Answers to some questions

When I was bored the other day, I asked people for some questions they were interested in me answering. I got a few responses and so I am going to answer those questions here!

Debra: How did you and dh meet?
Answer: In 1998 I asked my parents if I could join a martial arts school -- and they agreed! I started that April and progressed through the ranks. In 2002, yes after four YEARS at that school, I took notice (with a LOT of prompting from the school owner's wife) of Eric. She kept pushing me to agree to go eat with him. Finally I did so and we had a lot of fun, so we kept going out to eat and sitting in the parking lot afterward until 3 a.m. many nights. I was still in college, but I ended up spending more and more time with him. When my parents moved to Florida, we got an apartment together. The night of one of my black belt tests (he sat on the test panel so he didn't DO the test, I did) he said we were going for a drive to the waterfront. So we trekked back to our old apartment and that is where he proposed. Said something like, why don't we listen to some music and of course dense as I am I started going through the middle console for a CD, not NOTICING the box there...Fast forward to 2003, we bought our house. Fast forward even more to 2007 and we had our twins! What's ironic is that during those 4 years between when I started classes and when we noticed each other, he had actually tested me for one of my belts. Didn't remember him at ALL, and vice versa, even though he had to ASK ME QUESTIONS FACE TO FACE! Quite odd.

Arizona: Would you rather be Wonder Woman or The Bionic Woman? Here's another one: The Love Boat or Fantasy Island?
Answer: OKAY, before I give my answer, let me just say I was NOT familiar with ANY of those!!! :-) But since I wanted to answer the questions I did a little online research. On the first one, I would choose Wonder Woman. While the Bionic Woman is sort of more "possible" if you will, I like the "fantasy" aspect with Wonder Woman. I like her "undercover" persona, since I often feel that I had a similiar persona online. On this blog I'm mostly ME, but when I write stories I have to kind of become the characters and it's sort of like that here. I guess. Remotely. ANYWAY, yeah, so I like her better. As for the second question, THE LOVE BOAT all the way simply because I'm absolutely enamored with cruise ships (I went to school for two years aiming to DESIGN them, so yeah I like them.) Oddly I've only been on one and that was for a tour when our training ship was samwiched between two HUGE cruise ships in Copenhagen. It was interesting to come off the training ship where I got full of fuel oil, lube oil, grease etc etc in our engine room and then watch the chief engineer on the cruise ship in a Hawaiian shirt double clicking a valve on a computer screen...much more automated. I got a bit off topic there, but that is the one I'd choose.

Jaime: What's the best money you've ever spent?
Answer: This was a HARD one! Part of me wants to say the money spent to bring our kids into this world, but in a way that isn't something that I had to choose to spend, I was going to have those babies no matter WHAT they cost. And if I didn't have that insurance, it would have been over half a million! SO, I'm going to have to say the money somewhere within my massive student loan that paid for my time on the Maritime College training ship. Odd, perhaps, but those two months were really amazing. I learned SO much, got to experience things many people will NEVER have a chance to do and got to travel to Philadelphia, the Canary Islands, Copenhagen and Edinburgh. We sailed (using the term loosely there, it was a steam/diesel ship...) through a very large storm with 15-foot wave swells that actually tossed the ship around so badly that when the bow dipped down over a wave, it dug into the water and the propeller at the stern came OUT, which shook the heck out of hte propellor shaft -- which I was on watch checking things right next to... I spent five wonderful days in each foreign port and got to see things like the clear blue water on the beaches of the Canary Islands, and the sand dunes that looked a bit like the desert; the Scottish crown jewels, Edinburgh Castle, Loch Ness and the Scottish Highlands when in Edinburgh (with the added bonus that my grandfather was from Scotland..); the "burning of the witches" festival of sorts, a shipping companies headquarters, Kronburg Castle (sometimes known as Hamlet's Castle) in Copenhagen. And then in Phillie I saw the Liberty Bell and got a tour of the battleship New Jersey before it had been "cleaned up" and opened to the public. We went into one of the engine room containing one of the EIGHT boilers on the ship and compared it to our own engine room. Quite a few parallels. The time I spent both on the ship and in the ports is unforgettable and well worth the $2,000 or so it cost to go on cruise.

All right, that's all folks! Hope some of it was interesting!