Category: Memes & Asks

Answers to f.riday5.com today’s questions.

1. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

In the mid-80s when I was a kid, I asked Anneli Saaristo, a Finnish singer, for her autograph.

2. What do you think happens when we die?

Nothing at all. We just cease to exist.

3. What’s your favorite action movie?

I can’t decide between The Terminator and The Last Of The Mohicans. One of those two!

4. What’s your favorite smell?

Fresh, still hot from the oven home baked bread/rolls/buns.

5. Exercise: worth it?

Not in my experience. Nope.

Image from Pixabay.

I can’t believe it’s Friday already! Where did the week go?! Answers to today’s questions The Friday Five @ Dreamwidth.

1. What’s your favorite candle scent?

Unscented. I don’t burn candles myself so I don’t have much experience with them, but my Mom likes to burn them during December and she likes unscented ones. Sometimes she burns scented ones she was gifted, and I think maybe vanilla or citrus were okay if I remember right (as long as the smell isn’t overpowering). But usually when I’m around she burns unscented ones because many artificial smells are too strong/smelly for me and she’s not a fan either.

2. Do you have an artistic or crafty hobby? What is it?

Yes! Many! I play around in Photoshop making fandom wallpapers but also digital papers and textures. I used to make icons too but haven’t made those in years now. I used to make WinAmp skins, and still make FocusWriter themes. I write fanfic and original fic, I do fluid art with acrylic paints (acrylic pouring) and alcohol inks. I paint with watercolors, both drawings I’ve done myself and color-ins I’ve printed from the internet. I also occasionally do some adult coloring book coloring. I make (simple) notebooks with Tomoe River paper for my fountain pen use, and also do some playing/painting/drawing with fountain pen inks on them. I still bake some, sometimes once a week other times once a month but it’s something I enjoy so I try to do it more often than less. I also keep a log of my illnesses’ symptoms to track them and that’s so boring to do, that I love to pretty every page of that diary with stickers, washi tape and doodles.

3. What’s one weird way you save money on food?

I guess: not eating. I have a lot of trouble with appetite, have been for a decade now… namely I don’t have an appetite, even when I feel hunger. I’m trying to be better about eating (eating regularly, having a proper meal instead of a cookies etc.) but yeah, when I’m even more exhausted than normally and that happens a lot, I tend to skip meals without really noticing it because I just never feel like eating. Everything tastes right, I just never have an appetite. And when I have a proper meal, I usually lose interest in it about halfway through and eating it feels like work. Apparently not having an appetite is a usual feature of Crohn’s Disease, judging from my peer’s experiences. I don’t know that it truly saves money though – the last 14 months I’ve been mainly buying ready-to-heat meals because I’m too exhausted to cook, or don’t feel like cooking. Candies and chocolate, and salty things like potato chips go down easier than proper food and they don’t feel like work because I love the taste, so between those ready meals and the sweets, I propably don’t actually save at all compared to the kind of foods I used to eat before I got sick. Back then I rarely bought ready meals and used to cook my own food. I used to do meal planning and prep for the week ahead, and I miss those times. Now I rarely have spoons enough to that, but when I do I LOVE it that I have something home cooked to eat for the entire week. Because home cooked food so so much better than store-bought ready meals.

4. Do you collect anything weird or unusual?

I’ve always been considered kind of weird since I was a kid just because I have always collected something, although thinking on it I’m not sure if it was actually because what I collected was considered a boy thing. As a kid, it was X-Men, Star Trek and John Carter comics. I also collected sticks and pebbles.

These days I collect fanfic, fountain pens and inks (I actively use them though), and I’m somewhat into paper – I have several notebooks I haven’t yet started using, and several of LotusBluBookArt’s drawing/writing journals that I haven’t started yet. I intend to use them all though! I’m just slow and it might take a decade or two. I also love pretty handmade art journals/books that are for watercoloring and/or mixed media (they’re expensive 50-300 euros or more), but I don’t really own any of those except for one or two thin ones that I’m already using. About a year ago I discevered (MU print-on) stickers and that and washi tape are something I easily could end up buying LOADS of unless I’m careful. I keep pen and stationery things purchases sensible and well within my budget, no matter how much I might want to buy ALL THE THINGS.

5. Do you fear the deep ocean, or does its unknown depths excite you?

I don’t fear the deep ocean itself but when I was a kid, whenever I swam in not!swimming pool and something (a weed under water where I couldn’t see it) would brush against me, I would freak out – as in, fly out of the water to the beach/pier freak out. I haven’t swam in an ocean since I became an adult and I’m 100% sure I would still freak out if a weed touched me under water where I can’t see it. I never thought it was anything other than a seaweed but for some reason it touching me freaks me out, and to tell you the truth, I’d propably freak out even if it was a weed brushing against me in a damn swimming pool. So that’s what I fear, but not the ocean itself. The unknown depths theoretically excite me, in books/movies etc., but in real life I’m not interested in exploring myself.

Answers to The Friday Five @ Dreamwidth

1) Read any good books lately?

Nothing that stands out. Day before yesterday I finally finished (took me nearly two months) Minette Walters’ Fox Evil and it was only okay. Everything else has also been kind of meh the last couple of months… I’ve been working on these three novels but can’t seem to get going, and nothing else (except fanfic) really appeals me either.

The other book I’m trying to finish Ukkoshuilu by Johanna Sinisalo which is based on myths and has scifi/speculative fiction elements along with various social criticism, and descriptions of exploitation of workers and the unemployed, apparently Russian oligarchs involved with the main character’s ridiculous new job that’s taking advantage of her and the unemployment system by not having paying her for her work and treating her as “biomass” which is easily replaceable… which I have personally experience as well so that part feels like at least someone sees me and other people like me. I’m half way through, and it’s been at least a month and a half that I’ve been working on it; not sure I’ll finish it. I don’t like any of the characters (except the little daughter but she’s not focused on), feels like the plot started only in at exactly the mid-point of the book, and I don’t care what happens to anybody or even what’s the plot. But Johanna Sinisalo’s books are usually good, so I keep feeling like it’ll get going, and be exciting and good if I can just persevere with it.

I’m also working on Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds since mid-December, the synopses I’ve read of it sound really interesting and I kind of feel it too when reading it, but I’m still feeling mostly meh.

I’m actually starting to think the problem might lie with me actually – maybe I’m in a reading slump again! And also I’m impatiently waiting for the last The Expanse book from the library, so that could be a factor as far as scifi reading goes – maybe I just can’t muster interest in other scifi until I’ve read that book!

I’m just happy that I have no problems reading fanfic.

2) Taken any good baths lately?

I haven’t lived anywhere with a bathtub since 1993. It’s showers for me!

3) Do you read paper books, or do you prefer another format?

I prefer paper books, hard cover first then soft cover. But if I can’t get my hands on it as a physical book, I’m also happy to read ebooks on my laptop and/or tablet: epub is my preferred format there, but mobi’s fine too, and other formats if those too aren’t available.

4) Where’s the most comfortable place in your home?

My bed! I love to read in my bed. For tv watching and work on my laptop, it’s my couch. For writing with pen and paper, I like my writing desk even though my neck can’t stand it for long, looking down like that.

5) What’s the most relaxing sound you can put on?

I prefer silence – I’m sensitive to sounds/noise, my constant headache is easily worsened, or triggered into a migraine. My it’s a good head day, I like to listen to my music: the last long while it’s been The Last Of The Mohicans and The Leftovers soundtracks. I can lose myself in the music for hours at a time and do nothing but listen to it for like four or five hours. But I have to be careful not to over-do it because of the before mentioned headache/migraine, so such long stretches of sounds/noise are rare these days, usually more like 30 mins or an hour.

Picture from PIxabay.

Answers to today’s questions at http://f.riday5.com/2022/02/04/friday-5-for-february-4-the-full-spectrum-of-human-experience/

1. What is the best sandwich?

Wheat bread buttered, topped with thin lunch meat slices, small pineapple chunks, blue cheese chunks and grated pizza cheese at the very top, heated in oven until the pizza cheese has melted and is golden brown.

2. What’s the one thing you own that you really should throw out?

I cleaned out my closets about a year ago, and I can’t really think of anything that I should throw out now. What I should do is fix the stand-mixer so I can use it again, or take it to be recycled.

Logically thinking it should be simple fix with the right tools, but knowing how things are built these days, I’m not sure it actually is because things aren’t built to be repaired but to be thrown out and new one to be bought :/ And also I would have to buy the tool first, and it’s so far down my list of necessary buys that I never seem to get there. Particularly because the last few years I’ve been so fucking tired all the time that I haven’t baked much of anything, and certainly not anything that would need a stand mixer. The tiredness is also why I haven’t put the stand mixer fixing high on the list of things I need to do. So I guess it’ll wait some more.

3. What’s the scariest animal?

Big reptiles – crocodiles, alligators and caimans and I can’t remember if there’s others like that. Snakes are almost on par with them, but not quite. Raised By Wolves which is airing its second season right now, has a big flying snake/reptile and it the awfullest thing I’ve seen propably since I first saw Alien as a kid. I love it but it’s just the most awful thing – makes me shudder.

4. Apples or oranges?

I don’t really like either – I eat them if they’re sliced and part of a cake/salad etc, but I never buy oranges for myself and very, very rarely apples (and only one certain branch of apples at that). Apples are too tart/sour and oranges taste too strong plus the flesh can cause a rash on lips/in mouth for me. I like clementines/mandarins much better and they rarely cause rashes. I do love freshly squeezed orange juice though so I sometimes buy that.

5. What’s your favorite smell?

I’m not sure I have one. Maybe hot-from-the-oven home baked bread? I don’t have good associationas with smells… Just in general almost any smell that is strong enough for me to take actual notice of it, especially artificial smells, is usually also strong enough to possibly trigger a migraine. So I prefer unscented in all things, and actively avoid things like perfumes or scented soaps, candles, detergent etc. I buy unscented versions of everything I possibly can.