September 2025 Prompts
Oct. 11th, 2025 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxklore1. What actor would you hire to play you in your TV movie biography, and why? Definitely Amy Irving, because she’s played a lot of quirky women.
2. What extinct animal would you bring back, if you could? According to a list of cute extinct animals I found online, the lesser bilbo was “a small marsupial that looked like combination of a mouse, kangaroo, and bunny.” Aww.
3. When have you realized you were really wrong in your judgment about someone? As I’ve gotten older, I understand my parents better and cut them more slack about areas where I disagreed with them.
4. Who was the best teacher you ever had, and why? It’s really hard to choose one. One piano teacher I had, Johanna, stands out because she was the first person who ever suggested to me that I was having trouble with something (in this case, playing triplets with one hand and 4/4 rhythm with the other) because it was actually difficult and not because I was a musical idiot.
5. What is your favorite season and why? Autumn, because I love the crispness in the air and the colors of the leaves.
6. What was your major in college? How did you choose it? My degrees are in mechanical engineering. I’d started out planning to major in chemistry, but some aspects of organic chemistry didn’t resonate with me. I could figure out some reactions that might happen, but never quite grasped how I could tell which one would happen. I read about work some professors were doing on intelligent prosthetics and that led me to mechanical engineering. One of my early classes in that field was Introduction to System Dynamics and it just clicked with my world view.
7. If you had a mind-reading ability but could only choose 3 people to read their minds, who would they be? The most obvious one is the Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling. Next would be my brother. As for a third, on any given day, I would suggest one or another of my friends, but perhaps it might be more interesting to get into the mind of one of my favorite authors, e.g. Jasper Fforde or Alexander McCall Smith.
8. What is an experience you have had when you went fishing or swimming? When I was in grad school, there was a period when I lived in an apartment building with a swimming pool and I swam almost every day. I found that I could sometimes get into a state of perfect flow, with my mind completely relaxed thinking only of the rhythm of my strokes.
9. What do you like to do when it is really hot outside? Cower next to the air conditioner.
10. Tell about the kind of kids you hung out with as a kid. I mostly hung out with the other kids who lived on my block when I was younger. As I got older, I spent time with people with whom I had overlapping interests, ranging from dancing to playing tennis to science.
11. What are two things you want to do less of next week? What are two things you want to do more of next week? I want to waste less time watching dumb reels on Facebook. I want to spend more time reading and crafting. I should spend more time on housework, but I don’t really want to.
12. Which do you prefer, a shower or a bath? Why? Showers are for cleaning. Baths are for soaking and relaxing.
13. if you were on a game show (like Big Brother or Survivor for example) what would your strategy be? Lay low? make big moves? Win all the comps? How would your strengths and weaknesses play a role in your success or failure of the game? I can’t really imagine being on that sort of game show, where the whole point is interpersonal relationships. My idea of a fun game show is trivia / knowledge related and the only real strategies for those is to just know a lot of stuff. (Note: I was on Jeopardy! in 1989 and The Challengers around 1991.)
14. What does success mean to you? Success means meeting one’s goals to the best of one’s ability. It has to be self-defined, not dependent on another person’s standards.
15. How comfortable are you with saying “no”? It depends on the situation. I am usually good at saying “no,” but sometimes agree to go to an event I don’t really want to in order to support a friend or relative.
16. When was the last time you woke up and realized that today could be the best day of your life? I feel that way whenever I have plans to do something I’ve always wanted to but have never done before.
17. Where is your “happy place?” What about it makes you feel content? I often joke that my natural habitat is an airport lounge. In short, traveling makes me happy. That said, I love being near a beach with white sand and few people.
18. Have you ever pretended to be someone else? Why? Does giving a fake name and phone number to a guy who was hitting on me count?
19. Describe a game or activity you used to play with a sibling. My family played board games a lot. My brother was the worst person in the world to play Scrabble with because he was obsessed with keeping track of every move each of us made and it made things take forever.
20. Do you think your next car will be electric/hybrid? I doubt that I’ll live long enough to own another car. Twain (my Hyunday Accent, the logic being Accent Mark / Mark Twain) is 6 years old and has under 20,000 miles.
21. What's your earliest holiday memory? I don’t know if it’s the absolutely earliest holiday memory I have, but I remember the parades we used to have outside our synagogue on Simchat Torah when I was a child. We’d wave brightly colored flags and eat candy apples.
22. If you could be anybody, who would you be? I’m quite happy being myself.
23. What would you write in a letter you could send forward in time to yourself in 10 years? Hmm, maybe congratulations on having reached my late 70’s and wishes for continued good health.
24. Describe your favorite memory about an amusement park or county fair you visited. Do the rides at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and Expo ’67 count for amusement parks? I think Expo ’67 had a bobsled ride (on a track, not downhill) that I really enjoyed because it was fast but not high. There was also a small amusement park next to Nathan’s in Oceanside and I remember liking the helicopter ride.
25. Imagine you're stuck on the roof of a house that has been carried away by a flood. Which person would you most like to be on the roof with you? Practically speaking, I think it would be best to be on the roof with somebody trained and skilled in water rescue.
26. If you suddenly gained the ability to tell whether someone was lying, would you use it? Sure. It sounds useful, particularly with people I don’t know well.
27. When you were a child, how did you imagine your adult life? How is it similar or different to what you imagined? The main thing I remember imagining about my adult life had to do with where I’d live. I had some sort of building kit that let you design a studio apartment. I loved rearranging the walls and the furniture. I also liked drawing house plans. As an adult, I haven’t lived anywhere that matches the perfection of what I imagined when I was young.
28. What was the first way you earned money? My parents used to pay both my brother and me for certain chores that they considered above and beyond what we were normally expected to do. For example, in the autumn, they’d pay us so much per bag when we raked leaves.
29. What foreign countries have you been to? Which ones do you want to go to? Counting only UN member states, I’ve been to 93. In alphabetical order, those are Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eswatini, Fiji, Finland, France, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru. Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates, UK, USA, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabe.
As for where I want to go to, pretty much all of them but the top five would be Bolivia, Cabo Verde, Eritrea, Mozambique, and Turkmenistan..
30. Tell about the first time you ever held hands with someone. Assuming you exclude family members, it was probably a boy I knew in summer camp when I was about 10 or 11 years old. For what it’s worth, I’m in my late 60’s and I still think it’s really sweet when old folks like me and The Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling hold hands in public.
2. What extinct animal would you bring back, if you could? According to a list of cute extinct animals I found online, the lesser bilbo was “a small marsupial that looked like combination of a mouse, kangaroo, and bunny.” Aww.
3. When have you realized you were really wrong in your judgment about someone? As I’ve gotten older, I understand my parents better and cut them more slack about areas where I disagreed with them.
4. Who was the best teacher you ever had, and why? It’s really hard to choose one. One piano teacher I had, Johanna, stands out because she was the first person who ever suggested to me that I was having trouble with something (in this case, playing triplets with one hand and 4/4 rhythm with the other) because it was actually difficult and not because I was a musical idiot.
5. What is your favorite season and why? Autumn, because I love the crispness in the air and the colors of the leaves.
6. What was your major in college? How did you choose it? My degrees are in mechanical engineering. I’d started out planning to major in chemistry, but some aspects of organic chemistry didn’t resonate with me. I could figure out some reactions that might happen, but never quite grasped how I could tell which one would happen. I read about work some professors were doing on intelligent prosthetics and that led me to mechanical engineering. One of my early classes in that field was Introduction to System Dynamics and it just clicked with my world view.
7. If you had a mind-reading ability but could only choose 3 people to read their minds, who would they be? The most obvious one is the Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling. Next would be my brother. As for a third, on any given day, I would suggest one or another of my friends, but perhaps it might be more interesting to get into the mind of one of my favorite authors, e.g. Jasper Fforde or Alexander McCall Smith.
8. What is an experience you have had when you went fishing or swimming? When I was in grad school, there was a period when I lived in an apartment building with a swimming pool and I swam almost every day. I found that I could sometimes get into a state of perfect flow, with my mind completely relaxed thinking only of the rhythm of my strokes.
9. What do you like to do when it is really hot outside? Cower next to the air conditioner.
10. Tell about the kind of kids you hung out with as a kid. I mostly hung out with the other kids who lived on my block when I was younger. As I got older, I spent time with people with whom I had overlapping interests, ranging from dancing to playing tennis to science.
11. What are two things you want to do less of next week? What are two things you want to do more of next week? I want to waste less time watching dumb reels on Facebook. I want to spend more time reading and crafting. I should spend more time on housework, but I don’t really want to.
12. Which do you prefer, a shower or a bath? Why? Showers are for cleaning. Baths are for soaking and relaxing.
13. if you were on a game show (like Big Brother or Survivor for example) what would your strategy be? Lay low? make big moves? Win all the comps? How would your strengths and weaknesses play a role in your success or failure of the game? I can’t really imagine being on that sort of game show, where the whole point is interpersonal relationships. My idea of a fun game show is trivia / knowledge related and the only real strategies for those is to just know a lot of stuff. (Note: I was on Jeopardy! in 1989 and The Challengers around 1991.)
14. What does success mean to you? Success means meeting one’s goals to the best of one’s ability. It has to be self-defined, not dependent on another person’s standards.
15. How comfortable are you with saying “no”? It depends on the situation. I am usually good at saying “no,” but sometimes agree to go to an event I don’t really want to in order to support a friend or relative.
16. When was the last time you woke up and realized that today could be the best day of your life? I feel that way whenever I have plans to do something I’ve always wanted to but have never done before.
17. Where is your “happy place?” What about it makes you feel content? I often joke that my natural habitat is an airport lounge. In short, traveling makes me happy. That said, I love being near a beach with white sand and few people.
18. Have you ever pretended to be someone else? Why? Does giving a fake name and phone number to a guy who was hitting on me count?
19. Describe a game or activity you used to play with a sibling. My family played board games a lot. My brother was the worst person in the world to play Scrabble with because he was obsessed with keeping track of every move each of us made and it made things take forever.
20. Do you think your next car will be electric/hybrid? I doubt that I’ll live long enough to own another car. Twain (my Hyunday Accent, the logic being Accent Mark / Mark Twain) is 6 years old and has under 20,000 miles.
21. What's your earliest holiday memory? I don’t know if it’s the absolutely earliest holiday memory I have, but I remember the parades we used to have outside our synagogue on Simchat Torah when I was a child. We’d wave brightly colored flags and eat candy apples.
22. If you could be anybody, who would you be? I’m quite happy being myself.
23. What would you write in a letter you could send forward in time to yourself in 10 years? Hmm, maybe congratulations on having reached my late 70’s and wishes for continued good health.
24. Describe your favorite memory about an amusement park or county fair you visited. Do the rides at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and Expo ’67 count for amusement parks? I think Expo ’67 had a bobsled ride (on a track, not downhill) that I really enjoyed because it was fast but not high. There was also a small amusement park next to Nathan’s in Oceanside and I remember liking the helicopter ride.
25. Imagine you're stuck on the roof of a house that has been carried away by a flood. Which person would you most like to be on the roof with you? Practically speaking, I think it would be best to be on the roof with somebody trained and skilled in water rescue.
26. If you suddenly gained the ability to tell whether someone was lying, would you use it? Sure. It sounds useful, particularly with people I don’t know well.
27. When you were a child, how did you imagine your adult life? How is it similar or different to what you imagined? The main thing I remember imagining about my adult life had to do with where I’d live. I had some sort of building kit that let you design a studio apartment. I loved rearranging the walls and the furniture. I also liked drawing house plans. As an adult, I haven’t lived anywhere that matches the perfection of what I imagined when I was young.
28. What was the first way you earned money? My parents used to pay both my brother and me for certain chores that they considered above and beyond what we were normally expected to do. For example, in the autumn, they’d pay us so much per bag when we raked leaves.
29. What foreign countries have you been to? Which ones do you want to go to? Counting only UN member states, I’ve been to 93. In alphabetical order, those are Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eswatini, Fiji, Finland, France, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru. Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates, UK, USA, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabe.
As for where I want to go to, pretty much all of them but the top five would be Bolivia, Cabo Verde, Eritrea, Mozambique, and Turkmenistan..
30. Tell about the first time you ever held hands with someone. Assuming you exclude family members, it was probably a boy I knew in summer camp when I was about 10 or 11 years old. For what it’s worth, I’m in my late 60’s and I still think it’s really sweet when old folks like me and The Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling hold hands in public.
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Date: 2025-10-11 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-11 10:19 pm (UTC)