1.What was the best (or one of the best) summers of your life? Tell us why. 

I like to go with the very first sort of… subconscious thing that comes to mind and the one that appeared was the summer of 2000. I was living in a college apartment with 3 other friends. Two of them had gone home for the first part of the summer and one stayed. She and I hung out a lot with these two guys who moved in across the hall. We went to see The Patriot and went to the nightclub Brothers on Friday nights. Mike and I wrote poetry together while listening to Tool. We had to bail him out of jail once; we made a lot of “crescents” (literally ground beef with ketchup inside a crescent roll with cheese) and we generally got up to some trouble. I stayed up way too late watching ECW (wrestling) and didn’t do much studying at all. Yeah, that was a pretty good summer.

2. When you have a trip coming up do you make a list and check it twice to ensure you don’t forget anything? Or are you a ‘throw whatever you can think of into the suitcase at the last minute’ kind of packer? When returning from a trip do you unpack immediately or leave the suitcase right where it lands? 

I’d like to say I am some of both. I tend to make a mental list and then a physical one. I always set a day and time to actually begin the packing, usually with enough time to make sure it’s all there. I probably unpack the next day, depending on when we get home. If we get back sometime in the AM, I’ll start unpacking and doing laundry.

3. What’s your favorite food or beverage made with lemons? Is that a flavor you enjoy? 

I love lemon and probably most things made with it. I love a lemon bar, a lemon donut, I enjoy lemon flavored drinks, though barely ever drink them.

4. When was the last time you had to make lemonade out of lemons, figuratively speaking I mean?

Hmm this is one of those that triggers a flag but I can’t remember it. Like, I remember being in a situation where something went sideways, we adjusted, then later said “Glad that worked out!” I guess I will go with when we did our homebrew club competition. We asked a local brewer/friend to judge and one of our members and both of them had to bail out at the very last minute. In the end, we got some actual highly certified judges from another club to do it for us and it meant we got a nice little day trip to Jacksonville.

5. Did you like school growing up? Why or why not? 

Oh yeah! I was good at it and I liked being the best. I enjoyed winning contests and getting As and participating in activities like school news, hall patrol, etc. As I got older, I was less and less interested and realized I had no study skills to speak of. I think I’d be a much better student now!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

To answer our host’s question: I’m not on Threads because I’m trying to limit my social media interactions. lol.

I’m getting the hang of this being back at home thing. Today was a help: I took my daughter to school for a practice run before cross country tryouts next week and I always loved driving down the canopy road to the school. It remined me of all the times I’ve done training runs on it myself and it vaulted me back into the mindset I had from 2019-2022. That said, I decided I’ll do a walk this morning, maybe just two miles. It’s still coolish out and early enough I can do that and still get al my work done. Happy Wednesday!