Questions from Carrie

Okies, questions from carrieb.

1. What did your family say when they learned you had an online lover boy in Sweden?
"What if he's an axe murderer or something?!" I was living at home and going to college, so we also had to clear his first visit here with them to a large degree. It would have sucked and been quite expensive to do the motel thing if we didn't have to (though we would have, if they hadn't agreed.) They were a little worried about what he'd be like, but they did agree that he could stay with us for a week to ten days or so. And they made me take stewlis to the airport with me. I guess they figured that he would control his homicidal tendencies if there was a witness.

2. If you were captured by aliens, would you rather be in the alien zoo or the alien circus?
Definitely the alien zoo. I'm not big on travelling around and doing tricks for people.. I would much prefer the lazy life of having aliens paraded before me. Maybe they would keep me in a clone of my natural habitat. Maybe I'd even get Tivo. And broadband.

3. What do you want to name your hypothetical children? Does Magnus agree with the names?
We can only agree on one thing.. we're going to try to keep the actual names secret until after the baby is born. This isn't much of a problem in answering this question, though, because we REALLY have sucked at thinking of names we both agree on and that work in both languages and with our last name. We might have named a little boy Yancey (after his daddy! ha!) if Yancey Yayer didn't sound completely ridiculous. If it was completely up to me, we might have a boy named Tristan Cord and a girl named Sydney Chance.. those are the ones that I had in mind long before I met M. Magnus hates both of those. He also hates names that don't clearly belong to one sex or another, and I tend to really like androgynous names. He would possibly agree to let me name a boy Sydney, which I don't like at all. I was considering Kaiden, for a girl (also before I met M) but now a bunch of not-close relatives have named their boys that. I honestly can't imagine what we'll come up with.

4. Do you think you guys will ever move to Sweden or will you always stick close to Kentucky?
It's hard to say for sure, but at this point, we can't really see moving to Sweden before the age of retirement. I'm not making a prediction that we will after we retire, either, I'm just saying that it's hard to predict where we'll be then. I was rather thinking hard on it for a while, but then I realized that I didn't so much want to move abroad as I wanted to make changes in my life. (Namely, if I was going to be unemployed, it might as well be in a country where I have a valid excuse in the language.) After I figured that out, I realized that it's still not the most practical thing for us to do. I probably wouldn't enjoy it in the long term. It's not so much about the culture shock.. I would just miss my family too much. M said he'd never met a person our age that spent as much time with their family--and he said that only after I admitted to feeling guilty about not spending much time with them. ;) Also, if M could find the right job, he would be making three times as much as he would in Sweden.. based on the job that he had when he was there. Oh, and he's not homesick, either, whereas it's likely that I would be. We're not really totally against moving away from Kentucky, but it would need the right incentive. I can sort of see us in Tennesee or Georgia. Might be because I actually lived in those states for seven years. :)

5. Mike says I have to ask you a Wheel of Time question since he knows you read WoT. Hopefully it won't scare your other readers. If Perrin and Mat battled each other, who do you think would win and why?
Interesting question. I'm leaning toward Perrin, and not just because Mat annoyed the crap out of me for the first three books. Sure, Mat has all those memories from other men bouncing around in his head which would give him an edge in actual fighting, but I can't really see Perrin fighting Mat over anything less important than Faile, which is a big assumption, but I'm going with it, especially since that's the big thing with him in the last book or two. It's not like he thinks of much else these days. I know that Faile isn't a popular character, but M says that she reminds him of me, so I have to like her. Anyway. It's just unlikely that Perrin would lose at any cost with her at stake, especially given his tendencies toward occasional bouts of rage and his wolfy skills. On the other hand, Mat seems to be unable to die, so what do I know? :)

Okay, now's when I ask if anyone wants me to ask them five questions. Hopefully someone who I didn't ask five questions to when we did this a while back. :)

Opinions.

I've mentioned before that I'm struggle to control my levels of tact. I was born without a tact gene. It started early in life.. at age seven, I wrote my dad a long letter telling him that he 'runt' (ruint) my life--this is still mentioned to me at least five times a year. A couple of years ago, I made an active decision to stop saying exactly what I think. M didn't change me, but he gave me strength to BE me. That's when I sat down and really thought about my tendency to tell people exactly what I think and realized that it was not that I couldn't do it, it's that I didn't want to do it before. (I analyze everything. I could tell you why I didn't want to, but it's not really important.) In my happy little world, I assumed that if someone asked for my opinion, then I should give it to them. I still don't understand why people want others to lie to them, or validate their own opinions, or never hear what others think, but I've tried to be more accomodating. I've had moments of backsliding. I let my great-uncle drag me into a rousing political discussion this spring, for example, that left me feeling guilty, but in general, I've done really well, I think. Even my mother has noticed improvement, and she despaired of me ever learning to watch what I say. I've even refrained from posting things in my own damned journal.

I'm a fan of Dr. Phil for just that reason. People pay him to tell them the things that I've wanted to say all my life. He says just what he means to say, and I respect that. I'm fascinated now by how many people say that they wish everyone could be so honest with other people as he is. I know for a fact that people don't want honesty--see above. Honesty just isn't the way to win friends and influence people, but people love to pretend that they want honesty from their friends and family.

I don't know what the point here is. I just sometimes want so badly to say something to someone that I know they're not going to like. I don't like seeing people sacrifice their own well-being. People sabotage their lives all the time and they do it so lightly. Where are the lines between being a friend by telling them what they want to hear and being a good friend by being honest and just making them mad because they didn't want to hear it at all? And most importantly, is it even ethical to sit back and let someone do something emotionally harmful to themselves without lifting a finger to help?

I guess I'll never get a real answer to this. I just wish it didn't worry me so much. I guess the moral of the story here is that sometimes, it's not that people don't care if they don't say anything; it's that they're terrified of saying what they actually mean.