Ramblings of a Thirty-Something

Time for Question #2! It's another fun one, so be prepared for entertainment galore. Question 2:  Which of your friends would survive the Hunger Games? First, I'm going with the friends I have known the longest (i.e., relations, IW friends, and college friends). Not that I don't love all of you, my dear friends, but it would get tedious if I kept adding people to this and never actually choosing anyone. Second, I'm going to cheat. In my head, this would not be an ordinary Hunger Games--it would be under the circumstances in Catching Fire (that is, we formed an alliance). Because all of my friends have different things to offer, and if you put us all together, we would be unstoppable. I think both Audra and Clayton would make it far in any type of Hunger Games. Both my sister and my brother are very fit. My sister is quick and nimble, so she would outrun everybody and climb up in a tree and be all stealthy. My brother would probably throw things at people and wr

In my last post, I asked for questions from my readers. I didn't have ridiculously high expectations--not because I don't have faith in my readers!!! But I know that if I read somebody's blog and they invited me to ask questions, I would be very hesitant to do so. Nobody wants to be first. Nobody wants to think that the blogger (me) is sitting there, laughing out loud at the questions and judging the asker. I get it. I promise I understand. I only had one intrepid reader who gave me some fodder for my blog posts, which is fine. I actually was not surprised by the fact that this reader gave me so many questions to answer. Of course, to understand why, one must go back to our time at ISU when she was working a late shift at the Info Desk in the student center and I was sitting in our dorm room when a Facebook chat window popped up, begging for some kind of question/answer quiz she could take before she died of boredom. Add to that hours and hours of Sporcle quizzes (hence

I hope this post title wasn't misleading. I did not have a rare opportunity emerge; you , dear readers, are the ones to whom this opportunity shall be given. ("And the number of the counting shall be three, and three shall be the number of the counting!") (Sorry, I can't help myself.) Anyway, here is your chance. Your one , singular chance to ask me anything. Anything at all. Serious, funny, whatever. And I will answer it. Here's how this will work:  you ask me questions. As questions come in, I will compile a list of said questions. Then I will start a series of posts in which I will answer previously mentioned questions. Some posts might answer two or three questions if they are things like "What is your favorite kind of pizza?" or "Have you ever been to Azerbaijan?" Other questions might require a longer post. I promise that the length of my answer will have nothing to do with the person asking the question. I mean, I suppose

When I started this post, I had a specific image in my head I wanted to find. So I went to my dear friend Google. You see, there's that timeless old television/movie quote that is constantly reused which perfectly fits with what I wanted to write about...but no one on the internet can agree on its origins...so here it is from Friends:    (In my head, I'm pretty sure I saw a cartoon character flying through the sky, screaming "I regret nothing!" But instead we get Chandler and Joey, which works, too.)  Regrets. We try to avoid having them, but we all undoubtedly live with them. Some are small and easily avoided the second time around, like, "Man, I regret ordering that egg sandwich from that cafe that one time." Others are much bigger and less open for change, like, "I really regret getting my degree in finance--I should have gone into education!" ;) I'm happy to say that in my life, I have very few regrets so far. See, when I tr

I have been rather negligent in my posting as of late. Blame it on this persistent two-week cold. Blame it on my incredible disappointment with the How I Met Your Mother finale. Blame it on my busy schedule. Any of those would do. But today I have something happy to post about. In all reality, this should have been posted yesterday, but here we are. Back in January, I posted about my Grandma Fink's birthday. Unlike some people I know, I was blessed to grow up within ten miles of both sets of my grandparents. They were all present in my life in various ways; I don't think I would be the same person without them. Yesterday, my Grandma Rowe turned 85. She was born in 1929, so she literally grew up during the Great Depression. She lived through a World War, saw the world around her change from party lines to cell phones, dime movies to 3D televisions. She raised six children and is the grandmother of twelve grandchildren and the great-grandmother of nine (to date). And even at