Q&A with love

We interrupt our regularly scheduled frugality to bring you a "Liebster* Award", which I got from Cheyanne at Tangerine Wallpaper. Awww, thanks.

* (from the German, "lover")

Who's Cheyanne? Well, the first time I saw her blog name I read it as "Tangerine Wallflower" -- a person beautifully and boldly ("tangerine") overcoming shyness or introversion.  That's not actually a perfect description, but I don't think she'd hate that interpretation. I love her strong and courageous advocacy for people who just need a few extra voices on their side.  Plus, she's funny.

Along with the Liebster award comes a bunch of questions that Cheyanne has for me and her other awardees.  I've rearranged the questions a bit for some reason, probably because my answers go from short & boring to long and . . . well, maybe still boring.

What’s your most embarrassing email/AIM username?  Do kids still use AIM?  Or even know what it is?  Probably not. I haven’t used it in about 8 years.

No idea what AIM is.  I've had only two email addresses in my entire life.  The first one was assigned to me in grad school (ST402521@[gradschool].edu).  I got the second one from my job, which I've now been at for 23 years; it's my name at my school's name.  Boring.

What’s your favorite seasonal food?  You know, pumpkin, peppermint, etc.

Food preferences aren't linear.  (That is, picking a favorite doesn't compute in my brain.)  And I really love all kinds of foods, all kinds.  

What’s the last GREAT book you read?

Kristi Andersen's Springer-Verlag book on Brook Taylor's Linear Perspective.  Not exactly the kind of thing everyone wants to go around reading, but she's an amazing scholar of mathematics, perspective, and history, and I'm milking her book for a research project of my own.

I've also been reading Make it Stick (a book about how students learn) and How Colleges Work, two other books that will be useful to me when I go back to teaching.   

I guess that says that sabbaticals really aren't vacations -- I haven't been doing what other people would call "pleasure reading" (although, really, I loved those books).

Who was your celebrity crush when you were in high school?

Ariana Grande.   Actually, that's J-son's current celeb crush.  I don't even want to say "Sean Cassidy" . . . soooo embarrassing.

Your middle name — embarrassing or AWESOME?

It used to be "Katherine", but I dropped it because my first and last name are already pretty long.  Neither embarrassing nor awesome . . . just clutter.

What song have you had on repeat lately?

Oh man, does "repeat" have anything to do with AIM?  I'm guessing this question has something to do with modern technology.

Here are some of the songs I'll hit the "back" button on my CD player for.  I just realized in putting this together that to listen to something twice in a row, it's probably soothing, but I listen to a lot of hoppin' music, too:

• Cat Stevens, How can I tell you
• Tracy Chapman, The Promise
• Bizet's Humming Chorus, from Carmen
• Reba McEntire, You lie
• Blues Traveler, Hook 
• Elvis, Love me tender
• Cheryl Wheeler, Piper, or Arrow
• Probably others, but that's what I can think of now

Are you a collector?  What do you collect?

Mostly, I'm an anti-collector.  For example, when I finished my IronMan, I gave away everything (shirt to a friend, swim cap to another friend, medal to my pastor, etc). 

My daughter says I collect children.  I also have more than my share of canning jars. 

What did you want to be when you grew up (at 5 years old)?

An actress.  Then a Xeroxer (my mom had those at her office at NASA -- they were new and so cool). Then a cafeteria worker (the only fun thing for a kid to do except for xeroxing at NASA; the NASA cafeteria was awesome).  Later, I wanted to be a Washington, D.C. tour guide, then an English teacher. Somehow, I morphed into math.

If you could give a million dollars to charity, which charity/charities would you choose?

This is not an idle question for us -- my whole frugality is aimed at being able to give sizable chunks of money to places where it can make the world better.   I don't think we'll hit a million dollars, but over the course of our lifetime we'll probably donate a large fraction of that amount. 

We have a list of about twenty places we donate to each year, split between international, national, and local.  I have a huge soft spot for medicine, for economic development, for sponsoring children (so, the basic human needs areas), but we do a "bread-and-roses" approach: we also give some money to our local theater.  And our church.  And my alma mater.

What are five things you KICK ASS at?

1. Theoretical Math.
2. Frugality.  Natch.
3. Swimming (I don't do it much anymore, but I can if I want.  I didn't even train for the swimming part of the IronMan I did, and I was still one of faster people in the water).
4. Memorizing stuff.  Anybody wanna hear the Gettysburg Address?  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening?  A couple of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay?  I'm ready!
5. Mentoring.  When it comes to advice, I'm full of it!

What’s something that really gets you fired up?

Theoretical math.  Finding free stuff on the sidewalk.  Keeping things out of the landfill.  Running with my friends.  Silly family dinners.  

Not to mention, getting Liebsters from awesome bloggers! 

Now it's my turn to nominate (tag?) others.  Problem is, a lot of the blogs I'd nominate are from people who rarely, if ever, blog anymore because Real Life has taken over.  Totally appropriate.  For example, 

• Waste Less, Grad Student, who is working on her PhD.  Yay!
• Dogs or Dollars, who is urban homesteading with young kids and (of course) dogs.  More yay!
• PFC Mom, working with her church, getting her kids on their feet, traveling the world, and taking care of health issues (phew!)
• Poor to Rich a Day at a Time, whose rather amazingly insanely cheerful writer is battling cancer AND homelessness.

And a bunch of the people I want to Liebster-ize would be on my list not because of their own blogs, but because of their great comments (on my blog and on others).  This includes Debbie M., Leah/Penn, Tess, the frugal ecologist, plus of course Rozy and Nicole-and-Maggie (whose blog I love even though they're actually still blogging--go Grumpies!!)

And here are my questions [for anyone who wants to answer, really].  There are only four of them:

1. Is there something that you accomplished last year that you can now look back at and say, "Phew!  I'm glad THAT's done with!"  If so, what is it?
2. How do you keep track of your appointments and to-do lists?  (I'm really curious about how other people manage time and tasks).
3. What do you normally eat for breakfast?
4. What is the goofiest little thing, that other people don't necessarily notice, that makes you happy?