46 posts tagged “qotd”

What were the biggest and smallest places you’ve lived in?
Submitted by Jack Yan.

Smallest

Lake Waitaki, which is a tiny hydro town on the Waitaki River.  There were two streets and about ten houses when I lived there.  The electricity company has since removed all the wooden houses, leaving only five or six old stone houses, so it's even smaller now.

Biggest

Vancouver.  Vancouver city has about 500,000 people living in it, but greater Vancouver has a population of around 2 million - about twice as many as the whole of the South Island of New Zealand.

Have you ever walked out of a movie?
Submitted by Jack Yan.

Yes.  Silence of the Lambs.  Anthony Hopkins freaked me out so much that I only lasted about 20 minutes.  He hadn't done anything except stand in his cell chittering his teeth at Jodie Foster but the thought of what he might do was too much for me and I had to leave.  It wasn't the movie itself that drove me away, but rather my own over-active imagination. 

All this time later I still find Anthony Hopkins creepy even when he's only playing a likeably eccentric kiwi in The World's Fastest Indian.

Which countries have you visited? Which countries are on your list to visit?

Countries I've visited: Australia, Canada, USA, Holland, Morocco, England, France, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Vatican City, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Columbia, New Zealand.

I don't have a list because I'm open to going most everywhere if it's safe and practicable with a child (so no war-zones or places with no facilities at all for travellers).  Some places that particularly appeal though - Tunisia, Portugal, India, maybe a Pacific Island or two since we're down here.  I'd also like to go back to Western Europe, especially Greece and France.

Snowball fights, hot cocoa by the fire, and sleigh rides... What's your favorite thing about winter?

My favourite thing about the kind of winter that involves snow on the ground for days, weeks, even months at a time, is looking at it from afar.  Snow's pretty and all, and I like to throw snowballs, and I love skiing.  But I don't want snow where I am, or ice, or sleet, or freezing rain, or anything else that requires temperatures consistently below zero.  I'm a wuss and I like my winters mild.

Saskatchewan winter; not my cup of tea.

These days people are pinching pennies and living frugally, but we want to know: What's the last thing you splurged on?

A ginormous, humongous TV for our new lounge.  It took us a few visits to various electronics stores before I could get over my shock at the size of the new flat screen tellies and actually commit to buying one.  I'm still back in the dark ages, convinced that a 26" TV is big enough for anyone, but Travis persuaded me that we'd be squinting off into the gloom if we got something too small.  So huge it is.  All the better for watching tennis...

What is your favorite thing to do on a rainy day?

I've had lots of opportunities to learn how to entertain myself on a wet day, living as I have in Vancouver (where it rains cold, persistent rain for weeks at a time in the winter) and then in San Jose (where it rains in short, intense bursts every afternoon during the rainy season).  My favourite entertainment is to curl up in a comfy chair with a book. 

It's been raining here for the past couple of days and I have managed to work through a handful of books (although I'm knackered now because I sat up far too late last night and the night before finishing books).  I've had a YA binge.  Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, Holly Black - a cabal of writers who all live in New York, who all know each other (in fact Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier are married), and who all write YA fantasy. 

Holly Black's Tithe, a modern day faery tale, wasn't really my thing.  It's well-written and the teenage protagonist is likeable enough, but it didn't take my fancy. 

Libba Bray's book A Great and Terrible Beauty is a monster of a novel set in a Victorian-era boarding school for girls.  This one kept me up late last night and also caused a case of reading-induced temporary deafness earlier in the evening.  Travis was running around preparing Petra's bath and asking me questions about towels and clothes as he did so.  I didn't hear a thing even though he was never more than a couple of metres away from me.  When I finally looked up, I was startled to find that he had nearly finished bathing Petra without me noticing. 

Maureen Johnson's book, Devilish is a light, breezily witty affair - I like her style. 

Justine Larbalestier writes in a mix of Australian and American idioms in her Magic or Madness trilogy.  I found her Australianisms a bit self-conscious and a bit old-fashioned somehow.  I don't know whether Australian teens really talk like that anymore.  Although we're talking about a country where the unsuspecting party-goer can be asked if they want a "big boy" by the hostess, so anything's possible.  When this happened to me, I was flummoxed and my sister had to step in to save me.  Apparently a big boy is a cocktail sausage/saveloy thingy.  Language aside, Larbalestier's conception of magic as a force that drains your life away if you use it, and sends you mad if you don't, is an unusual and unusually dark take on the magical coming-of-age story.

Peeps, Scott Westerfeld's vampire novel, might just be the most well-written book of them all.  I felt like I was in good hands from the opening sentence and was able to relax into the book the way you can relax into a good movie, sure that the pacing, plotting, and cinematography (or writing) will sweep you along.  I wasn't sure about the ending, but I loved Westerfeld's reimagining of vampirism as a virus.

 

Have you ever broken a bone? If so, how?

I broke my collarbone skiing a few years ago.  I was noodling down the hill by myself, minding my own business and a guy on a snow board came hurtling down the hill behind me and ran me over.  This, despite having a whole uncrowded hill to play with.  "You turned," he said when I said WTF or words to that effect.  He was a lot bigger than me and we fell with all our combined weight on my right shoulder.  Even with the soft snow, it was too much for my collarbone.  I could tell immediately that something had gone wrong and lay on the snow doing an inventory of my body.  Ribs fine, once I recovered from being winded and could breathe again, legs fine, head find.  Oh right arm not fine.  It couldn't hold my weight when I tried to push myself up. 

"You'll have to help me up.  We've done something to my arm," I told the snow boarding guy.  He pulled me up and then took off, leaving me there to figure out how to get myself down the hill.  Bastard.  I was too shaken up to get on his case the way I wish I had when I look back on it.  So he left unscathed.  I thought about skiing down to the gondola that would take me to the village, but decided that would be a mistake when I discovered that I couldn't even lift my arm up high enough to put my goggles back on.  Instead, I trudged down the hill to the nearest chair lift, dragging my skies with my good arm.

The lift operator had seen what happened and asked me where the snow boarder had gone.  If he hadn't bailed on me, she would have thrown him off the mountain she told me.  She called the ski patrol and a guy rode to my rescue on a ski-doo.  Hanging on to him as he drove back up to the nearest hut was the most painful part of the day.  Each bump was excruciating and staying on the ski-doo took some determination.  Once we made it to the hut, he took my details, mopped the blood off my face and forehead - snow burns - just about sent me through the roof by squeezing my shoulder, and suggested that I go to the hospital to make sure nothing was broken.

I said no, because I was in shock by then, not thinking as clearly as I could have, and fixated on going home.  I was at Whistler, two hours from Vancouver, and by myself because I'd made a last minute decision to have a day skiing alone while Travis went snow-shoeing with friends, so getting home wasn't a straightforward thing.  The ski patrol guy asked me if there was anyone he could call for me.  "No," I said, "there's no one."  Which of course wasn't true, but at that moment I couldn't think of anybody at all.  When I told people what had happened later, my friends and Travis's parents were cross because I'd not asked for help.  "What were you thinking?" they said.  Not much it would seem.

The guy was dubious but he deposited me at my car and I was on my own with only one working arm.  Our car had a manual transmission, which meant that I had to change gear with my damaged arm.  I could manage first, second, and third, but I had to take my left hand off the steering wheel and use both hands to get fourth and reverse.  It turns out that there are more traffic lights than you think on the Sea to Sky highway and of course they all turned red in front of me.  I did a lot of whimpering as I changed gear a gazillion times.  But I made it safely back to Vancouver.

The scond most painful part of the day was taking all the layers of ski gear off.  Waterproof jacket, down jacket, light-weight fleece top, and polypro top.  The last two were tight and pulling my arm through the sleeves brought tears to my eyes.  Having struggled through that, I just sat around and waited for Travis to come and take me to the hospital.

A fractured collar bone was the diagnosis.  A very slight fracture.  Nothing major.  But, my god, it was sore once the adrenaline and shock wore off.

My take home lessons:  Don't ski alone.  Do ask your friends for help.  Carry a cell phone.  Driving a manual car with broken collarbone is not recommended.

What have you lost that you wish you could get back?
Submitted by, Witch Hazel

My waist!

What's making you smile today?

Petra as always.  She's changing and growing apace.  Her first tooth has just appeared, which might explain her erratic sleeping habits recently and her unusual crotchetiness. 

She's still working very hard on becoming mobile.  I'm not quite sure how she does it but she's able to twist and wriggle all around her mat even though she can't crawl yet.  She can get up on her hands and knees, but she hasn't figured out how to go forward. 

Today she learned how to push herself up from her stomach into a sitting position.  Very casual about it she was too, as if she'd been sitting herself up forever.  She has so much more control of her body even in just the past couple of days.

Petra's also showing more personality all the time.  She makes her feelings known, complaining bitterly when we do annoying things like dress her but loving us extravagantly as well.  She's always delighted to see us and loves to spend time getting up close and personal with us.

How have you changed in the past year?
Submitted by littleduckling.

In the past year, I've gone from this

to this:
Pregnancy and motherhood are the most profound changes I've ever undergone.  Every part of me has changed - my body, my feelings, my sense of myself, my sense of my place in the world - my whole identity has shifted.  It's good change, although I would like to be a bit more svelte(!).  Being Petra's mother has always just seemed right, even in the first bewildered hours after her birth it felt like we belonged.