1. I love food and cooking.

2. I taught myself to knit from a book. I haven’t done anything too complicated, but have made a bunch of stuff, including a couple simple sweaters. Someday maybe I’ll have time to pick it up again – it’s a very relaxing activity.

3. I am an avid reader. I read a ton of fiction and I read it FAST – usually at a rate of a book per week. I rarely go to sleep without reading first. It’s also a great way for me to recharge.

4. I am an introvert and homebody. I could be at home for a week and not leave the house and not feel even the teensiest bit of cabin fever.

5. I do 90% of my shopping online, including groceries.

6. I’m a fan of pedicures. But I rarely wear makeup, do my nails, dress fashionably or cut/color my hair.

7. I don’t have cable. Pretty much the only thing I watch off TV these days is American Idol. Mostly we netflix movies and TV shows that interest us, if we watch TV at all. Lately, the whole family is addicted to BBC’s newest Dr. Who, though.

8. I am addicted to potato chips. Lays Classic, preferably. VICE. It’s best to not have them in the house.

9. I don’t hold grudges, but when I get mad it takes me awhile to cool off. Like a couple hours sometimes. Mostly only poor Scott has to deal with that aspect of my nature, though. Bless him for his patience.

10. My baked beans (grandmother’s recipe handed down) are nationally famous.

11. I was on reality TV once. After knowing each other online for 6 years (and being virtual business partners for 4 years), Nancy and I finally met in person. Our first in real life meeting was filmed in San Francisco for Life Moments – a syndicated NBC reality show (now defunct). It was very painful to watch. I rarely like photos of myself and video – ack! I have a great face for radio.

12. My kids do their own laundry – even the 8 year old. I don’t make Jake do his (yet), though. They have quite a few other daily chores as well. <crack> goes the whip!

13. I wish I could sing, dance and figure skate.

14. I’m a better editor than I am writer. In spite of that, I dream of writing a book someday. I read such GREAT fiction, though, that my performance expectations are incredibly high. I don’t know if I can match them!

15. I am a damn good editor. Gifted, even. (However, I’m not editing THIS for typos, etc.

16. I used to think I was a dog person, but now I think… not. Maybe the problem is I’m just too overwhelmed with the demanding human creatures who are dependent on me at this stage of my life. Love cats; hate the shedding.

Over a million iPhones have been sold.  Have you: bought one, considered it, or decided it's not for you?

iPhone self-portrait

Bought it this weekend! Scotty has one, too. All photos in previous two posts taken with my iPhone. Not only that, but it is SUPER easy to email the photos right from the phone. I was whipping them off to grandmas and friends and family (and vox) as soon as I took them. Fun! So much easier than dealing with uploads off my digicam. Of course the photo quality – while not bad for a phone camera when there's adequate light – has nothing on my digital cameras, but it's super convenient and I always have my phone, so I'm likely to use it for that purpose quite often. Resolution of photos is 480×640 (4×6 prints). Not bad for everyday snaps.

I wish it interfaced better with the google suite, but now that google is IMAPing, I can access my email off the iphone as seamlessly as any other web machine!

I also love how it is also an 8G iPod! And how I can download music directly from iTunes onto the iPhone AND it synchs the music with my desktop automatically.

Surprising, there are no games on it. And no GPS like blackberries have (although it does have google maps).

I'm very satisfied with it for my needs (which is more pleasure vs. business). If I had to type a lot of email on a smartphone, I would have gone for a blackberry, I think.

The only thing (for me) that would make iPhone perfect is if it could synch with my google calendar like it does gmail. I CAN easily access my calendar from Safari on the iPhone, but certainly not as ideal as having the phone's main menu calendar button link directly to my google calendar. (It does link directly and synch with the outlook calendar, but I abandoned that for google a couple years ago.)

Also, I was able to import my google contacts into the phone. It was a bit of a hassle – had to export to CSV and then import to outlook and then synch, but it was doable and it is lovely to have everything so nicely consolidated now. Before I had phone numbers on my phone contacts and email addresses on my gmail contacts. I took a little time on Sunday to get all the phone numbers entered on my gmail contacts before I did the export.

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Show us what makes you[r spouse] a die-hard fan.

Yep, some daddies are all about their favorite team. Jake's daddy is no exception – he's all about Team Open Source, and he made this shirt for his boy. Rah rah!

Jake’s daddy made this shirt

Geekery

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What do you think about Ryan Seacrest being chosen to host tonight's Primetime Emmy Awards?

LOL – what?! This is really the QotD??

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Show us your favorite pair of shoes. 
Submitted by ♥Retro.  

I pretty much live in these…

Teva

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Where do you go to get away from it all? 
Submitted by Hops.  

Nose-first into a novel.

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What's in a screen/user name? Tell us how you found yours.
Submitted by Bill.

be = First two letters of my first name; ba = First two letters of my last name

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Amityville Horror

Video: What was the first R-rated movie you saw (or were allowed to see)?
Submitted by Lisa.

When I was 11 or 12, my best friend and I saw Amityville Horror (1979) (I read the book, too). I don't know what our parents were thinking. That movie scared the crap out of me, because, you know, it's a true story.

I freaked myself out for years afterwards whenever I had the misfortune of waking up randomly in the middle of the night at 3:15 am. And the slime oozing out of the walls and the glowing red pig demon eyes in the window. Shudder. That movie really traumatized me. (So much so that even today, I could only watch 58 seconds of the 2:32 trailer below!)

Oh, and I could NEVER live in a house with creepy pie wedge windows; the glowing red ones at 112 Ocean Avenue has forever ruined that architectural element for me.

Haunting or hoax, the true story of the DeFeo murders is horrifying enough.

The Amityville Horror (1979) Trailer

Speaking of murder (redrum REDRUM), then, when I was 13, I saw The Shining. More trauma. I don't watch scary movies anymore. One recent exception was The Sixth Sense and I could barely handle it.

The Shining

Here's a "trailer" I WAS able to watch all the way through.

The Shining recut as romantic comedy

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Drawing Personality Test

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Book: Show us a great biography or memoir.

Scott got me this pair of books about Mary Kingsley for Valentine's Day (after hearing NPR's featurette about these books on his way into work one day that week).

She was a remarkable woman – self-educated as well as incredibly insightful and enlightened, particularly considering the times (Victorian). I just finished reading Hello to the Cannibals (a fictionalized account, blended with another story) and will soon start in on the travel memoir she wrote recounting her adventures (cannibals and crocodiles and leopards, oh my) – all while wearing corset and crinoline!

Looks like NPR also has an excerpt form Travels in West Africa.

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