Tag: Sunday Stealing

Sunday stealing: March 2018

perfect circle?

Sometimes, you just need a Sunday Stealing to free-associate. Bev said it’s coming back in January, but not yet. I took these from March 2018 because I don’t believe I did them before. I’ll only complete the questions I feel like answering.  

1. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be?

Nope. Just because it’s not my taste, it doesn’t mean I should deprive others of an artist. 

2. You seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks! How are you gonna spend it.

I’m taking myself out to lunch, and then give away the rest to people who ask for money, probably $10 at a time. 

3. What is your favorite curse word

@$$4013, which is my frend Karen’s fave. 

5. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What’s it gonna be?

Flying. It’s always flying, about twenty meters off the ground. I’ve had dozens or maybe hundreds of dreams involving flying.

9. Give us a word that gets you excited.

Onomatopoeia

11. What word makes you smile?

It’s usually my intentional malaprops, such as refrigagator.   

Another quiz

1. Do you tend to have a guilty conscious?

Oh, yes.

2. Do you still have your wisdom teeth?

None of them. They went in my 20s, emoved by a dentist who was a family friend.

3. Peanut Butter – creamy or crunchy?

Neither. I don’t like peanut butter. As I’ve likely mentioned, this has been useful. Since my daughter is allergic to peanuts, I have eaten unlabeled cookies. I can often taste the peanut butter. 

4. Get up off your butt. Take 5 steps. Which leg did you start out on?

Right. My left knee is worse.

5. What color is your favorite kitchen utensil?

Black

6. Did you watch the Michael Jackson memorial/funeral?

No. But I remembered when he died. 

7. Do you know anyone who graduated from high school this year? Were you invited to their graduation party? Did you go?

Probably. Probably. No. 

8. White with black stripes or black with white stripes?

The latter. 

9. If we were to call your 6th grade teacher, what would they say about you?

He would not say much, since Mr. Peca is deceased. But he LOVED our class. 

More oblong

10. Can you draw a perfect circle?

Absolutely not. There’s an exercise my doctor’s office makes me do every year. I draw a circle, put on the clock numbers, and they give you a particular time of day to display. My circle is terrible and it’s always been thus. 

13. How many light switches and electrical outlets are in the room that you are in right now?

One switch, two outlets

14. Do you know sign language?

Alas, no. I’m not great with languages

15. Do you step on cracks in the sidewalk?

Yes, usually intentionally in an attempt to lengthen my stride.

17. What is something that everyone else has, but you don’t?

A liking for coffee, beer, and peanut butter.

And another

4. What is the one meal recipe you think you’ve mastered?

Lasagna

6. Would you describe yourself as spiritual, religious, or something else?

I don’t get all definitional about this. I’m a Christian and attend a Presbyterian Church. That’s always a dodgy proposition because a lot of Christians make Christianity look stupid, venal, and, frankly, unchristian.

7. Did you ever receive detention in school? What sort of kid were you in school – bookworm, smart kid, troublemaker, quiet … etc.

No. Probably all of the above at different times.  

8. When’s the last time you ran a mile? How often do you exercise?

Not this century. Most of my exercise is walking.

9. What would you say to your 16-year-old self, and why?

Nothing. He was pretty pigheaded so he wouldn’t lisrten to anything I had to say anyway.

11. Describe a “Hah! I told you so” moment you had recently.

I have them internally all the time but I don’t say them aloud to prove how right I was.

14. Paper or plastic? Do you prefer to pack your own groceries?

Pack my own groceries in a returnable bag. I’m generally better at it than the grocery clerks.

15. Do you have a shoe fetish? How often do you buy new shoes? Do you ever get rid of a pair of shoes no?

No. Only when necessary. When they wear out.

Random 2024 post

Lempicka

This is the random 2024 post. I randomly pick the blog post date for each month, and then, within that post, randomly select a sentence. I’m sure I purloined the idea from near twin Gordon.

A serious blogger like Kelly would review his output and highlight his favorite and/or best work from last year. This is a great idea, but it would involve actual labor.

January: “Even though it’s an online bank, there are plenty of ways to access your money by visiting any of the over 40,000+ ATMs in the Allpoint network.” At the end of December, I got a Visa credit card from Varo in the mail. It was sent to our home but addressed to someone we never heard of, and we’ve been here for over two decades. I later suspected that when I lost my wallet in the autumn of 2023, the person who found it (but did not return it) ordered a Varo card to be sent to my address and figured they could remove it from our mailbox. Ha! Our mailbox has a lock. 

February: “Still, I didn’t bother voting for her because 1) she’ll get in without my help, and 2) she has a five-octave voice, which she often uses unnecessarily to the music’s detriment.” Why I didn’t vote for Mariah Carey for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the fan ballot. 

March: “Bob Marley: One Love, Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.” It was the last film I saw at the Spectrum 8 Theatre before it closed. Fortunately, it reopened a few months later under different management. 

April: “The Average Body Temperature Is Not 98.6 Degrees” Linkage. 

Politics

May: “Jay Bernhardt, the newly installed president at Emerson College, got an earful about the arrest of more than 100 protesters at the Massachusetts campus.” About the pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

June:  “[Lauren] Blackman and [Nicholas] Ward met in a production of a Broadway musical called Lempicka, which had previously played in Williamstown, MA, where it went through several revisions, and La Jolla, CA.” A concert that was part of the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s American Music Festival. 

July: “It [Project 2025] claims that “centralized government ‘subverts’ families by working to ‘replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones,’ utilizing the biblical language of natural versus the unnatural.” I mentioned Project 2025 at least a half dozen times. 

August: “’The authors’ thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed.'” Linkage about Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America.

How am I?

September: “My wife has some dry eye issues, so she’s become an expert at eye drops.” My end-of-summer health report.  

October: “One in three tree species at risk of extinction: report.” A linkage post. 

November: “Merry Christmas Darling – Carpenters (1970) – Only vaguely familiar.” This is the first of my holiday music posts.

December: “The play Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare, which I think I had to read in college freshman English class, was a bloody piece that frankly bored me.” A Sunday Stealing about books. 

So it’s reasonably representative. There’s Sunday Stealing, which I completed over 40 times during the year. Ah, three musical posts, which I did at least once a week. I hit three linkage posts, which I do two dozen times a year. Also, I mentioned politics, movies, and a day in the life. 

The picture of my kid was also randomly selected from the pictures I used in 2024.

Stats
My stats are consistent month over month, except for December, which had twice as many visitors and thrice the number of views. Rebecca Jade and the Dave Koz Christmas Tour 2024 (Dec 12) pumped up the number of views I got. However, Random Christmas stuff (Dec 17) surprised me by boosting the number of visitors.
Posts & pages for 2024; the most popular

Stealing Sunday Stealing

UREC Interpretive Center

Sunday StealingI’m stealing Sunday Stealing. It was off for December 2024, so I went back to the questions from March 2013. Why that month? Because that’s when I turned 60 and for no other reason. I took questions from the four posts.

Do you think we will move completely from traditional books to digital ones, and if we do, are you OK with that?

I have difficulty listening to books and don’t enjoy reading books online on a tablet or computer screen. I like the tactile and emotional sense of holding a book.

Do you learn best by reading, listening, or experiencing?

It is experiencing. When I’m given a task, and somebody’s trying to instruct me, telling me stuff, it doesn’t usually take. If I read the manual, I have a better chance, but doing it side by side is almost always more successful.

Do you think teenagers are weird?
Well, duh. I used to be a teenager. They’re definitely weird.

How fast does your mood change?

It depends. I can go from being ticked off to being melancholy about getting ticked off pretty quickly.

 

What do you always take with you?
It’s a mantra going out of the house: wallet keys, phone.

Is your bed comfortable?
I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be when I first lie down, but I fall asleep quickly, so there’s that.

Would you say you’re an understanding person?
Probably. I feel as though I am empathetic; I can relate to experiences others have gone through
Talk, Talk
Are you talkative?

It depends on my comfort level and the situation. I can be fairly chatty when I feel part of the entity. But where I don’t, I can say nothing and observe a lot.

 

Do you sleep with the bedroom door open or closed?

Closed, but that’s pretty much a function of the fact that I go to bed after my wife does, and the hall light, which I need to get to our bedroom, is on until shortly before I go to sleep. I suppose I could leave the door open after she’s already closed it, but I haven’t habituated to that.

 

How many social media sites are you registered with?

I have an Instagram account, which I have seldom used, but I can see other people’s Instagram stuff. Instagram is not often in my headspace. I have Facebook, which I post daily, usually my blog post, and my wife’s and my NYT Connections. I’m on BlueSky, and sometimes I post my blog there if I think of it. I’m new there, though.

 

What are you listening to at the moment?

Shawn Colvin’s album A Few Small Repairs. That’s the one that has Sunny Came Home and Nothing On Me.

 

Do you believe in Karma?
Oh no, if there had been karma, there wouldn’t have been a person who committed felonies and managed to get elected President, essentially negating those felonies and other potential prosecutions. There is no karma.
I Wish
If you could have three wishes…but none of them could be for yourself, what would you wish for?

Sufficient money for certain organizations to do the projects they’re working on: for the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, that would be money to build the Interpretive Center, and for FOCUS churches to have a sufficient amount of enough money to feed everybody they want to feed in the Capital District. And to pay off the house my parents owned in Charlotte, NC.

 

Have you ever been on the radio or on TV?
Radio: When I was in college in New Paltz, NY, I used to read the news on WNPC for a semester, mostly wire service news. 

TV: I was kiddy shows thrice. My church choir was on a local telethon several times. I was interviewed for a news segment on a racial reconciliation event in he 1990s.  In 2017, five years after I wrote about the surprise October 4, 1987 snowstorm, I was interviewed by Spectrum News.  I think that’s it. Oh, wait; I was on JEOPARDY twice.

 

Have you ever won a lottery or sweepstakes?

I won $50 in a lottery fifty years ago.

 

Have you ever won a contest or competition?

I won a Class B racquetball tournament at the Albany YMCA. It was the only statue I ever won. In the 1970s, I was pretty good at winning radio contests, usually records, but once won $48.

 

Is there anything really interesting in your family history?
My mom’s mother’s mother’s father was James Archer. 
My dad’s mother’s mother’s father was Samuel Patterson.
And my mom’s father’s father’s father was Daniel Williams. 
All of them fought in the American Civil War, and all of them survived. 

Sunday Stealing: Good Luck Charm

An American Family

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. The quiz is stolen from the League of Extraordinary Penpals.

    Do you have a Good Luck Charm?

Oscar and Bellflower

    What was the last song you listened to?

I listened to many albums a couple of days ago, but I don’t remember the order. I Ain’t Marching Anymore by Phil Ochs? Holiday by the BeeGees? Maybe it was the Rolling Stones’ I Am Waiting.

    What is your favorite thing about the place you live?

Albany is the right size for me. I don’t want to live in a huge city, and I certainly don’t want to live out in the country or suburbs. A small/medium-sized city is just about right.

    What is your earliest childhood memory?

I don’t think I remember this as much as I’ve seen a picture of it. My family had gone to the Catskill Game Farm in Catskill NY, from Binghamton when I was three and a half. There was a plastic or metallic pumpkin large enough for me to sit in, and there’s there’s a photograph of this somewhere.

If you could be any animal, what would you be?

A platypus because it would be so contrary to any logic, It’s a mammal and it lays eggs. I love that.

Trust

  Who do you trust the most in your life?

Ostensibly, my wife, but I think there are things you trust some people in certain areas more than you trust other people. I have a couple of friends I’ve known since kindergarten and another I’ve known since the first day of college.

  How many languages can you say “hello” in?

From this list, I know French, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and German.

What is your favorite kind of weather?

Partly cloudy and 72 light breeze

    How did you discover that Santa wasn’t real, and how old were you?

Santa Claus isn’t real?

    What is the best feeling in the world?

Listening to familiar music with headphones. It tends to be classical music, such as Pictures at an Exhibition or  1812 Overture, or especially Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.

    What is your favorite color?

Aquamarine

    Is there a language you would love to learn?

All of them, especially Chinese and Spanish, but it is not my strength

How do you feel about reality TV?

Early on, I actually watched a few reality shows, such as An American Family, Queeer Eye for the Straight Guy, the first season of Survivor, and the first four seasons of The Real World. But I’ve long ago lost my taste for them.

    Did you ever skip school when you were a kid?

Only to go to a couple of antiwar demonstrations

    What is your least favorite food?

Kale. People telling me how good it is has not swayed me.

Sunday Stealing: hobbies

Doris the cat

SMBC
By kind permiission of SMBC Comics. “Fixing Social Media”

The Sunday Stealing meme continues to steal from 200 questions.

Hobbies I’ve learned from a friend

Do I have hobbies? I suppose genealogy is a hobby, but I don’t know who I learned it from. My cousin Lisa’s much more into it than I am, and I probably picked up a few things from her, but my quest started separately. Back in the olden days, when I used to read comic books, I would blame that on my OLD friend Uthaclena. When I was a kid, I used to collect coins and  stamps, but I don’t know who I learned those things from

My physical activity preferences

Earlier this week, I was walking down the street. This woman, who I did not know, said, “I haven’t seen you on your bicycle for a while,” which is true. I used to ride it all over the city limits. Somehow, I didn’t pull it out of the shed in 2023. In 2024, I told myself I should take it to the bike shop and get it fixed up, but the one closest to me, the Down Tube, closed recently, and I haven’t gotten around to schlepping it to another place to get it tuned up. Maybe I will do that before the end of the season, which is coming to a rapid close. Meanwhile, I walk.

MUSIC

Music I think is essential for everyone to hear.

I don’t think there’s any music that is essential for everyone to hear. I can tell you what I’ve been listening to recently. The Rascals had an album called Freedom Suite, and the first song was America The Beautiful. I also just listened to Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album, which has the unexpected hit Take Five. Randy Newman’s Political Science is something I’ve loved for years. Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way always seems to have an effect on me, as does the Beach Boys’ Until I Die.

Something I have to relearn every time I do it

Most things of an even minor mechanical basis baffle me. For instance, there’s a step ladder in my office as we speak, which I can put up, but I have the darndest time closing up. My wife could do so in seconds. I was at church last week, and we were moving tables from one room to another for an event. Neither the guy I was helping nor I could figure out how to collapse the legs. So we ended up rolling the table with the legs extended because it was just easier.

When I start thinking about holiday season planning

I have no holiday season plans. It’s all random. My wife talks to her mother or brother, and something develops, but an extended plan doesn’t exist.

Quirks & preferences I have about writing letters

I used to love writing letters. I still have a whole bunch of letters that I’ve received from when I went to college in the early 1970s until the end of the ’80s. In the later period, I have even the letters that I wrote back; I used carbon paper to keep the copy.

READING

If I had to limit my reading to only three genres, I’d pick…

History, historical fiction, and nerdy nonfiction books mostly about music

When joining teams, would I rather lead or follow

It depends on what the team is and how good the leadership is. I like to find my niche in most communities. I only want to lead it if it’s being run so badly that I feel compelled to take over.

What’s my dream concert, and who would be performing

I’m sure I don’t have a dream concert. Every concert I get to see always has something to recommend it.

The funniest, weirdest, silliest animal/pet I’ve ever met

I used to have a not-very-smart cat named Doris when I was in college. I used to say, “Doris, your mind is so porous.”

How has love changed for me over the years

We don’t have room for all that. Every relationship, romantic and otherwise, alters the trajectory.

A book, movie, or song that brings me a sense of peace

Every time I see a movie again, I see it differently. When I listen to music, I often hear it anew. I’m not sure “a sense of peace” applies. When I was involved in my Bible study, we read a lot of the Old Testament stuff, the war/ history section, which gave me no peace whatsoever.

NOMENCLATURE

Names I like but wouldn’t suit me.

I spent so much time establishing my name that picking another one doesn’t appeal to me. I spent time correcting the spelling of my first and last name; people put a D in Roger or an E at the end of Green. Several people would call me George because I think the letters in Roger and George are not dissimilar.

What’s a part of myself I’m still working to understand

Finding the balance between doing good for society and caring for myself remains challenging.

Something I love about myself today

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s my power of observation of some mundane things. For instance, a few weeks ago, I was walking home. There’s a police station about a block and a half from my house, and a cop car was pulling out of the parking space and driving down the road. It was dusk, and I could barely see the vehicle, so I flagged the car down and told the driver to turn on his lights.

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