Friday, October 29, 2010

Ease Your Aching Head with 20 Nevets Tidbits

All---

There have been a lot of brain-bending posts on Nevets.QST the past week or so, so let's lighten the mood a little.  Fortunately, two of my favorite blog regulars, Golden Eagle xiaojie and Summer Ross, gave me the perfect distraction: blog awards!  I don't normally do these, but I thoroughly enjoy the active, lively participation G'Eagle and Summer always have here, and I find them both engaging and intelligent, so I very much appreciate their thinking of me.  Plus, I figured it would be a great opportunity to change up the pace a little.

So, thanks, G'Eagle and Summer for the Honest Scrap award!  In response to this award, I'm supposed to offer up 10 honest tidbits about myself.  Since I got the award twice, I'll do twenty.  Shazam!

In order that they pop into my head...

  1. Loved the TV show M*A*S*H* so much growing up that I always wanted to be over there during the Korean war as a field medic.  Now I volunteer with the local EMS ambulance.
  2. I love language, and would probably be proficient in several by now if I were disciplined enough to focus on learning one at a time.  I think my all time favorite language is Mandarin Chinese both to hear and to speak.
  3. I play rudimentary guitar pretty soundly and when my asthma is in check I can sing okay-ish.  These skills are the foundation on which I've written 80 to 150 songs.
  4. There is no overestimating my fascination with Asian martial arts.  I have taken some aikido and wish there was somewhere near here I could take more.
  5. I have done archaeology in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Alaska, and Mexico.
  6. When I did forensic anthropology, I was known for my willingness to get in the muck and dig in.  My picture is on the wall in my old lab, covered in mud and goo in the back of a formerly submerged car, retrieving remains.
  7. I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for two years -- and I still don't know how to ski.  At all.
  8. My wife's step-mom works at a ski resort in Northern Michigan -- and I still don't know how to ski.  At all.
  9. I cook the same way I write: blind instinct and dumb luck.  It usually works out.  When it doesn't, I think I'm more depressed than when my writing fails.
  10. Coffee.
  11. I once created a The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe board game.
  12. I also once created a Dark Crystal board game and a The Dirty Dozen role-playing game.
  13. The book that inspired me to write my first novel when I was around twelve was Louis L'Amour's Jubal Sackett.  I remember being struck by the mixture of philosophy and adventure, of action and human interest, and of personality and rich setting.  That novel was Crow, a ~20 page single-space Western.
  14. The most-played genres in my iTunes library are Bhangra, rap from 1988-1991, alt.folk, folk rock, emo, and progressive classic rock.
  15. The first song that turned me onto the wonders of indie music was, "Do not Feed the Oyster" by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks."
  16. Onions.
  17. My favorite science fiction shows are Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  18. I can ski better than I can dance.
  19. If I had my druthers, I would live in a tropical rainforest, the American or Canadian west, or a tropical island.
  20. I miss the smell of the darkroom and the intimacy of talking to people on the radio.

And there you have me. :)

Since I don't really do the usual award scene, I don't feel comfortable handing it out back, but anyone who's commented on Nevets.QST should feel encouraged to post up 10 tibidts of their own.  Sometimes it's good to take a break from the headaches.

.Nevets.


11 comments:

  1. I love your list- LOL you can ski better than you can dance- but you can't ski at all! LOL

    My manly man lived in Alaska before he moved to Wyoming.

    #5 and 10 are of course my favorite!

    and you have done some pretty neat things- like anthropology, wow, I don't think I would be very good at that at all. I'll stick to English and writing.
    Thanks for your kind words as well. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting list, Nevets. I speak Mandarin Chinese and I am a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do but I wish there were shaolin wushu schools here in town. I also get depressed when my food doesn't turn out. I don't like to go into mud and goo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Summer - hehe Yeah, the dancing thing... lol Alaska to Wyoming is the right move, I think. Alaska has its good points, but I've found the people and culture of Wyoming more to my own taste. Though I've only visited, not lived there... (So far!)

    And, yes, I've done a fair amount of different things. That's been very rewarding. I wish I'd hit something that was "just right," but I don't regret the variety!

    @Yat-Yee - Hen hao! And I was really excited a while back to learn of a small Shaolin wushu school in a town about 30 to 45 minutes away. Unfortunately, it turned out that while they were centered there, they actually met about 30 to 45 further away. 60 to 90 minutes is a pretty long trip to go to enough classes to be worthwhile.

    Oh, and the odd thing about the mud and good? My normal state of being is that I can't stand that type of stuff. I can't even do finger paints. But someone, on the job, I moved past my limitations. That was pretty cool.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great list! And it's even 20 long instead of 10. :D

    Archaeology--cool!

    I don't like mud and goo, either. :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nevets - most enlightening. But what is/are druthers? As for dancing, my husband did what he called 'clutch and shuffle'. Trust me - anyone can do that. Even those that can't ski.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @G'Eagle - There is nothing quite like holding a piece of pottery in your hands that no one has used for 3,000 years. It is one of the most amazing experiences.

    @Frances - haha Here you go:

    I would rather -->

    I would ruther -->

    I'd ruther -->

    d'ruther -->

    my druthers

    lol

    @Bru - Aw yeah!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. You should post the office pix of you in the muck. :)

    What an interesting life you've lived; an awesome career. Thanks for sharing yourself.

    ........dhole

    ReplyDelete
  8. And lol? Which lots of people seem to use...

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Donna - Unfortunately, they're crime scene photos, so they'd receive general publication at this point. :)

    @Frances = Druthers is a bot of Americana. LOL is internet slang.

    In the early days of the internet and electronic bulletin board messaging services, it was toward the far end of a group of expressions of amusement that would be enclosed in angle brackets:

    (g) = grin
    (bg) = big grin
    (vbg) = very big grin
    (lol) = laughing out loud

    As the grin expressions fell out of use for a variety of reasons, LOL lost much of its strength through increased use. It know probably means something more like, "I'm laughing on the inside," or "One chuckle through my nose," or "Laughing once, quietly, and under my breath."

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh. And I thought it was 'lots of love' :(

    ReplyDelete

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