The Blue Sky Tag

I just got home from working Goodwill's early Fourth of July 50%-Off Everything Sale: I spent 8 hours running around re-stocking the shelves and am thoroughly pooped--and happy. I enjoy the stuff, the people, and the exercise, though it's a bit hard on my feet:
I spent my break lying down outside, out of sight under a shade tree, with my feet up on the trunk.

So--the perfect evening exercise is to take up blogger Cathy's Blue Sky Tag challenge (her answers), answering eleven questions.
I'm going to try to answer them in a fast and frothy manner, and not make a major philosophical treatise out of them...

1. What do you most enjoy about blogging?
In the cosmic scheme of things, I most enjoy the friends and connections blogging has brought me--some still blogging or otherwise posting somewhere other than FB too (Marz! Michael! Art Sparker! Deanna! Mortmere!), some no longer around (the dearly departed Bianca Castiafiore)--including folks I've met in person and those I've never met.

I also like the writing practice, the chit-chat, and having a place to share images (including art) and a place to reflect on my self, life and times. 
I also love how without meaning to, I've created a record of my life, one post at a time.

2. What made you start your blog and how long have you been doing it? 
I started my first blog, Flightless Parrots, in 2003 inspired & helped by a techie pal, Tim, and his  blog Primate Brow Flash (long since moved to FB (sadly, to me))--among other things, before there were icons for everything, he taught me basic html so I could italicize text, etc..  
Blogging appealed to me as a mix of personal  diary-keeping, creative journalism, and having pen-pals!

I deleted that blog after a couple years, took a break, and came back and started this one in late 2007--so, a total of about 12 to 13 years overall.

3. What most attracts you to a blog and what makes you keep reading it? 
Idiosyncrasy


4. What other hobbies and pastimes do you enjoy?
Uh... let's see.
Is blogging a hobby? 
What is a hobby? (STOP WITH THE ANALYZING, FRESCA!)
OK:
Reading and sometimes editing Wikipedia probably counts as a hobby.
Repairing and sewing clothes for stuffed animals
Little art projects, like making Little Animal Collages to leave anonymously for people to take
reading the Economist obituaries 
sitting in coffee shops
finding stuff
not having to do anything, after doing a lot

5. Given your time over, without any restrictions, what would be your ideal job? And why?
I'm amazed to say I'm in a job that is related to an ideal job for me:
I would like to work in thrift, which I am!
I imagine it differently though: 
perhaps a collectively run thrift store, one that doesn't carry clothes, because I don't care about clothes (though if someone in the collective did, which is likely, I have no objections, I just don't want to be responsible);
I want to work with what GW calls "hardlines" (dishes, furniture, books, artwork, vintage odds & ends, paper ephemera... etc.), as well as "softlines" that are not clothes: 
toys! fabric & crafts! linens!

I would call the shop CURIOSITIES

6. Which new country would you like to visit?
Well...
Liberia, maybe.
What a fascinating history this country has---founded as a political entity, you know,  by former slaves from the USA...! In truth, it frightens me---it's so hot & humid! And only recently survived a terrifying civil war.  And ebola... I would like to go with someone from there who would help me. 

I'm not really interested in travel for the sake of travel, but more for the possibility of forming relationships? I don't know...
Possibly, in an ideal version of my life, where I am much more active than I really am, this trip could somehow tie-in to thrift? I could learn some creative recycling? Start a relationship with folks who do that sort of thing?


7. What is playing in your headphones right now? Music, podcast, audio book?
I don't much like to listen to things, either music or words---I feel overwhelmed by incoming aural info---I much prefer to read print or watch a movie.


8. What is your favourite book and why? 
Let's say Fludd, by Hilary Mantel. 
A coming-of-age story about claiming your own life with the aid of unexpected and
. . . inconvenient spiritual forces: 
in some ways, I've grown out of it at midlife, but I still love how idosyncratic it is---you can see how Mantel went on to become the writer she did...


9. If you could go to any point in history to witness it for yourself, when and where would that be? 
The sack of Rome in 410, seen from Hippo Regius in the Roman province in North Africa (now Algeria), where St. Augustine was bishop --I feel the event has similarities to 9/11 in the United States... and Augustine was seeing it from the hinterlands, sort of like me in the midwest of the USA


10. If you could eat anything for your next meal, what would it be? 
Oh, please bring me some perfect roast chicken with crispy skin, on a platter with white rice, like the chicken bink & we were served one evening in rural Spain, where we saw the chickens eating bugs and greens in the sunshine! 
Yes, please. 
With ... hm, maybe some grilled vegetables, like shish kabobs of zucchini and summer squash and purple onion. 

For dessert, Swedish princess cake---sponge cake layered with whipped cream and raspberries, covered in green marzipan.

11. I’m writing this while watching Glastonbury, what would your dream gig line-up be? 
Oh, just give me Bruce Springsteen. Hm, maybe he could play some Beethoven... I wonder how that'd go.

Anyone who wants, please answer these questions too!