Tag: Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing — 2×4

office space

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Dr. Medusa is an associate professor who stole this meme from her friend Clare. Since Clare no longer blogs, it’s unknown whether she originated it or stole it. But that doesn’t matter. What’s important now is how you answer these questions.

The 2×4 Meme

TWO foods you can’t stand

  1. Peanut butter:  What’s odd is that, as a kid, I LOVED peanut butter. But I must have ODed on it because the smell now makes me nauseous.

2. Black olives

FOUR foods you love

  1. Lasanga, possibly the only thing I make using the oven 

2.  Strawberry ice cream

3. Carrot cake

4. Deviled eggs

Location

TWO places you never want to see again 

  1. A truly awful motel in Ashtabula, OH, where we stayed for the 2016 Olin Family reunion.  

2. A cockroach-infested apartment I lived in Kingston, NY for two months in late 1972. 

FOUR places you’d like to revisit

  1. Toronto, ON, Canada, where we went to just ahead of the Olin Reunion in Peterborough , ON in 2011. It was combined with a stop at Niagara Falls. I can always go to the Falls.

2. Barbados, where we spent our honeymoon in 1999. 

3. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. I’ve been there twice, in 1998 (the Carls Perkins and Wilson had recently died) and 2016. 

4. Paris, France. We were in France for a few days, but not nearly enough in the capital

TWO musical artists who make you want to change the station 

  1. I don’t know a musical act well enough to hate. There are aspects of various music that I don’t enjoy: misogyny, hyperviolence.

FOUR musical artists you love to listen to

  1. The Beatles (what a surprise)

2. Sly and the Family Stone

3. Beach Boys – Sly and Brian died recently

4. Talking Heads

The past

TWO moments you’d like to erase

  1. Oddly enough, this came up in conversation recently. Trying to get moved from a horrendous office space in August 2017 involved yelling (not just by me), and I needed to leave to cool off, but I was physically blocked. There are more details, but suffice to say: 1) I did get to move, but 2) it took WAY too much effort.  

2. One morning in June 2009, I was trying to get back from Charlotte, NC, to Albany, NY. Because of a conversation too inane to repeat, I was late for my plane and had to switch items while in the TSA line.  

FOUR moments you’d like to relive. OK, I’m not sure the premise is correct for me. Do I want a rush of nostalgia? No. Do I want to “fix” the past? Maybe, but THEN what? Do I want to re-remember stuff? Well, maybe.

  1. I’m told that, when I was in third grade, I got so angry because some kids were playing keep-away with my hat that I went home. I can totally believe it. I don’t remember this, but my friends tell me I then hopped a Crowley’s milk truck to get home. I’d only want to relive to clarify the narrative.

2. When my maternal grandmother would ramble about relatives, which she called “relations,” I would take notes the next time.

3. I would put my childhood photo album in a safer place.

4. When I took apart the front door lock when I was a kid, I would have taken notes so I could put it back together.

 

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

The ABCs of Sunday Stealing

Wordle

A logo from a now-defunct group I used to participate in

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here, we will steal questions from every corner of the blogosphere. We promise to work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Creative Bold inspired this week’s meme. She used the alphabet to tell us a little something about herself. Now it’s your turn.

Let’s Do Our ABCs. J5. The Look of Love. Sesame Street.

A. Auto—it’s a white hybrid that looks like every other vehicle of its size. I’ve gone to the wrong car. Occasionally, so has my wife, and she bought it and drives it.

B. Bed size – Queen.

C. Cats – Stormacita

D. Dogs – I wrote about this a couple of years ago. Quoting me: In my life, I had only one dog. He was named Lucky Stubbs. I believe he was an Alaskan husky we had when I was a tween. He would nip at me, but my parents, specifically my father, seemed unconcerned. That is, until he bit one or maybe both of the minister’s daughters. THEN they got rid of him, ostensibly to a farm in the area.

E. Essential start to your day—I’m afraid it’s Wordle. My win streak is over 955; maybe when I finally blow it—I’ve had two sixes in the last 50 games—I’ll give it up. Or not.

Well, you should be able to guess one

F. Favorite color – Green. Or blue

G. Gold or silver -eh, either. Whatever.

H. Hand you favor (righty or lefty) – Right-handed

I. Instruments you play – kazoo

J. Job title – retired business librarian

K. Kids – one

L. Live (rural, suburb, city) – medium-sized city

M. Meal plans—Okay. We usually have oatmeal with blueberries and a banana for breakfast. Lunch and dinner are relatively varied. Sometimes, when my wife is busy, I buy takeout; the Indian takeout usually lasts four meals.

N. Nicknames – I’m not partial to them.

O. Overnight hospital stays. When I was five and a half, I remember having a bloody nose so severe that I was admitted to the hospital; it was great because I got to see the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, such as Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear. There was a car accident in June 1972.  Then, there was the heart thing in 2013. 

P. Pet peeves. Lots. Drivers who don’t yield to pedestrians when they have the right of way.  People who say “do your research” when they mean, “Listen to the lunatic I listen to.” But I have been less fussy over spelling errors because English is weird.

The movie quote should be about movies.

Q. Quote from a movie. My favorite quote about cinema: “That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” Grand Canyon (1991), spoken by Steve Martin’s character

R. Regrets. “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” This line from the song My Way, popularized by Frank Sinatra, is a fiction in my life.

S. Siblings: Two sisters, one less than a year and a half younger, and one a little more than five years younger.  

T. There’s no T! So Television: I just got a Roku, and I’m still figuring it out.

U. Underwear. Yes.

V. Vegetable you love. Spinach

W. What makes you run late? Often, other people

X. X-rays you’ve had. Teeth, left knee, and various other parts.

Y. Yummy food – spinach lasagna, fried chicken leg, strawberry shortcake, carrot cake.

Z. Zoo animal; At The Zoo

Sunday Stealing – Let’s Blog about Blogging

alternative facts

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week’s meme is swiped from If By Yes, a Canadian blogger who describes herself as a “left-wing left-hander with two left feet.” It’s a shame she doesn’t update her blog anymore. Anyway, she participated in a meme that she tells us was popular way back when.

About Blogging

1. When are you at your blogging best – a.m. or p.m.?

Absolutely in the morning. At some level, if I have an idea about a post, I sleep on it, and often I have at least an approach mapped out in the morning. The only time I work on the blog after about noon is doing something mechanical, such as adding links to articles and music posts.

2. How many blogs do you have? Please include the links in your answer.

This is it, at least publicly. The rogerogreen.com blog content morphed from the rogerowengreen.blogspot.com on May 2, 2010. The old content from those first five years is here, but not all comments have been moved, so there’s that. My old work is defunct, as are a bunch of others I’ve participated in. I had a blog on the Albany Times Union from 2008 to 2021, but that ended; the content is uploaded here.  

The rest is silence

3. Do you prefer silence when you compose your posts and write your comments?

Absolutely not. I write to music, and it doesn’t matter if it has words or not. I am listening to Rossiniana by Ottorino Respighi, which Kelly posted. But usually, I listen to compact discs of artists whose birthdays are in the current month, such as John Hiatt, Joe Strummer (The Clash), and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin). Indeed, I can’t do very much without music. I use it when I’m cleaning or filing.

Conversely, I can’t listen to talk, such as the NPR news shows my wife likes to listen to. Sidebar: I’m very sad/angry about the death of the CPB— the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

4. What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever spilled on your keyboard?

Probably Diet Coke.

What’s the use of getting sober…

5. Ever posted while intoxicated?

I don’t generally write on Facebook immediately. I might write a blog post and then post that, but that requires time, thought, and a cooling-down period. The only immediate things I have posted on FB and BlueSky lately are public service announcements about accidents and severe weather.  

I don’t even post immediately when ticked off, but let the thoughts simmer. These recent examples bother me as a librarian because they are not fact-based decisions. The FBI redacted djt’s name from several references in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein files. The Smithsonian said it restored a display to an earlier version, which notes that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.” djt accused the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, of faking jobs numbers, directing his team to fire the former President Biden appointee. These are, to quote a former White House staffer, “alternative facts,” which are bad for democracy.

But see how c-c-c-alm-m-m-m I am? And sober. 

 Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Sunday Stealing — Living in the World, Not on It

refrigigator

“Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

“This week, while looking for a blog we hadn’t hit yet, we discovered Living in the World, Not on It. This meme comes to you from ‘life in the slow lane of the unemployable, unworkable, disabled HR Manager/EMT’. Too bad she quit posting because she sounds interesting.”

Living in the World, Not on It

1) You’re on a trip taking a tour through the jungle. You have a backpack with some food, first aid supplies, a pocket knife, a flashlight and a couple bottles of water. Somehow, you get separated from your group. By night fall you haven’t found your group and haven’t heard them looking for you. How long do you think you would be able to survive on your own?

First, let’s be clear that I will never voluntarily take a tour through a jungle. It’s not my thing; maybe I’d do so at gunpoint or something. That said, how long I could last depends on how much water I could find, how hot it is, and what unsavory plants or animals I encounter. I could probably survive about a half a week on the avoirdupois of my body. Water is the basic thing; also, extreme heat – I don’t do well with hot and humid.
Liar
2) Do you think it’s okay to lie to spare someone’s feelings? Why?

Of course, especially about things of no great consequence. I’ve known so-called “truth-tellers” who use “honesty” merely to create pain and prove superiority over another human being.

That said, I’ve long been affected by Sissela Bok’s book Lying, which I read four decades ago and wrote about here almost twenty years ago. Even the “little white lie” has consequences for the teller and, if they find out, for the person being lied to.
Talk talk
3) If a talking doll were made to resemble you, what 3 phrases would it say?

I don’t know about phrases, but it would use the word accoutrement in a full French accent; French and Italian words are inherently sexy. It would say “refrigigator” as one of the words I enjoy mispronouncing. One phrase would be “That’s suboptimal,” which I swear I heard from some press secretary or Cabinet official in a Presidential administration. However, I can’t find out who; it is usually used as classic British understatement, I have read.
If You Could Read My Mind
4) If the superpower to read minds at will were possible, would you think it would be cool and helpful, intrusive and wrong, manipulative, or maddening?

It certainly would feel intrusive if I could read other people’s minds, and I’m sure it would feel the same if others could read mine. The idea of the Thought Police is frankly terrifying. I believe the idea of NOT saying things was a good thing. It would also be manipulative and maddening.
It might be helpful if you’re dealing with someone who cannot speak or otherwise communicate. Otherwise, I have not seen the upside, although I suppose if I could read my cat’s mind… Well, maybe I don’t want to know that either.

5) Are drunk confessions things people can’t bring themselves to say sober, or just the crazy ramblings of an influenced and intoxicated mind?

Based on observation, I think both are possible. Still, in my experience, most involve people confessing affection, expressing anger, or saying something they just can’t otherwise get out.

Sunday Stealing: Follow That Dream

jEOPARDY, Scrabble, and 500 rummy

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week we stole from Follow That Dream. Bonnie, who posted it, admits she stole it from Stella. Now here it is, just waiting for you to steal it for your blog …

Stolen from Follow That Dream

1. My bestie and I once …

One of them and I went to Las Vegas in September 2024, which was my first time and likely my last, though I had a good time.   

2. When I’m nervous …

I look around a lot.

3. My hair …

Has been receding since I was 17.

4. When I turn to the left, I see …

A shred bag blocked the front window.

Adenia

5. My favorite aunt …

My great aunt Deana (Adenia) Yates was born in 1908, the youngest of my maternal grandmother Gertrude Williams’ siblings. She is to the right in the picture above with her sister, mother, and niece (my mom). There are more descriptions here.

My sisters and I visited the house that Deana and Gert shared, 13 Maple Street in Binghamton, NY, almost every day during lunch and after school during the academic year.

If I hadn’t been watching JEOPARDY with Deana on weekdays at noontime, I might not have become so obsessed with the program that I tried out for the show in 1998. I taught her canasta, and she taught me 500 rummy. She played SCRABBLE with me a lot. Sometimes, I would watch her “programs” with her and her sisters, the CBS soap operas Guiding Light, Edge of Night, and Secret Storm. 

I was sad when she died in 1966, in part because she was a buffer between her sister and me. Gert didn’t think a boy should wash the dishes, which I did at home. More than once, Deana said to her sister, “Leave the boy alone!”

6. I have a hard time understanding ….

Consider this an expletive-filled rant about the politics in the last six months in the United States, and the capitulation by media (I’m talking about you, ABC, CBS…) More people will become sick and die.

7. You know I like you if …

I tease you and/or engage in circuitous wordplay.

8. When I was 5 years old …

Among other things, this.

Ramblin' with Roger
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