Saturday, August 16, 2014

7 Quick Takes – Questions Answered

Sorry for being a day late – I started this yesterday after work, but then went out to a social thing with other librarians and then I was so exhausted, I went to bed early. 

--- 1 ---

From DK Zody: Where were you born and how did you end up in Texas?

I was actually the first person in my family that was born in Texas.  My parents and siblings were all born in Indiana.  They moved to Texas in 1968 and lived in Amarillo.  They moved to Perryton, TX where I was born in 1969.   We lived there for six years.  That was where I was hit by a car and broke my neck when I was four years old.  In 1976 we moved back to Amarillo.  I lived in or around Amarillo until I moved to San Antonio in 2011.  I still love living in San Antonio and wonder why I didn’t move here sooner!

--- 2 ---

LM asks: When/how did you become so interested in Scrabble?

I’ve always enjoyed word games.  I liked doing crossword puzzles as a kid.  In puzzle magazines, I liked doing the anagram magic squares.  Sometime in the mid 1990’s, I had a Scrabble game on CD that I played on the computer a lot.  The more I played, the better I got, but I’ve since learned a lot of other strategies from Matt.  I used to play my ex-husband, but he always accused me of cheating since I knew more words than him.  When I finally got an iPhone about 6 or 7 years ago, I played Scrabble on it quite a bit.  One of the reasons why I contacted Matt on Catholicmatch.com was because his profile indicated that he liked playing Scrabble.  Once we started playing (and dating), he taught me a lot of strategies that has helped me play better.  I rarely played bingos before I met him.  Now I average one or two per game most of the time.  Before nationals last summer, I did some studying, but I’m not as dedicated as Matt is. 

--- 3 ---

From Mago:  If I have guests it would be very rude to "end" the evening at some point, like announcing that I'd want to go to bed now or such - it would be equal to throwing the guest(s) out. The guest is expected to say when he wants to leave.
Is this the same in the US ? Or is the host expected to say "thank you for your visit" first ? Who is expected to take initiative ?

I won’t claim to be an expert on etiquette, but I’ll offer my personal perspective on this scenario.  Most of the time, guests generally take the hint when it’s getting late and excuse themselves.  On the chance that a guest has overextended their stay, I would try to drop hints about the lateness of the hour by saying something like “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late” or “Wow, it’s midnight already?”  If by chance they haven’t taken the hint, I would say something like “I hate to cut the evening short, but I have to get up early tomorrow.”  Most people would take the hint by then and most are gracious about it. Now that I’m in my 40’s, it seems that most people my age are too tired to socialize past 11:00 p.m. anyway.   If by chance we’ve been drinking or the guest has a long drive ahead, I always offer to let them stay the night.  

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Jan’s question: What shocked you about Matt when you two moved in together?

I’m not sure that anything in particular shocked me when he moved in since he had practically been living here for about six months before he actually made the move.  One of the things that did shock me during the move, however, was to realize how much of a messy hoarder he was.  When I was helping him pack and clean I found saved receipts from 2001.  Instead of dust bunnies under his bed, there were dust killer rabbits.  He still had pairs of pastel colored pants that haven’t been popular since about 1986.  The other thing that kind of shocked me was learning how bad his mother actually was when we got the cold response from her regarding a potential visit during Thanksgiving.  I thought perhaps he was exaggerating to some degree and I encouraged him to work on the communication with her.  I learned my lesson.  

--- 5 ---

That’s all the questions so I’ll give you few other updates.  I’m glad I survived my first week back with all the exciting inservice meetings (note sarcasm).  The library meetings weren’t too bad this year.  It seems we had a lot of down time.  Yesterday I helped most of the librarians with creating their wiki library pages. 

--- 6 ---

My cat Lucy has somehow hurt her leg/foot.  Matt took her to the vet for me on Thursday, but it seems they didn’t have any definitive answers.  They did give her some pain medication and will see her again  on Tuesday.  So far she’s been staying under the bed in the workout room.  I’ve put her food and litterbox in there and check on her every so often.  Today she limped out into the kitchen for a bit.  She’s pretty old, but has been in generally good health for her age.  She is still eating and seems fairly happy at the moment so I guess it’s just a wait and see if her foot gets better.   

--- 7 ---

Josh has been working at a radio station this summer as an intern.  He does weekly classical music programs and was interviewed for 35 minutes for a special on Holst’s The Planets.  It’s really pretty interesting, you should listen if you have free time this afternoon.   

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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