Five questions thingy

[serene]

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
3. You will update your lj with the answers to the questions [or just answer in comments].
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in a post on your LJ [if you want to].
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

[Note from Serene: The normal disclaimer applies -- skip whatever you want to skip, do or do not do, as pleases you, make up new rules if you want. Whatever. Also, I'm only promising to interview the first five people who ask me, but I'll try to get to everyone.]



1. What's your favourite baseball movie? Why?

I have to say Bull Durham, because it's sexy, funny, smart, and features Susan Sarandon in outrageous clothes. It's the only thing I've ever liked Kevin Costner in, and even before I was queer, I had a crush on Annie Savoy. (For the longest time, my LJ blurb said "Annie-Savoy-wannabe".)

2. We've just been discussing outing oneself at job interviews. What's
the most disastrous reaction you've ever gotten to that?

I suppose some people might think not getting the job is a disaster, but I'm not aware of that being an issue, and since I've been employed nearly continually since I came out, I don't think it's held me back much. Certainly no one's ever reacted overtly to the dropping of "my ex-wife" into the conversation.

3. How about the funniest?

See #2.

4. Why are you a reluctant vegan?

I'm not a vegan at all. If I lived entirely by my ethical standards, I wouldn't eat animal products; I think they are avoidable harm, and I try to avoid avoidable harm. However, I healed myself of an eating disorder many years ago, and how I did that was to stop making food rules for myself, because as soon as I make a food rule, whatever I'm not "allowed" is instantly the thing I will kill for. Also, I'm extremely very superlatively anti-dieting, and being vegan strikes me as nearly impossible (for me) to separate from the diet mentality.

So I end up eating vegan foods more than other foods, and maybe one day it will be all I eat. I was vegetarian for 20 years (2 of those years vegan), and the whole time, I told myself that if I woke up one day wanting meat, I would eat it. I did, and I did. I felt healthier and ethically happier when I was a vegan, though, and if it wouldn't cause all kinds of other junk in my life, I would force myself to go back to eating that way.

Why I *call* myself the Reluctant Vegan is that even when I'm not eating animal products, I feel all kinds of cultural baggage around that, and I have never been one of those vegetarians who thinks meat and dairy are gross, or that people who eat them are murderers (or whatever), so I'm reluctant to be painted with that brush.

5. What's your favourite happy poly experience?

I could get flip and say "every day is my favo(u)rite happy poly day", but one of my favorites was the email I got from loracs before my first overnight visit to see stonebender. She said, essentially, "You're staying at our place, and I won't take no for an answer." We had never met, she and I, and she's an *incredible* hostess, so I have never gotten over the sheer selflessness of that act.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

1) What makes a place "home" to you?

2) You have to do something joyful and intellectually challenging today -- money and time and energy are no object -- what will it be?

3) Who is a person who has been an inspiration to you in life?

4) What is the most difficult thing emotionally about having an invisible disability?

5) What's the best thing about your day today?

[flippac.livejournal.com]

1) Now I'm expecting to be living on my own again sometime I have a sneaking suspicion that home is where my desktop computer is. Or more generally, where I get to customise my living&"working" environment and have enough facilities to use as a base of operations. I'm doing a lot more travelling than I used to!

2) I'm tempted to say learning my way around someone I like's body, but I already did that today :-) I'd probably either code up one of my more interesting research-oriented ideas (many're doable in a good day, or doable with a pre-existing base to work from) or build something I had a pragmatic use for.

Turning myself into a system's fun too, but usually not doable in a day - you can't get the conditioning to stick. Letting the result run can be joyful but usually doesn't involve the intellect so much.

3) Hmm. I'm not sure anyone's been a really big inspiration on their own in a long time, which isn't to say there hasn't been an awful lot of it from assorted sources. Being schmaltzy I could answer you - some of the approaches you've described to problems on alt.poly have definitely been eye-opening. Or perhaps I should point out that my sense of humour owes a large amount to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett? That probably has some far-reaching consequences.

4) These days it's either the amount of career damage and wasted time caused by aspects that were invisible to me, or the moment when I find myself explaining what I do and why it doesn't involve employment to someone I'm not sure's going to be sympathetic. Before I found how to make it sufficiently visible to them, the amount of crap I got from people in positions of power who were supposed to be helping me.

5) See the start of my answer to question 2 :-)