comment if you want five questions
Jul. 10th, 2007 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursula1. How did you get involved in the SCA?
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aelfgyfu had parties in high school to which she invited more or less everybody, or at least everybody who had or would ever audition for any play at WLHS during her tenure there, along with her SCA friends. At one point everybody at the party piled onto her parents' couch. It broke. I slowly slid from the "random eighth-grader taking high school classes" category to the "SCA friend" category.
For a longer answer, see this interview.
2. What is your persona?
You don't know the answer to this question because I don't have one. I have too many interests to fit one persona, or even one era: there's no way that late Roman illumination and knitted gloves, for instance, could ever be contemporary. On top of that, there's the fact that my primary interest is not sewing clothes, so my garb tends to whatever I can beg, borrow, or trade, rather than giving a consistent impression of a particular person. (I know one doesn't need to be a costumer to have a well-defined persona, but since clothing is the most obvious signal, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend it doesn't matter at all.)
That said, I do have persona clusters, times and places where a number of my interests intersect. My "primary persona", as measured by long-standing interest, is Frankish (officially ninth-century, but cheerfully falling a few centuries earlier when the issue is garb rather than scribal experiments). The persona that knows about heraldry is fifteenth-century French, originally Breton but these days strictly French and slowly moving further east. If I were the sort of person who has new alternate personas instead of new crafts, these days I'd have a sixteenth-century Ottoman persona named Ayse.
3. If you could have diner with one person living or dead who would it be and why?
I know this is a typo, but I found myself trying to answer it anyway: if you could own a diner with one person living or dead, who would it be, and why? The easy answer is, "Somebody who already owns a diner and knows how to run the business," but since I don't know the name of any such person, that seems like cheating. So let's go for the second easy answer: somebody with enough money not to care if the diner never turns a profit, and enough other projects to let me come up with the concept. In this case, I think I want a diner in Centralia, Washington. Centralia is a town along I-5 about half an hour south of Olympia which has a bunch of fast-food restaurants and outlet stores. It also has an impressive brick early twentieth-century train station. I've spent a lot of time in that station, because I used to take the train north to visit my cousins in Olympia, and Amtrak used to have a rule (maybe still does) that children under a certain age weren't allowed to get off the train at an unmanned station. Since Olympia's station is staffed by volunteers, my relatives had to come to Centralia to get me. (Adults may be interested in the fact that it's sometimes possible to pick up City of Centralia wireless and check e-mail while a train sits in the station.) At any rate, Centralia is a rather boring freeway exit with a few historic features between my parents' house and the town where all my father's relatives live, so it strikes me as an ideal spot for a good diner. My hypothetical Centralia diner would be close to the freeway in a house built before the Second World War, serve good cappuccino (this being the Pacific Northwest) , Dick's beer (this being Centralia), and salads with greens other than iceberg lettuce, and employ lots of former Evergreen students on their way to better things. Who should be the funding partner? Melinda Gates. I'm assuming only a Seattle billionaire could even fantastically be bothered with Centralia. I picked Melinda rather than Paul Allen because she & Bill have an official interest in education, and it often occurs to me that my life would be a lot easier if somebody would start a small liberal-arts college in Seattle. (It would make sense! You could start with degrees in computer engineering and creative writing, and be instantly supplied with decent faculty.) Bill Gates has already named half the UW campus after his relatives, but maybe Melinda would like a campus for her family.
4. What is your current favorite TV show if you have one?
Dr. Who. I like it because it has a limited number of viewpoint characters and is in tune with its own cheesy sci-fi-ness. I have been evolving a set of rules for surviving an episode:
1. Run away.
2. If you can't run away, stall until the Doctor shows up.
3. Do not, on any account, make speeches about the friendliness and peacefulness of the human race.
4. Servants and technical support staff must not talk to Rose.
5. How did you andglasseye meet?
Sometime in middle school. We don't remember meeting, thoughglasseye claims we had a math class together, probably algebra. A slightly longer answer may be found here, and the story of how we got together may be found in a previous interview.
aelfgyfu had parties in high school to which she invited more or less everybody, or at least everybody who had or would ever audition for any play at WLHS during her tenure there, along with her SCA friends. At one point everybody at the party piled onto her parents' couch. It broke. I slowly slid from the "random eighth-grader taking high school classes" category to the "SCA friend" category.For a longer answer, see this interview.
2. What is your persona?
You don't know the answer to this question because I don't have one. I have too many interests to fit one persona, or even one era: there's no way that late Roman illumination and knitted gloves, for instance, could ever be contemporary. On top of that, there's the fact that my primary interest is not sewing clothes, so my garb tends to whatever I can beg, borrow, or trade, rather than giving a consistent impression of a particular person. (I know one doesn't need to be a costumer to have a well-defined persona, but since clothing is the most obvious signal, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend it doesn't matter at all.)
That said, I do have persona clusters, times and places where a number of my interests intersect. My "primary persona", as measured by long-standing interest, is Frankish (officially ninth-century, but cheerfully falling a few centuries earlier when the issue is garb rather than scribal experiments). The persona that knows about heraldry is fifteenth-century French, originally Breton but these days strictly French and slowly moving further east. If I were the sort of person who has new alternate personas instead of new crafts, these days I'd have a sixteenth-century Ottoman persona named Ayse.
3. If you could have diner with one person living or dead who would it be and why?
I know this is a typo, but I found myself trying to answer it anyway: if you could own a diner with one person living or dead, who would it be, and why? The easy answer is, "Somebody who already owns a diner and knows how to run the business," but since I don't know the name of any such person, that seems like cheating. So let's go for the second easy answer: somebody with enough money not to care if the diner never turns a profit, and enough other projects to let me come up with the concept. In this case, I think I want a diner in Centralia, Washington. Centralia is a town along I-5 about half an hour south of Olympia which has a bunch of fast-food restaurants and outlet stores. It also has an impressive brick early twentieth-century train station. I've spent a lot of time in that station, because I used to take the train north to visit my cousins in Olympia, and Amtrak used to have a rule (maybe still does) that children under a certain age weren't allowed to get off the train at an unmanned station. Since Olympia's station is staffed by volunteers, my relatives had to come to Centralia to get me. (Adults may be interested in the fact that it's sometimes possible to pick up City of Centralia wireless and check e-mail while a train sits in the station.) At any rate, Centralia is a rather boring freeway exit with a few historic features between my parents' house and the town where all my father's relatives live, so it strikes me as an ideal spot for a good diner. My hypothetical Centralia diner would be close to the freeway in a house built before the Second World War, serve good cappuccino (this being the Pacific Northwest) , Dick's beer (this being Centralia), and salads with greens other than iceberg lettuce, and employ lots of former Evergreen students on their way to better things. Who should be the funding partner? Melinda Gates. I'm assuming only a Seattle billionaire could even fantastically be bothered with Centralia. I picked Melinda rather than Paul Allen because she & Bill have an official interest in education, and it often occurs to me that my life would be a lot easier if somebody would start a small liberal-arts college in Seattle. (It would make sense! You could start with degrees in computer engineering and creative writing, and be instantly supplied with decent faculty.) Bill Gates has already named half the UW campus after his relatives, but maybe Melinda would like a campus for her family.
4. What is your current favorite TV show if you have one?
Dr. Who. I like it because it has a limited number of viewpoint characters and is in tune with its own cheesy sci-fi-ness. I have been evolving a set of rules for surviving an episode:
1. Run away.
2. If you can't run away, stall until the Doctor shows up.
3. Do not, on any account, make speeches about the friendliness and peacefulness of the human race.
4. Servants and technical support staff must not talk to Rose.
5. How did you and
glasseye meet?Sometime in middle school. We don't remember meeting, though
glasseye claims we had a math class together, probably algebra. A slightly longer answer may be found here, and the story of how we got together may be found in a previous interview.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 07:11 am (UTC)Also... I have a question for you (I just saw Transformers, bear with me)... what is your ideal Armageddon/Save Earth future in which you get to be the heroine? (ie what future would have the government showing up on your doorstep to have you help save the world?)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 05:43 pm (UTC)i figured out that unless all modern tech died and saxon hordes invaded (ie horse warfare became relevant again) i'm pretty much useless. although i think i could hold my own in a zombie attack, but that is likely true of any good gamer who has a high ick tolerance.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 01:22 am (UTC)i'll just pray for zombie invasion or maybe a shadowrun-esque future since i'm sure i could figure something out in that event.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 04:53 pm (UTC)1. If you could have a house anywhere, where would it be?
2. If you had to have one of those mystical soul-bonds with something that makes vaguely sarcastic telepathic remarks about your choices (especially when you're angsting about your human love life), what would it be? Weapon? Some sort of animal? Tree? Something else entirely?
3. How about if the Magic Sewing Fairy offered you garb from a specific era?
4. Current favorite place to waste time online?
5. Would you stake your first-born son on a contest (allowing for the possibility that he'd get an adventure out of it)? If so, what sort of payoff would you require?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 07:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 04:27 pm (UTC)2. Why Newberg? Is there a town you'd rather live in, all questions of cost aside?
3. Do you have pets?
4. Favorite nursery rhyme?
5. Done any theater stuff since undergrad?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 06:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 01:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-15 04:37 am (UTC)2. A novel you're currently enthused about?
3. Preferred alcoholic beverage?
4. Ideal pet?
5. You have a night's service from a shoemaking elf-- what sort of shoes do you request?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 03:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 03:32 pm (UTC)I'm curious to know what you're curious about. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-16 03:49 pm (UTC)2. When did you live in Canada, and why did you move there?
3. Where do you fall in the from a pattern/ make it up as you go along knitting continuum?
4. Your job is tech-writing-y, right? How did you get into that? What advice would you give to an English major who had recently graduated from college and wanted a similar job?
5. Why Huns?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-16 04:31 pm (UTC)Distinct circles, and never the twain shall meet.
2. hen did you live in Canada, and why did you move there?
From 2001 to 2004. I had found myself in an icky sort of rut in my life, and was looking for a radical change of lifestyle. I knew people in Calgary, so I thought it might be interesting to live in another country for a while (which I HIGHLY reccommend, btw). I applied to immigrate, they said "sure!", and off I went. One of the best things I've ever done for myself.
3. Where do you fall in the from a pattern/ make it up as you go along knitting continuum?
Depends on what I'm making, how lazy I'm feeling, and the yarn I have on hand. I'm a big fan of winging it, like using smaller needles and skinnier yarn and then following the directions for a larger size, or using texture rather than color, or combining a couple of patterns to make it more interesting (I do this with hats a lot). I also like to follow a pattern properly once, to see how it works, and then tweak it in subsequent creations - mostly in the realm of garments. I've got grand plans for a shawl that will be almost totally made up ("what happens if I CO the number of stitches that pattern says I'm supposed to end up with, then do a cable pattern at the edge with SSK/K2tog a couple of stitches in...will it do that cool slanty decrease thing?...*swatch*...Yay!"). I'm getting more confident, though, and suspect I'll be making up my own patterns ere long.
4. Your job is tech-writing-y, right? How did you get into that? What advice would you give to an English major who had recently graduated from college and wanted a similar job?
I kind of manufactured it, in an effort to exploit my natural talents and to get the hell out of administrative support. I had the opportunity to "write" a user's manual for a database my company had put together for a client, and then just actively pursued jobs that were writing-based after that. I would advise an English major to do just that. Unless they wanted a gig that was heavier on the "technical" rather than the "writing," in which case I'd suggest looking into some of the certifications that are available. But communicaton is ALWAYS important, and, in my experience, people who can write effectively will always be in demand.
5. Why Huns?
I wanted my persona to wear pants. Specifically, I wanted her to wear pants that were like wearing pyjamas. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 07:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 05:23 am (UTC)2. Are you at all interested in either September Crown (camping event in the mountains over Labour Day weekend) or Kingdom Bardic (mid-September event-- I'm supposedly giving a Latin lecture, and
3. Shall we cook medieval food next week? Chickpea, lentil, and/or fava?
4. Tell me about someone named Jones.
5. Favorite item from the stuff at the grocery-store checkout?