Ask Me More…

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.