1. On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your sense of direction? 1=can’t find my way out of a paper bag and 10=if I’ve been somewhere once I can find it blindfolded ten years later.

Y’all, I’m giving myself a 9 (for posterity) because I am damn good at finding my way around. I got my sense of direction from my dad and maternal grandfather.

When was the last time you looked at/used a map you could hold in your hand? (phones don’t count!) 

There’s a campus map on my wall and a kid needed to find a building I had never heard of so we used the map to determine it was in section E5 and then located it.

Choose one of these directional expressions and tell us why you chose it.

Oh, “down south” for sure because I feel a certain affinity for the south. I grew up in south Florida, which most people know is more like Little Cuba and not the deep south in any way. But I have family from southern Alabama and I now live in N. Florida, where we are frequently referred to as South Georgia. I love it here; the kind of people, their work ethic, their familiarity with everyone. We get a bad rep from mainstream media. We’re not all racists or hillbilly’s who wield guns all the time. That’s just ridiculous.

2. Did you do more talking or listening yesterday? Is that typical? Describe your yesterday in one word.

Hmm, probably talking. Some days I talk too much and that’s not usually like me but I get on a tear about something and I overshare.

Yesterday in one word: frantic.

3. Time, money, water-power-resources, opportunity…which one on the list are you most guilty of wasting? What might you do to change that?

I guess I have to say opportunity because sometimes, I can see places where I could have jumped at a chance but I didn’t try to reorganize myself or my life to make them happen. I think you can do that if you really try. And really want it. (Whatever that may be.)

4. Did  your family take regular vacations when you were a kid? Tell us something you remember about a family roadtrip from your own childhood.

You know, even though we didn’t have a lot of money, we took trips. We mostly either went to Disney World (4 hours from us) or, a few times, we drove for 3 days to get to Western New York. Those were particularly memorable trips because we took my grandparents’ ’56 Lincoln and it was big enough for all seven of us (grandparents, us 4, and my aunt.) We drove up through the mountains of Virginia, the Amish country of Pennsylvania, and then in New York, we saw the parts of the state that look nothing like the city. We stayed in a farm house with one TV channel and no street lights. We shot rifles at tin cans, caught crawfish in the super cold creek that ran alongside the home, behind, and up into the foot of the mountain, to a small lake that the beavers worked hard to dam. These were great memories for me.

Below: my parents walking behind said farmhouse.

5. If you could grow anything you wanted, what would you grow? Why?

I don’t think I’d be very good at growing plants so I’m going with chickens even though that’s a slight deviation. I just want fresh eggs!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

You ever wonder why you keep doing something that isn’t helping/healthy? I think I need to stop reading the news. Never have I finished reading it and said, “Boy, I sure am glad I read that. Is it irresponsible to retreat into my own little hole and ignore the world around me? I kind of think it is. But what good is obsessing about things I cannot change? Maybe if I did change something, it would be a different story. I don’t know.