Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Driving myself crazy, need a break. Figure I'll take a few minutes to finish this up and see if that clears my head.

Swiped from a few people on my friends list:

Full name: Donald Glenn Arthur Jr. (I've read that I'm supposed to drop the "Jr." since my father died, but it feels funny not to use it.) I'm usually evasive when asked what the "D" stands for, for no particular reason other than preserving an aura of mystery and being bratty. (I usualy say it stands for "de one an' only".) I've noticed that using first initial + middle name, while not the default, is hardly rare, but it still bollixes up an awfull lot of poorly designed databases. *grumble*

Were you named after anyone? My father, Donald Glen Arthur. (His name showed up with one 'n' on some documents and two 'n's on others. IIRC (and I could be mistaken), there were two 'n's on his birth certificate but he used one 'n' most of his life.)

My siblings have more interesting naming stories: my sister is named after both grandmothers, one brother is named after both grandfathers, and my other brother bears a masculinized version of my mother's name.

When did you last cry? A few tears involuntarily leaking out? I don't remember which movie I was watching on television -- sometime in the past month. Really let it all out? Uh ... I've felt like it a few times, but it's probably been way too long since I was able to let go. I don't remember.

Do you like your handwriting? I've got a few different handwritings. I almost like one of them, but not the others.

What is your favorite lunchmeat? I am a vegetarian (and I don't care for any of the fake-meats I've tried). As a child, lunchmeats were in the "okay, it's food and it's here" category, so I'm hesitant to call any "favourite", but the one I came closest to liking was pimento loaf.

Any bad habits? Yes. (You didn't want a number, did you?)

What is your most embarassing CD on the shelf? Uh ... [goes to look to see whether any evoke that emotion] ... Nope. Closest I can come is RuPaul, Supermodel Of The World, and that doesn't get me there. Sorry.

If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Maybe. I'm nice enough, but I'm not sure I'm interesting enough.

Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell? I've skirted the edges when I've thought it important enough, filing off identifying details first. I'm not going to go into what counted as important enough here, because that steps close to more secrets, and a survey-meme isn't important enough.

Do looks matter? Yes, but only in that I'm more likely to be already looking at someone who is especially attractive and/or especially interesting-looking when they do or say something interesting enough to engage more than my eyes. If you're not as pretty, all it means is that it might take me a few minutes longer to notice you, and being pretty is no guarantee that I'll want to get to know you. Once the "getting to know you" process is engaged, looks don't matter. Well, not in the sense that I think the question was intended. Gazing upon loveliness is still pleasant even after more important forms of attraction have been established -- but at that point it's a bonus, not a condition. I feel that looks shouldn't matter, but that's a different question than was asked.

How do you release anger? Seldom, poorly, and incompletely.

Where is your second home? Here, Baltimore. But my "first home" only exists two weeks out of the year. (Look me up just downhill of the corner of Brewer's Road and Howard's Fenway if you're in town this August when town exists.) There are other places that feel like they could be that for me, but I don't spend enough time in those places for any of them to count. (Skyline Drive, for example.)

Do you trust others easily? This question needs context. For some types of trust yes. For other types, no. For many kinds of trust, somewhere in between.

What class in school do you think is totally useless? I'm sure that for each class I can think of, there's someone to whom it is useful. But the one that translated to "9th Grade English For College Freshmen" seemed like a stupid requirement when I was considering transferring as a college sophomore. (The University of Dallas has no such class, you see -- freshman English there is a literature class and they expect the high-school stuff to have been learned before you got there -- so not having an equivalent class on my transcript, nor an AP exam, I was told I'd have to take a class covering what I learned in 9th grade in order to transfer.)

Do you have a journal? A conventional diary as opposed to a blog? Yes, a paper one, but I go through month-long spurts of writing in it followed by several-months-long spells of not getting around to it. I've tried keeping it on a computer instead, but I'm even worse about that. Somehow I manage to keep up here, more or less, possibly because of the occasional feedback. But there's a lot I don't write here because it's shared.

Do you use sarcasm a lot? A lot? I don't think so, but I'm not sure how much counts as a lot.

Have you ever been in a mosh pit? No.

What are your nicknames? Past and present, many from college: D'Glenn, Daglenn, D, Dee, Glennmonster, Werecatfish, Fuzzy Faced Ichthanthrope, Moonunit, Captain Video, Human Vibrator, Electric Transvestite, Arthur, Legs, and Coo. I think I've forgotten some old ones.

Would you bungee jump? Probably someday. Need one of those circular tuit thingies.

Do you untie your shoes when you taken them off? The ones that have laces. When I wore sneakers, I did not usually untie them first. Now I don't usually wear shoes with laces, and when I do, they're ones that don't come off easily without being untied first. (I've got one pair of mundane flats with laces, and my Medieval Mocassins that I wear with my kilt or with medieval and renaissance garb. The rest of the time I'm in pumps, boots with zippers in the winter, bedroom slippers, or once in a blue moon, loafers.)

Do you think that you are strong? No, but sometimes I do things that other people say they can't do, and I get confused. Sometimes it's because I don't know my strength; more often (I think) it's because I'm more stubborn than strong (or smart) or because I apply force in an unusual manner or direction. When the fibromyalgia screws with my arms so I can't open a jar or a bag of crisps, I get rather upset.

More or less the same answer, minus the jar/bag comment, applies to emotional strength.

How many wisdom teeth do you have? Two and a half remaining.

How many people have a crush on you right now? #blink# I really don't know. There's one who did have a crush on me but now we're actually seeing each other so I don't think that still counts as a "crush". There's one who may have had a crush on me years ago, but if so, I missed my chance. History has shown that I am extraordinarily clueless about picking up on signs that someone has a crush on me (or any other signs of being interested in me). Folks will have to be less subtle. There's one who's been giving me signals I'm too shy to trust my intpretation of, recently.

What color pants are you wearing? I am not wearing pants. This is not unusual. I was tempted to say "black" on the grounds that "black is the absence of colour", and since "the pants I am wearing" do not exist, they cannot have any colour. But that would confuse the people who know me, who would wonder whether I'm typing this at my mother's house or something. Uh ... I'm assuming the American, rather than the British, use of the word "pants" here. If I was supposed to answer in the British sense, do folks still wanna know?

What are you listening to right now? The whirring of the fan on my Windows NT machine, which, unlike my main Linux box, is still moving air.

Last thing you ate? Doritos "Guacamole" flavoured tortilla chips. (They're green, the artifical flavourings sortakinda almost suggest something almost but not quite related to avacado as a faint undercurrent, and the bag says "gaucamole" on it. They're actually pretty good, but I can't in good conscience dispense with the "scare quotes".)

Last person you talked to on the phone? John, of The Homespun Ceilidh Band

The first thing you notice about the apropriate sex? (Note: Noticing that at least one person had to tweak this question in her answer because the original phrasing, "opposite sex", didn't quite cut it, I figured I'd make this edit for the convenience of anybody who copies these questions from me.) It depends on ... which way she's facing, what she's wearing, the lighting, how far apart we're standing. I can't give a solid answer on this, I'm afraid. Quite often it's her hair or her eyes or her smile; sometimes it's her clothes or her figure; sometimes it's her shoulders (yum, shoulders). Put nice legs between a cute skirt and eye-catching shoes, far enough from me that a first glance will be full-length, and I might notice legs first. Or put her on television in a figure-skating competition, and I'll often notice her legs first. I never noticed butts all that much until I dated someone with The Most Adorable Butt In America, and suddenly started looking there more often.

But if she's holding a guitar or a bass and knows how to play it, I'll notice that first. (Oh, I could watch Ms. Wilson's left hand all evening. Despite noticing the rest of her charms, my fantasies of spending a night with her involved having her teach me to play that intro from "Crazy On You")

In candlelight, I'll notice cheekbones and eyes first.

Do you like the person who sent you this? I like the people I copied it from.

Favorite drink? I don't do well with "what is your favourite ___?" questions, as they depend so much on my mood from moment to moment. I'm fond of Balvenie Portwood (a Scotch whiskey I cannot afford), Remy Martin cognac (which I can't afford), malta (a Hispanic soft drink I often can afford), orange juice, Thai iced coffee, Thai iced tea, mango lassi, decaf Earl Grey, and Grand Marinier. Any of those is in the running for favourite. There are many more things I like well enough to be considered "treats" (such as Cel-Ray celery soda, Loch Du, Turkish coffee, tamarind soda, Mackesson Triple Stout, or really good birch beer).

Do you wear contacts? No.

Siblings? Three: one sister and two brothers, all younger than myself.

Favorite month? Not sure (we're back to that "favourite" word again). Probably October. I love autumn, and in October people are thinking about Samhain (my favourite (but not most important) holiday) as opposed to thinking about Thanksgiving in November.

Are you too shy to ask someone out? Hell, I'm almost too shy to answer this question! I'm pretty good at finding ways to work around or past my shyness in many contexts, and I can be sort of gregarious, I'm conspicuous as Hell, and I fall into "teacher mode" or "performer mode" at the drop of a hat, so even people who know me sometimes have trouble understanding how shy I am underneath it all. But it took me literally years of trying to work up my nerve before I could manage to (rather clumsily) ask ... uh, a certain woodwind player who reads this ... out.

Flirting, on the other hand, I can handle! It's completely different.

Hugs or kisses? Each in its time. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of hugs, but mmmmmm, kisses can be sooooo sweet!

Living arrangements? Just me and a cat in a rowhouse.

What books are you reading? Oddly, nothing at the moment. I've been too busy to feel I could allow myself that form of "goofing off" (I can rationalize LiveJournal for a few minutes at a time; pick up a book and the afternoon goes away).

What's on your mousepad? On one, an empty malta bottle and a roll of toilet paper (ran out of Kleenex the last time I had a cold); on another, toenail clippers; on a third, only the mouse; on the fourth, dust that I'll need to wipe off before the next time I start X on the console, which I almost never do.

What did you watch on TV last night? I caught a few minutes of Carson Daly and the rerun of Jay Leno as I was putting away groceries; that's all I saw of the telly last night. But with any luck, my VCR watched a couple of shows on my behalf.

What's the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning? I don't have a consistent answer for that. "Where am I?" "What, no meteors after all?" "Fuck, that doorbell is loud." "I'm late!" "Owwwwww!" "I hope that hairball lands someplace easy to wipe up." "This dream is getting confus... Oh." "Is it street-cleaning day?" "My god, what a gorgeous cat." "Thirsty." "Did anybody comment on my quote-of-the-day this morning?" "Prilosec." "No, too early, not slept enough, hurts, tired, why awake? No fair." "When did she get up?" "Did I fall asleep?"