement.) Also, I find that I write in a completely different voice at the keyboard and in ink. When I'm using a pen, I'm slower and more thoughtful and introspective. And DARKER.

4. Did you ever own any pets other than the current two? If yes, I want details: when, what, and how they came into your life.
Yes. In order: A poodle/terrier mix named Taffy who was a gift from my grandparents' neighbor when I was three. My best friend Alisa was given Taffy's littermate, but her grandmother took over care of that dog. Jody. (See my pool entry). When we moved to Colorado, Taffy came with us, howling the entire way on the plane. Poor dog. But she stayed behind when we left, and it took me a long time to forgive my mother for that. Once in California, I inherited a parakeet, Uh-oh, from a friend, and went through a string of Chinchilla del Rex bunnies for 4-H, and was given another puppy (Tawnie, a long-haired dachshund mix) but when Ira and my mother got married he forbid me to keep the dog, because “animals don't belong in the house”….I have Zorro because he agreed, once he bonded with Abigail, that it was a horrible thing for him to have done, and he OWED me a dog. Fuzzy and I never lived anywhere dog_ok in South Dakota, so we tried cats, a tiger kitten named Kotula and a calico named Sparkle, but again, we couldn't bring them to California, but they both ended up with good homes with trusted friends. And then Zorro came into my life as a rescued-from-the-streets stray, and we hand-picked Cleo two years later (she turned three this spring, and no longer pees on people's feet). There've been fish over the years, and box turtles and lizards as a kid in New Jersey, but you don't really bond with non-mammals.

5. Tell me something I don't know.
I own seven pairs of sneakers and they're all different models of the same brand, RYKA, which I found on the net. I love them. They're designed by women for women, so they fit differently, wider toe boxes, more arch support, and they give money to “Take Back the Night” type causes, which I also like. Empowerment's a good thing, I think.

Oh, and, I've become addicted to crepes.

If you want me to interview you–post a comment that simply says, 'Interview me.' I'll respond with questions for you to take back to your own journal and answer as a post. Of course, they'll be different for each person since this is an interview and not a general survey. At the bottom of your post, after answering the Interviewer's questions, you ask if anyone wants to be interviewed. So it becomes your turn– in the comments, you ask them any questions you have for them to take back to their journals and answer. And so it becomes the circle.