Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Questions Meme

Back in the spring when the interview meme was going around again, I solicited a bunch of questions from people, and then promptly fell off the side of the Earth and never answered a lot of them. I did keep them, however, and even had some of them already answered and ready to post, so, figuring that its better late than never, here are another 20 from nrivkis, artbeco, it_aint_easy, and bardling.

If you’d like to ask me five questions, or indeed, five more questions, feel free to.

  • from Naomi (nrivkis):

    1) Was being drunk at D17 fun?

    Well, it was fun in the sense that I had a good time. I’m not sure it was *necessary* in order to have a good time, but I do enjoy the effect of alcohol in moderation, and rarely in somewhat greater than moderation. 🙂

    2) What is the one thing that you love most about your wife?

    Wow, one? Probably her innate sense of honour and fairness.

    3) Looking back, do you still think your first serious crush (whoever that was) was worth it?

    Hrm. Discounting passing schoolboy fancies, I’d guess my first deep and serious crush was a girl I went to college with. Things never really worked out between us the way I would have liked, but I did ultimately learn a lot about myself from her, so I’d say that yeah, it was worth it.

    4) What is your opinion of Tinkertoys?

    Tinkertoys are brilliant! What’s NOT to like about them?

    5) What one object that you lost in the fire would you most like to have back?

    Interestingly, fleetfootmike asked me the same thing. Same answer, though: a teddy bear named Amadeus.

  • from Beckett (artbeco)

    1) What is it about women that you enjoy the most?

    They’re soft and they taste good. 🙂

    In all seriousness, I’ve always been more comfortable around women than men, and most of my intimate friends, with a few exceptions, have been female. I’m just more comfortable with the way they (as a general rule), think, the way they deal with other people, and the way they process things.

    2) How did you arrive at the poly/married lifestyle you now have?

    Well, though I didn’t really realize it until AFTER I was involved in a serious poly relationship, I’ve always been inclined to being polyamorous. (This became obvious to me as I was detailing my past relationships to kitanzi and realized that there were several situations in my past where I would have been just fine with a poly solution to events, if only I’d had the notion and the other people involved would have been agreeable.)

    3) You can change anything about your body that you want or need to, internally or externally. What changes and what do you look like?

    Well, the first thing I’d do is drop about 70 lbs. (I’ve been trying, in fits and starts, to work on this the hard way…I’d love to have a ‘snap your fingers’ approach to it. :)) I’m not unreasonably unhappy with the way I look, though I do find it gratifying that other people seem to find me more attractive than I do. 🙂

    4) You die unexpectedly. What sentence sums up your life best?

    “You could rely on him to be there for you when you needed him.”

    5) Your partner gets pregnant. What is your reaction?

    Well, that would largely depend on which partner and how THEY felt about it. I admit that I have no strong desire to have children, myself, for a variety of reasons, both selfish and otherwise, but neither I am closed-minded about the issue. I’d like to think that my reaction would be similar to Foxglove’s in A Game of You.

  • from Paul (it_aint_easy)

    1) What is the airspeed of an unladen African swallow?

    I doubt it is very different from the airspeed of an unladen European
    swallow, which research has shown to be approximately 24 mph.

    2) Do you have a relatively short answer for people who might ask “What’s up with that polyamory thing?”? If so, what is it?

    Well, first I’d point out that poly means different things to different people. For ourselves, kitanzi and I don’t have some sort of “ideal relationship model” that we’re striving to fulfill; we simply believe that if you make a connection with someone who brings love and joy into your life, there is absolutely no reason in the world not to pursue that relationship. It helps that we are ideally matched in our basic philosophy of what poly means to the each of us, so we don’t ever really have any friction between us on relationship issues, and we both genuinely enjoy seeing the other being happy.

    3) How did you meet your first wife? (If it’s not too painful.)

    No, it’s not painful at all. deidrecorwyn and I weren’t married, although we were together long enough that for all intents and purposes, we may as well have been. We met at an SF convention in Greenville, South Carolina in 1989. I spent the summer in Athens (where she lived), and then when I returned to school in the fall, she moved back to NC with me. I permanently moved to Georgia in 1990.

    4) How did you get started playing music?

    Well, I’d always been interested in music, but never had any formal training — I wasn’t even in the band in school. But when I was sixteen, I spent $250 that I earned from my first real job to buy a second hand guitar from a guy in Greenville, NC. It was a 1982 Rickenbacker solid-body electric, and it was lovely. I never actually did learn to play it properly, and two years later, when I was desperately short on cash, I sold it to a friend of mine. I didn’t pick up the instrument for another 10 years.

    When my apartment burned down in 1998, I nearly perished in the fire. It occurred to me that there were a number of things I had been saying I would get around to eventually, and that I really should think about doing them now. I bought the 12 string guitar I’m still playing today about six months later. I went and took some lessons from the local music store to get “oriented” on the instrument, and then set about learning songs based on what I had learned in that class. I really need to start taking lessons again, as I’ve really hit a plateau in what I can teach myself, I think. (Or at least, I’m not learning new things as quickly as I used to, and I don’t want to stagnate).

    5) Where in the world would you most like to go for a month’s visit?

    There are a number of people who are dear friends or potential loves who live much too far away from me. Given the chance (and assuming that I can bring kitanzi along….we don’t cope well with being apart too long), I’d spend a month with one of them.

  • from Rika (bardling):

    1) Why did you pick IT to work in?

    It was more or less an accident. I’ve always been a computer enthusiast, and thus had skills to rely on in lieu of having finished college. I got involved in the ISP business back when the Internet was only just starting to get attention, and have been here ever since. To be honest, it was really just a very lucky case of knowing the right people at the right time and having a hobbyist’s background at a moment when that was enough to get you in the door.

    2) What first attracted you to your wife & does it appeal to you more/less/the same now among all the things you love about her?

    The first thing I noticed about kitanzi was her amazing smile, which lights up her eyes. It appeals to me as much as it ever did.

    3) What’s the hardest/worst thing you have and what’s the best thing you get to do in an average week?

    Hardest thing: On a typical week, I don’t know. I have a job I like reasonably well and a nice home life, with many friends both locally and distant with whom I can make reliable regular contact with. It’s not a hard life.

    Best thing: Waking up every morning next to kitanzi

    4) What’s the most formative thing from your childhood as far as making you who you are now is concerned?

    Hrm. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and it’s difficult to find a really specific answer. A great deal of what shaped me into the person I am is my family. It’s from my family that I learned such things as honesty, integrity, compassion, and reliability, which I like to think are among my better traits.

    5) You can change any one thing about your current life – what is it?

    A specific relationship in my life that was damaged and that I’m working to repair. If I could manage to magically prevent that damage from having occurred, I’d do that. Lacking that, I’m doing what I can to work towards making things right again.

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8 Comments

  1. Somehow, I missed that you had nearly lost your life in that fire. I’m very glad you didn’t.

    • I was the only person injured at all, but I suffered second degree burns over 80% of my back and shoulders, and for about 3 minutes I wasn’t sure how we were going to get out of the apartment.

      *hugs*

      • Holy…! That’s what I get for falling out of touch…

        Glad you’re still with us!

      • And *this* is one reason why I love you.

        You are so very grounded. Most people I know (self included) would look at the injury as a life defining moment, and never move past it. It would come up again and again, how you were burned, etc etc etc.

        You look at it as a life defining moment, yes- and then you moved on. It doesn’t come up in conversation. You chose to look forward, not stay living in one moment of time.

        You rock. So much.

        • I’ve never really seen the value in holding onto the bad. It just doesn’t occur to me.

          Thanks for the kind words.

        • Yeah. That. And thereby picked up the wisdom to help other people do the same — I doubt that I would have recovered as completely from the emotional scars of my auto accident as I did if autographedcat hadn’t been around for most of the last few years while I was working on it, gently showing me the way to absorb trauma and then let it drain out again.

  2. Only 5 questions? Tricky… I could spend days trying to whittle it down to the 5 most pertinent and piercing questions that would get to the depths of Rob’s soul. Or I could just say “screw it” and pick the first 5 that come into my head.

    Screw it! 😉

    1) What song would you most like to hear a cover of and by whom and why? (was going to ask what song would you most like me to cover but decided it would be too egotistical 😉

    2) Do you ever feel like it is difficult to find time/juggle/balance the various deep poly relationships you have and your day to day life with L?
    (if yes, how do you do it -- we want step by step specific instructions please. Grin. Just kidding, you can disregard this part).

    3) What is something you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t yet? (trivial, fun, scary, life changing, expensive… something you haven’t done yet for whatever reason (maybe because you’ve just never gotten around to it).

    4) Is there a book that comes to mind (or an author more generally) that has had a profound impact on your life? Why?

    5) What is a really useful (and/or important) thing you’ve learned about either sex (and/or romance) as you’ve gotten older?

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