[Meme] Eleven questions chain letter thingy

(Cross-posted from Tumblr, questions via othercat2.)

Rule 1: Always post the rules
Rule 2: Answer the questions of the person who tagged you before writing eleven new ones.
Rule 3: Tag eleven people and link them.

-----

( cut for length )

-----

I am no good at these games, but what the heck. Here are some questions:

1. How, when, and why did you choose your internet name?
2. What are your feelings about thunderstorms?
3. Do you have any siblings? If so, how close are you?
4. Are you allergic to anything? If so, what?
5. Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school? Why?
6. Who was your favorite teacher in high school? Why?
7. What was the last book you read?
8. What is the next book you plan to read?
9. Do you have a driver's license? Why or why not?
10. What was your first fandom?
11. If you won $10,000 with no strings attached, what would you do with it?

I will tag, um... anyone who wants to play and happens to read this, I guess. (I told you I was no good at these games. Ah well. Such is life.)

Star Island, Day 7: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

Before stargazing on Monday night, I lit a candle for Meteora, the great goddess of weather and airplanes, asking her for smooth travel. I also asked Constricta, the goddess of travel delays (traffic jams are her particular specialty, but she is not restricted to them) to ensure that my flights were on time, and Wayland (the god of rest areas and other temporary journey stops) to ensure that nothing would go wrong in the various airports.

Hey, it makes me feel like I'm doing something to alter things that are, in reality, beyond my power to alter, and aleviating one's own sense of helplessness is highly beneficial whether the ritual does anything to the outer world or not. :-)

Anyway, all did go well. I got up around 8:30am on Tuesday, we left the island at about 10:45am, and reached Bemidji airport a bit past 11:30am. All my planes were on time -- even the minor delay embarking in Detroit turned out to be a tiny, easily fixed mechanical problem and we landed early in Ithaca despite losing five minutes in Detroit.

I bought a trade paperback edition of Wolf Hall at Simply Books in the Twin Cities airport; I enjoyed reading it so much I wanted my own copy! I also bought Bring Up the Bodies -- a much shorter book covering a much shorter period of time, apparently -- which I will start as soon as I finish Anna Karenina.

Anna Karenina had been my intended island reading project -- I got halfway through last summer and planned to finish this year -- but Hilary Mantel distracted me wonderfully. Nonetheless I got back into Tolstoy on Monday and read a bunch more on Tuesday. I am now about halfway through Part Six (of eight parts), or more technically, on page 605 of 817. (Long book! Still shorter than War and Peace! Eeesh.)

My peppers survived my absence, though they are still not ready to pick. I will post pictures of them tomorrow, maybe, along with a bunch of pictures from Star Island. The thing about picture posts is that first I have to email the pictures to myself from my phone, because I don't have any way to do a direct data transfer to my computer. (I should probably look into that sometime...) Then I have to download the files from gmail, then post them to Tumblr, then make image links from Dreamwidth since DW doesn't have its own image hosting service. It is a stupidly long and convoluted process.

But, you know, pictures! I like pictures. So I persist, slowly and awkwardly. *wry*