2006-02-26 - 6:46 p.m.
My sister-in-law, who is not on Diaryland and therefore doesn't have at her disposal thousands of surveys, was e-mailed this one, filled it out, and forwarded it on to me and others. As I like this kind of thing, I filled it out for her and sent my answers back. She hoped that I would also transmit the survey beyond to friends of mine, but I figured they would all be either disinterested or (if they are on Diaryland) burned out on surveys. However, I have posted it here, and anyone who feels like it can fill it out. Otherwise, its presence serves as my answers to this particular survey of "Getting To Know Your Friends":
1. What time did you get up this morning? 8:30 A.M., most unusual for a Saturday morning, I can assure you, and I even went to a party last night. But all night long in my dream state, I kept trying to remember the name of the cruise ship that my grandmother, Nana, had taken around the world (the "Caronia"), which I simply couldn't remember until I woke up. And then I remembered that the "Queen Mary 2", currently the largest cruise ship in the world (twice as long as the Washington Monument is high, only about a hundred feet shorter than the Empire State Building, and as tall as a 24-story building), is docked in L.A. Harbor today (a rare event) and I want to go see it. Getting up early got me so that I could make my plans. I want to be there when it leaves later this afternoon.
2. Diamonds or pearls? As a man, I can't wear either as these exist in and for the feminine realm, but I think that pearls are the most feminine thing going, the perfect item to set off clear, pink-perfect skin. There is nothing like a woman wearing pearls, and the old-fashioned nature of them adds to their charm and appeal. Regarding gemstones, singly, I like amethysts the best, but if I were getting married, the engagement ring I would like to give would be a combination of diamonds and sapphires, that combination of clear sparkle and deep blue is amazing, and very elegant and royal.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Understand that I see, on average, two movies a week. The last movie I saw, last Tuesday, was "Freedomland," which most reviewers trashed and most viewers seemed to characterize as "the worst movie I've ever seen". Both types were wrong, I thought. While the movie had some holes and some questionable things, on the whole, I thought it was a fascinating emotional and psychological roller-coaster, extremely well-acted by the female and male leads, and helped me further refine my understanding of socio-economic and racial issues, and underscored the extreme difficulty of being a parent. The movie just prior to that was "Last Holiday" with Queen Latifah, an actress I had met and "worked with" due to having been an extra in her "Living Out Loud". I really like her, and loved the movie, despite it being pretty much a "throw away" and a "remake" of two other movies, one also called "Last Holiday," and the other "Joe vs the Volcano" with Tom Hanks, and yet I loved it and found it inspirational. Also, thanks to this movie, I've added "the Grand Hotel Pupp" in the Czech Republic to my continually-growing "must travel to" list.
4. What is your favorite TV show? Yes, I am fully a snob, I do not watch TV AT ALL. Books and movies are my thing. I not only do not have a current favorite TV show, I doubt if I could even name one. However, from the past, my favorite TV "show" was really a rotating series that showed on two different nights under the main banner of "NBC Mystery Movie". These presented such marvelous offerings as "McMillon and Wife," "McCloud", "Columbo", "Banacek", "Cool Million", "The Snoop Sisters," and I think one or two others. Each one offered some aspect that I loved: "McMillon and Wife" was filmed in San Francisco (at the time I lived in the Bay Area and really enjoyed seeing San Francisco on the screen instead of the more commonly-shown Los Angeles) and offered the quirky Susan St. James, whom I really loved, plus Rock Hudson. "McCloud" had a lead actor, Dennis Weaver, while presenting a persona of a "well, shucks" kind of a guy, in real life was a spiritually-advanced old soul who was also a member of a spiritual organization that I was in and I would see him at their convocations. "Columbo," of course, was brilliant and funny. "Banacek," one of my favorites, portrayed one of my dream life-styles, a handsome rich man (George Peppard) being driven around Boston in a limosine, finding impossibly lost and stolen things. "The Snoop Sisters" had Helen Hayes and...Mildred Natwick, I think...two appealing elderly mystery writers who always found themselves solving REAL mysteries. "Cool Million" was my total favorite, and still represents my "dream job"--he will do ANYTHING you need done (solve a mystery, rescue a kidnapped industrialist, recover a valuable art artifact, etc.), but his fee is a million dollars. This was in the 70s; nowadays, I guess his fee would have to be at least 20 million dollars. Anyway, he flew everywhere in his private jet and had a life of amazing adventure and romance. Very "Cool".
5. What did you have for breakfast? My STANDARD work-week breakfast is three poached eggs, two ounces of turkey SPAM (on a diet takes the place of bacon or sausage), and one slice of whole-wheat toast with Smucker's sugar-free jam (usually raspberry). I will have my coffee at my desk at work. However, on Saturdays (which is today), I don't have the toast, but instead have potato pancakes (a weekend treat), and I have my coffee here, currently, Don Francisco Hazelnut Vanilla coffee.
6. What is your middle name? Dewey. I've forgotten where that comes from, but I believe it is the maiden name of my paternal grandfather's mother (as I am named after my paternal grandfather, so he had the same middle name).
7. What is your favorite cuisine? By "cuisine" you must mean an entire cuisine, not just one particular food or dish. The best way to explain it is this: "highly developed, civilized culture meets tropical paradise", and two examples of where you find this is in Fiji, where the cuisine is a combination of East Indian (that's the "highly developed, civilized culture" part) and native Melanesian foods, and in French Polynesia (i.e., "Tahiti"), where it is French cusine mixed with Polynesian foods. Mexican food, although more plebian (but no less good for that), probably fits in with this, as it is a combination of Spanish culture and native indian foods. My single most favorite DISH is Beef Strogonoff on RICE (not on noodles), which is neither Fijian nor Tahitian!
8. What foods do you dislike? Only one: okra, and even that I can tolerate if it is fried or in a gumbo (the word "gumbo" MEANS that it has okra in it). There are lots of foods that I IMAGINE that I would dislike, but have never had, such as the Chinese "ground live at your table" rattlesnake, or, also the Chinese, shot-glass full of Cobra bile. The Chinese, apparently, will eat ANYTHING, even if it absolutely should NOT be eaten. The French are kind of similar to that, actually (frogs, snails, cheeses so rotten the stink alone will kill you), and yet they balance it out with great cooking much better than the Chinese do. I guess, as a region, Asian foods probably appeal to me the least, when I really think about it. Vietnamese, Korean, Cambodian...I think I'll pass. And sushi leaves me cold.
9. What is your favorite Potato chip? My favorite similar-snack food would be Cheetos, and a distant second would be Fritos. Potato Chips are way down the line, although do not take this to mean that I dislike them. Where I like potato chips is with a hot dog by the swimming pool. However, neither one is on my diet.
10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? "Moment" has to be the operative word, but "at the moment," it is Philippe Saisse's Masques (particularly the title song), but just prior to that it was the Broadway score of "Lost Angels" (a jazzy "L.A. film noir on stage") with extremely clever, almost Sondheim-level lyrics, and just before that, the soundtrack from the movie "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."
11. What kind of car do you drive? Oh, the best, a hugely roomy 1993 Cadillac Sixty Special with the best engine Cadillac ever made. Do I lust after anything else? Humm, well, if I had money to burn, quite possibly a Maybach (the longer of the two models). I like big, but nimble, powerful cars.
12. What is your favorite sandwich? I've had it only once, I think it was called the "King" burger from Fat Burger. But the name of the place tells you all you need to know about why I don't eat there, for good reason. Prior to that, there was a place at Universal City Walk, "Marvel Mania", primarily meant to appeal to children and other super-hero comic lovers (unfortunately, now closed), that had a full pound hamburger called "The Incredible Hulk". That one was worth going to Universal City Walk for (I HATE Universal City Walk, and even more so for their closing Marvel Mania).
13. What characteristics do you despise? The absolute truth? People who ignore me, and that goes for total strangers, too. Just walk down the street and don't acknowledge or even look at me, and I feel like running back and stabbing you with a spear. That's a selfish way of looking at it, but there you go. I also somewhat "despise" people who are defined by the "trendy" in accoutrements. Just last night I was introduced to man (just prior to taking his date to the party I was going to) who actually was walking around with a cell phone in his pocket and had an earphone-microphone tube headset in his ear with a long wire hanging down between the headset and his phone. What kind of an electrified-robot-machine-siamese-twin-pseudo-human is that, why is he walking around like that? The 1930s futuristic horror movie "Metropolis" lives, it was miniaturized and is now walking around among us. I had to resist the urge to slap him or say something like "Making a lot of phone calls?" If he had had a Bluetooth cordless receiver clipped on his ear (making him look like a semi-android from "Dune"), I'm afraid I would not have been able to resist the attack. I pretty much despise people talking on cell phones (while walking down the street, while shopping in the grocery store, while eating in restaurant), generally. I know I must sound over-violent in this passage, when I am not, but we are in a battle for our humanity and its recognition, here, and that calls for serious methods.
14. Favorite item of clothing? You mean, that I have, or that other people wear? For me (but I can't yet fit back into it) is a long, lean, tall, almost-to-the-floor rich black wool double-breasted coat with brass buttons. It needs to be worn with tall boots. A Finnish/Russian fur hat wouldn't hurt, either. VERY impressive and sexy. Lately, with women, I am loving "wraps", which I guess are "shawls", "mantillas", maybe even "ponchos", made of wool or silk or other beautiful and dramatic fabrics, very elegant and suggestive.
15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go? Number one on my wish-list is The Seychelles (tropical islands in the Indian Ocean between Africa and India), but just flying there costs more than double the flight to any other place I've investigated, including the other places on my list: Dubai, Rio de Janiero, Venice, and Geneva. Right now, where I am seriously planning on going on my summer vacation is Dubai, "the Hong Kong of the Middle East" in the United Arab Emirates. My plans may change, though. Instead, it COULD be Brazil, Italy, Switzerland, or France.
16. What color is your bathroom? Hack, cough, laugh...you think my bathroom, or any other region in my horrible apartment is DECORATED? We're lucky if it is even CLEAN (which, to the perceptive, reveals my distaste for these inappropriate living quarters). It's WHITE and peeling/fading and always on the brink of moldy. The floor is a hideous yellow linoleum (and I'd rather have a DIRT floor than linoleum). However, I do have a rather nice shower curtain that is of a "tropical fish" motif: brilliant blue "ocean water" type background, and then photographs of multi-hued tropical fish covering nearly every square inch of it. There is some sparse relief from the yellow linoleum in the form of a leopard-print rug which I use as a bathmat. (My decorating style, when I am able to indulge it, is kind of a "National Geographic Society/Ernest Hemingway" with a little "Indiana Jones" thrown in.)
17. Favorite brand of clothing? Completely tailor-made would be my choice, but since we currently have to make do with "pret a porter" or however it is spelled (i.e., "off the rack"), probably Ralph Lauren is best. However, once I have reached my goal weight, I have serious plans to hit Saville Row in London. However, if more economical reasoning prevails, I might want to go shopping at NK in Stockholm, my favorite department store (it's more manageable than the block-large Harrod's). Let's put it this way--the Swedes, with their perfect bodies (male and female), know how to dress and know how to make clothes to show off and even enhance that perfection. It's what I call "dressing with appropriate arrogance." Nothing in America can touch it (this country's best design has always been "blue jeans and white t-shirt" and has never really gone beyond that).
18. Where would you want to retire to? Can I live similar to high-society, Mahattan playboy Peter Beard, a penthouse overlooking Central Park in New York alternated with one's own private game preserve in Africa? How about an ocean-going yacht (ship, is more like it) like Malcolm Forbes (who, let's not forget, also had his penthouse in Manhattan, his horse ranch in New Jersey, his chateau in France, and his island in Fiji)? Oh, you mean, being really REAL? Well, I still do basically love the idea of being able to travel anywhere, but particularly back-and-forth between super-cultural-big city (New York, London, Paris, Zurich) and tropical paradise. Maybe a good combination would be something like Rio de Janeiro, which I think is big cultural city and tropical paradise in the same package. But to actually retire in a foreign country where the language isn't even English, maybe I should just pick a place in the U.S. I don't really know, it all seems too-limiting and I don't expect to retire, anyway. (By "retire" I mean "stop working altogether"; but this doesn't mean that I wouldn't entirely change methods of making money.) Maybe Florida? One of the Keys might be nice, but only if I have a boat, too. That's really all a long-long ways, away. Lots of things could change between now and then.
19. Favorite time of day? Twilight, as the sun is setting, darkness is creeping upon us, and all the lights are coming on, particulary on a summer's evening in a humid climate. Absolutely PERFECT! I want to hear those crickets and tree-frogs start chirping loudly.
20. Where were you born? I say "Asheville, North Carolina," although the actual, fully-accurate truth is "Biltmore, North Carolina," Biltmore being the little village that George Vanderbilt had built next door to the Biltmore Estate and the rest of Asheville, for housing the artisans, builders, and workers who built his estate. The hospital I was born in (the tiny, two-story Biltmore Hospital) still stands, but is now an old-folks-home. The rest of Biltmore is now a quaint and elegant shopping district.
21. Favorite sport to watch. I do not care to watch ANY sport, but, truth to tell, I am starting to develop an interest in, of all things, camel racing. Honestly. And part of my plans to go to Dubai in the Middle East is to also go to the camel races. (I also want to go on a camel-caravan ride out into the desert.) I have fallen in love with camels (for reasons that would take too long to explain here), and I have now graced my office at work with some beautiful framed camel pictures.
22. Who do you least expect to send this back? I don't know to whom I will send this, as I have participated in a lot of surveys like this for quite a while (and I love them), so anybody I might send it to has probably already done a lot of them and therefore are burned out on them.
23. Person you expect to send it back first? See the answer above. I expected to be FIRST sending it back, myself, but now I see it is time for me take my shower and go see the "Queen Mary 2", so I won't be back to this until after dinner. [Now it is the next day and I am back. The whole venture was a failure. Too many cars on the freeway and after sitting in one spot near the freeway exit for a half-hour, and I knew that where we all were headed was a dead-end, I realized I wasn't going to be able to make it. So I had to be satisfied with a cursory glance at the ship as I travelled on the Vincent Thomas Bridge overhead. The ship, sorry to say, appeared ugly. That might be partially sour grapes, but later finding pictures on the Internet confirmed my initial impression--it's an ugly black hull (reminiscent of the decrepit original "Queen Mary" that sits mouldering in Long Beach Harbor) topped by what appears to be a huge, New-York-style housing project. No stab at being sleek, elegant, and boat-like was attempted in its design. To contrast with it, the Princess Cruises "Sapphire Princess," docked in L.A. next to the "Queen Mary 2" was suitably beautiful. Even though the "Queen Mary 2" looks from photographs like it would be extremely beautiful inside, the appearance of the outside was wrecked by their apparent desire to somehow look like its more old-fashioned predecessor while nevertheless vastly increasing the amount of space for housing thousands of passengers.]
24. What type of detergent do you use? Both my laundry detergent and my dishwashing liquid come from Whole Foods: the laundry detergent is "Seventh Generation (free and clear of perfumes and dyes)" and the dishwashing liquid is "Dr. Bonner's Sal Suds". I started getting these due to their being "ecological," but now I use them because I truly do like them best.
25. Coke or Pepsi? I'm not that picky, but given the choice, prefer Coke...but it always must be Diet Coke (or Diet Pepsi). I haven't had a regular "sugared" soft drink for virtually all of my adult life, ever since the creation of "Tab".
26. Are you a morning person or night owl? Such a night owl that I think I am truly nocturnal. However, I also do happen to love very early mornings (as the sun is rising type of early), very rarely ever seen.
27. What size shoe do you wear? 11C
28. Do you have pets? None, now. I like other people's pets, though, but I think my pet-owning days are permanently over. I no longer think that animals belong in the house or the car.
29. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone? Going on 45 pounds lost now, that's exciting. There's a lot more associated with that, but there isn't room, or time....
30. What did you want to be when you were little? After considerable thought, my chosen profession was to be a king. I was a very young child, and announced to my father that was what I wanted to be. He said, "You can't." I asked, "Why not?" He said, "Because your father has to be." I responded (to this one who was now a serious obstacle), "Well, why weren't YOU one?"
31. Favorite Candy Bar? Candy bars are not now, nor have they ever been, an item that I would EVER buy. However, I guess my "favorite" would be "Three Musketeers."
32A. What is your best childhood memory? The family moving back to our house in Biltmore Forest ("Asheville") after several miserable years (for me) in Raleigh and Boston. It was summer and I ran barefooted out into the back yard and with the bright sun and moist heat, I was in such ecstacy I felt my body would explode.
32B. What is your worst childhood memory? Our family living in married student housing in Boston while my father went to M.I.T., we were dirt poor and the housing was like a slum and all the other students on campus had only babies, so for a child in second grade like I was, there were NO kids around who were my age. Being sick (which we all always were) was actually a relief from the otherwise intractible loneliness, but I can remember that when I was well, eternally wandering around and around in those squalid surroundings being absolutely and utterly alone. I probably received the boon from those days of achieving a highly-developed imagination, because that was ALL I had.
33. Different jobs you have had in your life? Gardener, trash hauler, short order cook, cafeteria dish washer, heat-shrink operator in a lettershop, college textbook publisher representative, men's clothing and shoe store salesman, apartment complex nighttime security guard, burglar alarm monitor, legal researcher, legal aid lawyer, typist, personnel assistant, computer programming instruction manual writer, market research analyst/project director, word processor, executive secretary, medical clinic clerk, medical transcriptionist, computer systems analyst, career counselor, hard disc assembly and testing instruction manual writer, estate executor and in pro per lawyer, theatrical director, spiritual counselor, shipping clerk, customer service clerk, hired hand, featured film and television extra, actor, assistant finance director, human resources manager.
34. What color shirt are you wearing? I am on my computer, in my apartment, alone. I am, therefore, naked.
35. Nicknames: Tom, Tommy, and Ozzie. "Tom" is best.
36. Ever been to Africa? Not yet.
37. Ever been toilet papered? Actually, no, but I have had my dorm room RFed.
38. Love someone so much it made you cry? Good lord, more than once!
39. Been in a car accident? Five of them, none of them my fault, nobody hurt. The first one, being hit smack on the right side of my parents' car (a 1959 Plymouth Station Wagon) by a drunk driver leaving a liquor store parking lot, while I was on my first driving date ever, on my way to dinner before the Junior Prom. The second one, the car just ahead of me on a highway outside of Charleston, South Carolina suddenly stopped. I managed to stop just behind her, but the Cadillac behind me could not, so my car was turned into an accordion between the two. My beloved Peugeot 504 that I had only had for a couple of months, and it never was right after that. The third one, I was tooling downhill on a major country highway when a deer leapt out right into the front of my car. Unavoidably hit, the bleeding dead deer with its momentum then continued to slide down the road next to me for about ten minutes, caused $6,000 worth of damage to the front end of my car (a 1986 Dodge ES Turbo Convertible). The fourth one, a mentally-deficient man (without insurance, car registration, or even a driver's license) instead of stopping at the intersection between a minor country road and the major road I was on, simply continued across the intersection without stopping, right in front of me, so, unable to stop, I smashed into him (that same poor Dodge convertible). He claimed I was at fault, as did the witnesses watching the whole thing since, after all, I had hit HIM. However, the policeman who came to investigate saw that clearly I was innocent, wrote a police report that outlined the whole thing and, to my knowledge hauled the other guy off to jail. My own collision insurance paid for repair of my car. The fifth (and, I hope, final) one, I was following an immense SUV (black Ford Excursion) into a shopping mall's underground parking lot. The driver of the SUV was too far away to reach the ticket-machine, so, in an effort to adjust his position, instead of looking where he was going, backed up, relentlessly, right into the front of my wild and desperately honking Cadillac (that I had had for less than a month). Big old black man, to him I was a rabid Chihuahua, scared him to death. I would have ripped him from limb to limb if he hadn't given me proper insurance IDs, etc. He was petrified that I would report this to the DMV, said I would cause him to lose his truck-driving job. I told him I wouldn't report it if he hassle-free paid for my car to be fixed. It was expensive (Cadillac, you see), but he and his wife came to my office at work immediately after I sent him the repair estimate and paid me in full. I tore up in front of him the DMV report. Everybody ended up satisfied, except time later revealed that the Cadillac body shop did a lousy job on the structure underneath the bumper (but the surface COSMETICS were good); car dealers, crooked to the last.
40. Croutons or bacon bits? Neither one on my "dietetic" salads. If I had to chose only one, though, it would be seasoned croutons.
41. Favorite day of the week? Friday, because it is a more fun, relaxed day at work, and the weekend is coming up. It almost feels like a miniature, weekly version of the last day of school with the summer vacation coming up; the anticipation is always slightly better than the ultimate reality, though.
42. Favorite restaurant? This is a very hard one to answer, because there are so many variations--best occasion, best local restaurant, best foreign restaurant, and so on. My favorite restaurant in the Los Angeles area is Ports O'Call in San Pedro (but you have to sit outside by the water of the main shipping channel), and I notice that other restaurants I have loved are owned by the company that owns this one. But it's not the best restaurant in the world. The award for the best restaurant experience ever goes to Victor's in downtown Umea, Sweden, where I took Hazze and Carina Lofgren to dinner as a reward for my being their guests in Sweden--elegant atmosphere, the most amazing food ever, and phenomenally grateful company, but I doubt if that experience could ever be repeated. Probably the most unique restaurant is Chalet Suzanne in Lake Wales, Florida (happened to eat there in a huge Florida thunderstorm). A restaurant I would go to again and again and again, if I could, is Deerpark, at the Biltmore Estate (deep in a beautiful Appalachian Forest), my favorite restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. However, I also love the Blue Ridge Cafe at the Grove Park Inn in that same city. Both the Blue Ridge and Deerpark are buffet restaurants. Another awesome buffet, and my single best buffet experience ever, was Bear Mountain Lodge near West Point, New York, but when I went there it was Christmas Day. The best breakfasts in the world I had eating outside at the Naviti Resort in Fiji. Okay, I guess if right this minute I could be transported to any ONE restaurant in the whole world for the very last restaurant meal of my life, which place would I pick? I guess it would have to be Deerpark on the Biltmore Estate, mentioned above.
43. Favorite flower? Hands down, gardenias, with jasmine and honeysuckle being reasonable seconds. However, for people to give me: tiger lilies.
44. Favorite ice cream? Cookies and cream!
45. Disney or Warner Brothers? And I KNOW these places from the "inside"; my first (and therefore very exciting) experience as an extra was on the Warner Brothers lot (a TV show with Suzanne Somers), and my favorite (and most money-making film experience) was Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella made by Disney. I'll pick Disney.
46. Favorite fast food restaurant? Wendy's. But I don't eat there anymore....
47. What color is your bedroom carpet? Beige. I didn't pick it, but I don't dislike it. If I had my "druthers," I'd probably go for something in blue tones. Blue velvet would be nice.
48. How many times did you fail your driver's test? This strikes me as a surprising question, because I assumed that EVERYONE but me passed their driving test. I'm referring, though, to the driving part of the test, not the written part, that was easy, of course. But the driving test, I flunked it five times thoughout the age of sixteen and therefore did not actually GET my license until I was 17. It wasn't the driving so much as the nasty attitude of the examiners that just made me mentally clam up and become very stupid and inhibited.
49. Before this one, from whom did you get your last e-mail? I'll have to go back and look...okay, it was from garynorth.com, "Gary North's Tip of the Week" (Gary North advises on financial issues), this time, on how buying refurbished printers is much cheaper than having your broken one fixed.
50. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Since one can use their credit card for ANYTHING, does it have to be a STORE? For example, I could use it to buy airline or cruise ship tickets.... Amazon.com is where I spend the most money, but not enough to max out my credit card. Maybe I'll just say NK ("Nordiske Kompaniet") Department Store in Stockholm, Sweden, my favorite department store (mentioned somewhere up above on the subject of clothes). Once I need more clothes, I could probably easily max out my credit card there. Honestly, though, the most expensive purchase I ever made on a credit card probably really wasn't all that much (a little over $2,000), but I charged my Apple I-Book on my credit card. Didn't come near to maxing it out, though.
51. What do you do most often when you are bored? Sleep! Going for a drive is a distant second. Also, I read a lot, but it doesn't have to do with boredom.
52. Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire? I'm still not sure where I will send it.
53. Last person you went to dinner with? You mean specifically "went to dinner with," not just "ate dinner with", because whom I last "ate dinner with" was whomever happened to be sitting next to me at a school dinner last Friday. The last person I specifically "went to dinner with" was my friend and co-worker, Monique, who took me out to dinner for my birthday. However, we had a horrible time, because she is black and I am white and the restaurant, which USED to be one my favorite places (let's not protect the guilty: The Valley Inn in Sherman Oaks) ended up being horribly racist, so the service was butt-awful. It probably wasn't so much the fact of having a black person there as it was having a black woman with a white man there. Sheesh, we aren't DATING (and it's none of their business even if we were). Anyway, they're off my list (and HERS, for that matter), which is too bad for them.
54. Ford or Chevy? I more think of Ford for cars and Chevy for trucks, and both of them are in financial trouble, these days. As much as I love what used to be American cars, there really hardly aren't any anymore (when Honda is made in Ohio and BMW is made in South Carolina, when Chrysler is owned by Mercedes and Jaguar and Saab are owned by General Motors, most Volkswagens sold here come from Mexico and then there are the cars made in Canada...WHAT is an American car, or any other nationality?). Ford, at least, still makes full-size cars (i.e., the Ford Crown Victoria), but I'm not in the market for a new (or different) car. However, when I think about it, the kinds of new cars that revolve around in my head, Fords and Chevys aren't showing up: "I loved the little Kia Rio (around $11,000 base price) that I rented when I was in Florida three summers ago, a cute little economical car that zipped along almost like a sports car yet had plenty of headroom (for pure utilitarianism); and strangely enough, the Kia Amante is a pretty elegant and beautiful-looking car and a lot more affordable than the Audi A8 that I could see myself choosing ($26,000 base price vs $68,000 base price) that LOOKS good anyway, and I read that for size, luxury, and reliability, the "Millionaire Next Door" would probably choose the Toyota Avalon ($27,000 base price) over a Lexus LS ($47,000 base), and the only new Cadillac I really like is the STS ($42,000 base), it's a good bet that I wouldn't be buying any new car at all, but just keeping going the one I already have and still like. However, in answer to THIS question, I guess Ford.
55. What are you listening to right now? Total silence except for the whirl of my networked external hard drive.
56. How many tattoos do you have? If there were a number fewer or smaller than zero, I would say that. How about "absolute" zero? No, none, and no way.
57. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If I were a creationist, I would say "the chicken," and if I were an evolutionist, I would say "the egg". Okay, so what do I REALLY think? I'll say,"the egg".
58. How many people are you sending this Email to? I'm returning it, completed, to the person who sent it, and also posting it on my on-line dairy site, where it will probably be read by five or fewer people, but COULD be read by an unlimited amount.
59. When is your birthday? February 6, 1948.
60. Favorite color? Purple. Not one that I wear that much, though.
61. Time you finished this e-mail? Right this moment it is 6:04 P.M. on Sunday, February 26, 2006.
62. Least favorite color? They all have their uses and their place, but I'll say Orange.
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