Questions Meme
Most of you know the drill: respond indicating an interest in the meme, and you get five questions to answer on your journal.
These are from cordelia_v.
1. Tell me the name of a children's book you'd completely forgotten reading when you were little, that you rediscovered with delight when your own child was old enough for it.
I'd not quite forgotten it, but certainly hadn't thought about it in many many years. I started reading Goodnight Moon to Phoenix to help her fall asleep; I continued it with Kallisti, and I no longer need the book to "read" it; I've got it nicely memorized. I tried to put a tune to it, so I could sing the whole book as a lullaby, but my musical talents just don't stretch that far.
2. I know you're a gamer. What's the longest game session you've ever participated in? (hoping I phrased that in a way that makes sense). What game was it?
Ohh geeze, I have to dredge my memory for this one. I haven't done really long sessions since I was a teenager. The game was certainly Dungeons and Dragons, or our variant of it (we, umm, discarded character sheets at some point; it became a lot closer to interactive fiction than gaming--but ostensibly was still D&D, set in the D&D universe). I don't think any of my sessions were longer than a weekend, and that includes sleep breaks; I never pulled the 48-hours-straight gaming session, but we did do "get together Friday night; game until midnight or 1am, sleep, wake up around 8, game all day until midnight or 1, sleep, wake up around 8, game all day, go home at 11pm Sunday night" more than once.
3. Do you have any pets in your household? I can't recall your mentioning any.
We have a gopher snake named "Friendly" (guess who named the snake?), about whom I should write a nice entry someday--we lost it for over a year, and found it again when we cleaned out the under-the-stairs. And we briefly had a turtle, which we kept for a couple of weeks, fed fish-bits to, and then let go in Tilden Park, which was a lot safer for it than the parking lot in which it was found. (It showed up after some bad floods.) We used to have an iguana, but it eventually died. (Rob had had it for many years, and it wasn't young when he got it. Nasty-tempered thing; apparently had been owned by bikers who abused it.) We had a dog for a few years, but had to have it put down--we'd had a roommate who got drunk and played rough with it; after he moved out, we discovered the dog was prone to attacking people who smelled like alcohol. Rob won't let me have bugs for pets. And he's allergic to cats, and he's not sure he's got the energy and time to keep up with a dog (he's very much a dog person).
4. What states have you lived in?
California. Arkansas.
Umm... I think that's it. I've had more-than-a-week visits to Washington (state) and Nevada. I don't think I've ever been east of the Mississippi. My mom used to drive us back & forth to Arkansas for the summers, so I've been through most of the states between CA and AR, and once my father drove us back & stopped off to visit his brother in Indiana (umm, is that east of the Mississipi? My awareness of geography basically ends at "how many planets do we live on?").
5. How do you observe the Solstice with your family? Or do you? I'm curious as to how pagan religious celebrations incorporate or are done with kids.
Badly; I'm pathetic at family celebrations. We do heartily encourage them to keep the traditional all-night vigil and watch the sunrise after the longest night; they dutifully bounce around madly for an hour after their normal bedtime, and then crash. More celebratory pagan families have decorations which are very similar to Christmas ones (that tree with the fruit shiny globes and flowers bright-colored ornaments? Ancient sympathetic magic; decorate a tree in winter to remind the gods & ancestors that we're ready for spring now, really, and the cold stuff could go away any time.), and they often sing songs (of which I have a fine collection, which I do not sing), feast, drink, and tell stories about surviving great hardships. And then everyone's supposed to trudge out to watch the sunrise, and yell and cheer that this time, the dark didn't stick around forever and eat us all.
These are from cordelia_v.
1. Tell me the name of a children's book you'd completely forgotten reading when you were little, that you rediscovered with delight when your own child was old enough for it.
I'd not quite forgotten it, but certainly hadn't thought about it in many many years. I started reading Goodnight Moon to Phoenix to help her fall asleep; I continued it with Kallisti, and I no longer need the book to "read" it; I've got it nicely memorized. I tried to put a tune to it, so I could sing the whole book as a lullaby, but my musical talents just don't stretch that far.
2. I know you're a gamer. What's the longest game session you've ever participated in? (hoping I phrased that in a way that makes sense). What game was it?
Ohh geeze, I have to dredge my memory for this one. I haven't done really long sessions since I was a teenager. The game was certainly Dungeons and Dragons, or our variant of it (we, umm, discarded character sheets at some point; it became a lot closer to interactive fiction than gaming--but ostensibly was still D&D, set in the D&D universe). I don't think any of my sessions were longer than a weekend, and that includes sleep breaks; I never pulled the 48-hours-straight gaming session, but we did do "get together Friday night; game until midnight or 1am, sleep, wake up around 8, game all day until midnight or 1, sleep, wake up around 8, game all day, go home at 11pm Sunday night" more than once.
3. Do you have any pets in your household? I can't recall your mentioning any.
We have a gopher snake named "Friendly" (guess who named the snake?), about whom I should write a nice entry someday--we lost it for over a year, and found it again when we cleaned out the under-the-stairs. And we briefly had a turtle, which we kept for a couple of weeks, fed fish-bits to, and then let go in Tilden Park, which was a lot safer for it than the parking lot in which it was found. (It showed up after some bad floods.) We used to have an iguana, but it eventually died. (Rob had had it for many years, and it wasn't young when he got it. Nasty-tempered thing; apparently had been owned by bikers who abused it.) We had a dog for a few years, but had to have it put down--we'd had a roommate who got drunk and played rough with it; after he moved out, we discovered the dog was prone to attacking people who smelled like alcohol. Rob won't let me have bugs for pets. And he's allergic to cats, and he's not sure he's got the energy and time to keep up with a dog (he's very much a dog person).
4. What states have you lived in?
California. Arkansas.
Umm... I think that's it. I've had more-than-a-week visits to Washington (state) and Nevada. I don't think I've ever been east of the Mississippi. My mom used to drive us back & forth to Arkansas for the summers, so I've been through most of the states between CA and AR, and once my father drove us back & stopped off to visit his brother in Indiana (umm, is that east of the Mississipi? My awareness of geography basically ends at "how many planets do we live on?").
5. How do you observe the Solstice with your family? Or do you? I'm curious as to how pagan religious celebrations incorporate or are done with kids.
Badly; I'm pathetic at family celebrations. We do heartily encourage them to keep the traditional all-night vigil and watch the sunrise after the longest night; they dutifully bounce around madly for an hour after their normal bedtime, and then crash. More celebratory pagan families have decorations which are very similar to Christmas ones (that tree with the fruit shiny globes and flowers bright-colored ornaments? Ancient sympathetic magic; decorate a tree in winter to remind the gods & ancestors that we're ready for spring now, really, and the cold stuff could go away any time.), and they often sing songs (of which I have a fine collection, which I do not sing), feast, drink, and tell stories about surviving great hardships. And then everyone's supposed to trudge out to watch the sunrise, and yell and cheer that this time, the dark didn't stick around forever and eat us all.