To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Answers to everyone's "top five" questions herein! Wow, you guys asked a lot of questions. Thanks! (You can still ask me my top five anything, and I'll ask you another top five question back.)

Um, these aren't in any sort of hierarchy. Each member of a top five got slotted in as I thought of it, not because it's number one or four or whatever. They're sort of top five groups rather than lists.

vallentine asked about my Top Five Places to Visit/Travel To

1. I'd love to go back to Salzburg, maybe in the summer when they have their music festival. I spent two days there in March of 2005, and it wasn't nearly long enough, although I'm really glad I was there for the open-air Easter markets (I bought myself a painted eggshell). I'd love to take one of the Postbusses and go up into the mountains for a long summer twilight. Similarly, a visit to Vienna would be awesome, since I haven't ever seen it.

2. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. I've wanted to go there ever since I discovered Natalie McMaster in freshman year of college and looked up her place of birth. The scenery looks amazing in photos; probably it would be better in person. Optimally, I'd like to go in the fall. Plus, there's the music. I love me some fiddles.

3. Alaska. In the summer. I'd like to see a glacier, but don't want to deal with snow on the rest of the trip. (And yes, there are several glaciers near Juneau, so this is actually feasible. There are, like, cruises and stuff that cater to this sort of thing.)

4. Christmas in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, New Mexico. I want to see all those luminarias/farolitos against the desert night. Have since I learned about them in second-year Spanish.

5. The Lake District, England. That and the town full of bookstores in Wales are the two places I really regret not getting to when I was over there.

Plus Australia...New Zealand...all the places I didn't get to while we were in Ireland...Russia...lots of other places...


serendipityxxi asked about my Top Five Characters and Why

1. Ed Chigliak, Northern Exposure. Ed is...Ed is Ed. There's hardly another way to describe him, but I'll try. He's caught between two directions in practically every part of his life. Half-white, half-Native; half-filmmaker, half-shaman; a cloudy-headed dreamer in Cicely, but I feel certain he could become a cynical realist if he ever made it to LA. He analyzes movies the way I do TV; he has a keen appreciation for the craft involved in filmmaking, and in lots of other things (duck flutes, totem poles, healing arts). He's often the center around which weirdness swirls on the show, constantly leaving confusion in his wake but being perfectly oblivious to it himself. I absolutely love his relationship with Ruth Anne, how they treat each other as equals despite her being fifty years older than him. He and Chris are wonderful together as well; I think they operate in entirely different spheres, but they still get something out of the relationship.

2. Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Vorkosigan books, Lois McMaster Bujold. She's brave and kickass, but she doesn't have to make herself into a man to do so. Plus, dear god is she funny. And incredibly evil. *g*

3. Jaye Tyler, Wonderfalls. I love her sarcasm and cynicsm, of course. I also love how she's dragged kicking and screaming into this whole good deeds thing, but she does it anyway, and not just to shut up the lion and monkey and all the others (although that's a large part of it), but because somewhere, deep in her heart, despite her very vocal objections, she actually does want to connect to people.

4. Tossup: Geoffrey Tennant and Anna Conroy, Slings & Arrows. Geoffrey because...he's Geoffrey. He's brilliant and screwed up and a little mad to boot; a Hamlet still desperately in love with his Ophelia. He's going on instinct and just trying to let the plays be seen through his productions. Anna because she's the most competent person on the show. ;) Seriously, that's part of it, but also because while she appears meek and sort of ineffectual, she shows herself by the end of the series to have a backbone of steel.

5. I think, despite my recent introduction to him, Benton Fraser of due South will have to be on here, because he is at once such an enigma and yet also so very familiar and similar to myself. I mean, the guy is weird. He's determinedly polite and focused maybe a little too much on justice, and manages to see the good in everybody. I cannot imagine writing anything from his POV, not only because of the cultural context (I don't see me making up Inuit stories), but...something...about him that's just hard to capture, although it's fascinating to try and pick apart. And yet at the same time, there's also this profound sense of recognition. I know he isn't as naive as he sometimes pretends to be; it's a defense mechanism to avoid potentially awkward conversations and situations. I know this because I did/do the same thing. Particularly in high school, I feigned cluelessness about everything sex- and/or romance-related so that people wouldn't talk to me about their boyfriends, for example. Like Fraser, I was also an only child, who had more books than friends. I think we both take sort of an observer stance in life because of this, and participate usually only when there's some kind of script to follow (catching a bad guy, dancing a ballroom dance).


She also asked about my Top Five Pet Peeves

1. Okay, I could fill this with grammar-related entries, but I'll keep it to two: run-on sentences and sentence fragments. Behold the poor, unloved semicolon! It is your friend! That little dot above its comma can do what a normal comma cannot! It gives it super powers! Periods are also nice, if you're so inclined. And a sentence with both a subject and a predicate is a happy sentence. (Unless you're being fragmentary for effect, but really, you shouldn't be doing that until you know how to avoid fragments in the first place, eh?)

2. Having funny-shaped feet, so most dress shoes, and many non-dress shoes, don't fit correctly. (I have a rather wide ball/toe and a fairly narrow heel. I CANNOT WIN if the shoe doesn't tie or strap on.)

3. People who don't use turn signals. Rar.

4. Dialogue spelled in dialect. It can all be conveyed in word choice and grammatical construction, I swear. Please do not try to spell a Scottish accent, a Southern accent, or any other kind of accent. It makes the Baby Jesus cry.

5. The way that most DVDs of television shows have completely inadequate chapter markings. They generally only bother to have four, when they really should have six. And the first one is only five minutes (teaser + credits), the second one is maybe ten, the third one is another ten or fifteen, and then you've got a fourth chapter that's twenty or thirty minutes long. Argh.


sleepingcbw asked about my Top Five Poems in the English Language (excluding epics)

1. "The Wild Swans at Coole," Yeats. (I could fill all five slots and then some with Yeats, but I'll leave it at this.)

2. "Journey," Millay.

3. Tie: "Ave Atque Vale," "Nostalgia," and "Lying in a Bed in the Dark, I Silently Address the Birds of Arizona," Billy Collins.

4. "That the Science of Cartography Is Not Limited," Boland

5. "Woods in Winter," Longfellow.


wildtiger7 asked about the Top Five Books I Most Want to Read

1. This time, I really am going to finish East of Eden.

2. And Ivanhoe.

3. A new Vorkosigan novel

4. Anything in my "currently reading" list on the sidebar of this entry.

5. A new book of poetry by Billy Collins.


rowdycamels asked about the Top Five Things I Want to Do in the Next Five Years

1. Um, get a decent job?

2. Travel out of the country again.

3. Finish some kind of major written work: novel, short story collection, poetry chapbook, whatever.

4. Move out of Nashville.

5. Find a way to do ballroom again.


aervir asked about the Top Five Holidays I've Been On

1. Lucerne and Salzburg in seven days. I loved both cities, and had an eight-hour train ride through the Alps in a Harry Potter train car to get from one to the other. I had fantastic weather for the trip, too; very spring-like, except of course for up on Mt. Pilatus, where it was snowy. Two best parts: The Sound of Music tour in Salzburg and sitting in the sun by the lake in Lucerne, digesting some amazing Swiss chocolate and taking pictures of swans.

2. Ireland On a Bus. I was actually not all that fond of the bus part, but I liked spending ten days in the country with the rest of the Kenyon/Exeter folks. Best part: a midnight walk along the beach in County Sligo with the other Pezzers, and coming back to a peat fire and a hobo cat in the cottage we were staying in.

3. softstepshoes's house with rowdycamels and pezprez during spring break of sophomore year. Phoenix is awesome, Sedona is awesome, Chandra's family is awesome. It was the first time I'd ever been west of the Mississippi and the first time I'd ever seen a desert.

4. Kenyon/Exeter's second London trip, where we discovered the Victoria & Albert museum and I fell in love with it. And we tried on hoop skirts and corsets. I don't think I can describe the depth of my love for the V&A. We also discovered the most amazing Thai restaurant, and then went to see Phantom, so even if they were ultra-cheap seats, that was still great fun. And we saw a fantastic production of Sweeney Todd from much better seats later that weekend. There was also wandering around the street performers in Covent Garden, and visiting Trafalgar Square. That was probably the best of our many London trips, although Swan Lake and Hyde Park in May comes awfully close.

5. Both trips to Bath. I love Bath. Bath is the most beautiful city. I loved its cathedral, and the Pulteny Bridge, and the little dollhouse shop on the bridge, and the Christmas shop, and the Roman Baths, and the walk along the river...yeah. Bath was incredibly awesome. I wish I'd studied abroad there.

Honorable mention: Paris over six days. The weather sucked, but all the stuff we did was great.


She also asked about my Top Five Items of Clothing

1. My "Switzerland: Founded 1290" t-shirt.

2. My most comfy pair of jeans.

3. My long-sleeved purple and cranberry cotton shirts.

4. My purple/yellow/brown summer skirt.

5. My long, black velvet jacket with the fancy embroidery all over it.

Honorable mentions: My blue and white Kenyon/cornstalk t-shirt, my pretty sparkly t-shirt with oranges on it, and my fuzzy purple not-quite-a-cloche-but-close-to-it hat.


weyoun21 asked about my Top Five Things to Do on a Rainy Day

1. Read (fanfic, books, whatever).

2. Watch TV (preferably something on DVD, and not network drek...maybe something in the Discovery/History Channel family if I'm desperate).

3. Catch up on e-mail and random websurfing.

4. Sleep (because I usually have a sinus headache).

5. Play in Photoshop.


By the by, the Chamber Singers are performing in town tonight! I am definitely putting in an appearance, and will have a full report when I return. :)