AJ is nosy, but I’ll humor her

One thing I’ve learned about blogging on WordPress is that it can have a certain social-media aspect to it. The more you blog, the more you notice the people who are reading your stuff and, if you’re cool like I am, you try to reciprocate.

It can be a little like Facebook, but with a lot more creativity than Facebook, because most bloggers aren’t just reposting memes or writing one-liners, they’re actually stringing their own words together to form real sentences and paragraphs!

Let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t have snagged that Lobster Award if I hadn’t made a new acquaintance in Dahlia, who lives in India, and I surely wouldn’t be answering the questions I’m about to answer if I hadn’t met AJ, who, thanks to a huge time differential, is usually feeling perky in Malaysia about the same time my morning coffee is brewing in America.

So yeah, AJ is pretty cool, and I know from reading her Words from Sonobe blog that she’s been to Texas, has bungee-jumped, and knows how to fold paper into small squares. She also has some real attitude concerning the workplace, which is one of the things I like best about her, because I feel the same way. Work sucks, and neither one of us is afraid to admit it!

So anyway, AJ popped up this morning and asked a bunch of nosy questions (in a social-media sorta way), but there’s nothing too terrible here, so I’ll give it a go.

4 NAMES PEOPLE CALL ME OTHER THAN MY REAL NAME:

Daddy
Grandpa
Dude
Asshole

4 JOBS THAT I HAVE HAD:

Civilian KP duty on an Army base: It sucked. The only good thing was playing basketball with the leftover rolls.
Census-taker: It sucked. All the guys were sent to the rough side of town, where the inhabitants were usually quite demonstrative in their dislike for probing questions.
Executive news editor: It sucked, but less than any other job I’ve ever had.
Big Orange price-changer grunt: It sucks. How would you like peeling hundreds of labels while wearing a day-glow orange shirt at 5 o’clock in the morning?

4 MOVIES I HAVE WATCHED MORE THAN ONCE:

The Sound of Music
Silence of the Lambs
The Godfather
Jason and the Argonauts

4 BOOKS/AUTHORS I’D RECOMMEND:

Lonesome Dove by James McMurtry
The Bounty Trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
Mister Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester
Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

4 PLACES I HAVE VISITED (with the shot glasses to prove it):

Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota
Someplace in Canada
Luckenbach, Texas
Monarch butterfly sanctuary in Michoacan, Mexico

4 THINGS I’D RATHER BE DOING NOW:

Flying an airplane
Driving across West Texas
Smoking a brisket
Rolling enchiladas

4 FOODS I DO NOT LIKE:

Turnips: Now you know why the Shadowy Vale gnomes were down to their last turnip.
Menudo: Or anything else featuring guts
Crawfish: Something about sucking brains I do not like.
Raw oysters: I was only drunk enough once, and paid the ultimate price.

4 OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:

Smoked sausage
Chicken-fried steak
Enchiladas
Filet mignon

4 SHOWS I WATCH:

Game of Thrones
The Americans
Homeland
The Walking Dead

4 THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS YEAR:

I’ve been mowing the grass since an early age. Not my favorite activity.

Unloading the dishwasher
End of the mowing season
End of the gutter-cleaning season
Not dying

4 THINGS I AM ALWAYS SAYING:

“What the fuck???”
“Why must we suffer?”
“I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday.”
“Of course! It’s fucking New Jersey!”