draliman on life

Right on the verge of Share Your World Week 21, here I am with Week 20, hosted as always by Cee over at her photography blog. Since I’m running late(r) this week, I’d better get stuck in.

If you could go back and visit any time period, what time would you travel to and why?
All of time is my oyster – this is quite a decision. I could see the dinosaurs! Watch knights in shining armour riding around the countryside. Visit the stomping grounds of Dickens and Shakespeare. Visit ancient Rome or Greece.

I’ve made my decision! I shall travel back to a week last Saturday. My pizza was particularly well baked and I watched a double episode of Stargate SG-1 while I was eating.

Ah, halcyon days.

If you could have three wishes granted for you alone, what would they be?  This is a time for you to dream and have fun.
Hmm, I’m good at dreaming but not so good at having fun.

I left this one to the end. I’ve still got nothing. I’m not the sort of person to grant wishes to, sorry.

Wanting something to quench your thirst, what would you drink?
Mmm, Diet Coke. Accept no substitutes! A tasty can of chemical goodness. Nicely chilled, of course. Warm drinks don’t quench my thirst.

Or a nice cold fruit smoothie. Goodbye teeth! Welcome, sugar overload! Tasty, though.

If you watch TV what are your favourite three television shows?
Well, this is a tricky one to answer. There are way more than three! My dream list would contain such classics as Dr Who (that’s a no-brainer), Stargate, anything in the crime vein (CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Dexter, Castle and so on), Bones (for sure), anything medical-related (ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Casualty, Holby City), Buffy, Angel, Lost Girl. I’m sure by now you can see the sort of stuff I like to watch!

See you all again next time.

It’s time for Share Your World, a weekly series hosted by Cee over at her photography blog. Let’s dive straight in!

Do you prefer shopping or going to a park?
Yay, shopping! Hunting around for a parking place. Traipsing around a busy town. Pushing my way past a billion people. Basking in the noise. Breathing in the fumes.

No, wait. That’s not right.

I’m changing my answer to “going to a park”.

What is the highest score you’ve ever made in bowling?  Actual or virtually played.
With or without the buffers up? 🙂

It’s been years since I went bowling. I can’t handle the (real or imagined) smug looks on other people’s faces as my ball consistently falls in the gutter. Plus it’s very expensive, like £4 per person per game.

I think the best I ever did was around 160 or something. I can bowl a “good” game, then the next game I hardly hit anything.

Name the foreign countries you’ve been to.
I’m not particularly well travelled. I’m probably the only person I know who hasn’t been to Spain or Egypt 😦

Germany – two school exchanges, worked there for a year, went there for a friend’s wedding, went to a conference.

Switzerland – weekend trip while I was living in Germany.

Republic of Ireland – worked there for four years.

France – three day business meeting. Caught the ferry back to England after living in Germany.

Belgium – drove through the edge of it on the way back from living in Germany.

The Netherlands – one day business meeting.

Wales – holiday, conferences.

Scotland – holidays.

And last, but not least, as I’m Cornish I am including England!

Describe your own outlook on life in seven words or less.
It happens. Deal with it. Or not.

That’s all for this week. Have a great week everyone!

Here I am to Share My World once again, brought to us by Cee over at Cee’s Photography Blog. So without further ado, I’ll jump right in!

What object do you always have with you when travelling and why?
The quick and easy answer is “a credit card”. That way, if I’ve forgotten anything I can buy it. Not that I’m rolling in money and can just replace everything, but I can stretch to that forgotten toothbrush.

I’ll also make sure I have my Kindle, camera and so on – the usual things – but after a credit card the most important thing is my phone. My phone lets me read my Kindle library (in case I forgot my Kindle), I can work out where I am with the GPS, Google local services, check to see how much money I have left, take pictures and if all else fails, actually phone someone!

What subject would you like to study in depth, if given the time to do so?
That’s a tricky one. I’ve sometimes thought about psychology or sociology. Or maybe economics. That sounds really boring and it might have numbers in it but it might be nice to see what’s going on and how the entire world’s economies fell to bits.

I think I’d rather know a bit about everything than everything about one thing. That sounds like a good way to earn a living by winning pub quizzes.

Which would you prefer:  a wild, turbulent life filled with joy, sorrow, passion, and adventure–intoxicating successes and stunning setbacks; or a contented bordering on happy, secure, predictable life surrounded by friends and family without such wide swings of fortune and mood?
It’s the quiet life for me! I like everything planned out and stable. No sudden surprises for me, thanks!

What are your favourite spices?
Tricky one this! I need to find something that is undeniably a spice.

Parsley, rosemary, thyme?
Herbs. No wiggle room here. Denied!

Pepper?
Apparently a condiment. Possibly also a spice. I’m not taking the chance. Denied!

Curry powder then. You can’t go wrong with curry powder.
This is a blend of spices, not a spice. Denied!

Garlic? I love garlic!
It’s a species of the onion genus, and onion is not a spice. I think that dried garlic powder is a spice, so I’ll take a chance. That’s one!

Chilli powder.
Ground dried chillies. Definitely a spice. Yay!

So after all that we have garlic powder and chilli powder.

See you next week when I will be sharing my world once again!

It’s time to Share My World again! There will be a new set of questions tomorrow – this week is a bit confusing as tomorrow is the first of two May holidays in the UK and I was thinking it was Saturday again today.

But it’s not. It’s Sunday. I might wash the car and do some gardening. “Low maintenance garden” my ass. There may be no grass but there’s weeds.

The questions, which I shall attempt to answer, are provided every week by Cee.

What are some words that just make you smile?
“Dastardly”. That’s a negative word but it sounds funny. That always makes me smile.

“Asshat”. That makes me smile too. It’s not actually a word though, apparently 😦

A dastardly character involved in some asshattery

(Image source and copyright information wikipedia)

When you lose electricity in a storm, do you light the candles or turn on the flashlight? How many of each do you own?
Even in the horrific storms this last winter I didn’t lose power. I was living in a town, so all telephone and electricity cables are underground. There was some lightning once or twice, but I guess it didn’t hit any electricity substations. Some homes in Cornwall did lose power, though.

However, if this should happen I have a couple of torches (=flashlights) around the place. I need to buy some candles (for nice mood lighting as well as emergencies) but I haven’t got around to it yet.

What is the longest book you ever read?
The type of book I read doesn’t tend to be particularly long. I’ve read David Eddings’ “Belgariad” and “Mallorean” may times, but that’s two sets of five books each, though all the same characters. “Lord of the Rings” is three books but that was quite long.

The book which seemed the longest was an exam text I had to read at school – “Sansibar oder der letzte Grund” by Alfred Andersch. It wasn’t really all that long but it was full of difficult words and I found it pretty boring. I preferred the other two books – they were plays, which meant dialogue, which meant more words I actually knew. There’s a big difference between speaking another language and reading a novel.

So you win a pet monkey at a fair, but this isn’t just any old monkey. It can do one trick for you whenever you want from getting a pop out of the fridge to washing your hair. What would be the trick?
Many of the posts I’ve read for this week would have the monkey doing housework. According to the covenant on my house I’m not allowed to keep chickens or pigs (there goes my dream of a chicken coop and pig farm combo in the back garden) but it doesn’t specifically mention monkeys.

Therefore I would open a monkey sanctuary so that all these hard-working housework monkeys can get one weekend off a month from their duties.

It would be run by Marcel because he looks like a sensible sort of monkey.

(Image source Friends Wiki)

See you again next week!

It’s Sharing My World time again, hosted by Cee at her photography blog.

Here are this week’s questions.

For your blog do you basically use Windows or Mac, laptop, desktop, pad, or phone?
I’ll read on anything but I always write my blog on my Dell Latitude Ultrabook. I’m not sure what the difference between a laptop and an ultrabook is. It’s actually way outside my budget but I bought it from Dell Outlet, where people buy stuff and then immediately send it back so Dell resell it cheap, so £1100 became £650. Cool! It runs Windows 7.

I need a keyboard to type at any sort of speed. That’s why I use a laptop rather than my tablet or phone. And I need to be able to use it, which is why it runs Windows 7 rather than Windows 8 🙂

Here it is. I’m writing this post on it – freaky!

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be either a football (soccer player) or a train driver. Fortunately neither came to pass.

Every summer we visited my Gran in the north of Scotland and to get there we went by train much of the way. The car went with us on the train. It was very exciting, hence “train driver”. As it happens, though, driving a train isn’t as exciting as it looks. As for “football player”, well, doesn’t everyone? The closest I ever got to that dream was handing out half-time oranges at primary school. I didn’t get to play because I sucked.

Did you grow up in a small or big town? Did you like it?
I grew up in a little village, but only until I was five so I don’t really remember it. We then moved to the biggest (only, in fact) city in Cornwall, a teeming metropolis of around twenty thousand people. Ah, city life. The bright lights, the crowds etc etc.

Since then I’ve lived in reasonably-sized cities (Guildford, Cork, Stuttgart) but I like where I live now, a little village again, though I’ve only been here two months. Yesterday was very weird. It was a beautiful day. I was outside doing a bit of gardening, a couple of others were washing their cars. Everyone said “hello”. Then my friend from around the corner came round with two of her little kiddies and we all went to the village market. I felt all grown up. When did that happen?

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Probably around 30, though I like knowing that I’m older when I get all the weird aches and pains. If I’d had these aches and pains at 30 I would have been seriously worried. Here is a list I have compiled of all my ages:

• Emotional age: 16
• Life experience age: 30
• “I’m getting too old for this” age: 52
• First thing in the morning age: 12
• Any time after 9pm age: 93
• Physical age: 107
• Actual age? Well, I posted a photo a little while ago, have a guess! Anyone guessing over 50 will be removed from my Christmas list.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I hate this question. It doesn’t seem like a “bonus” to me. I’m glad nothing went wrong last week and I hope nothing goes wrong next week? I’ll just copy and paste that from now on.

See you next week!

It’s time once again to Share My World! The questions have been posed by Cee over at her photography blog. I don’t have a lot of time, I’m off to work soon to start the “long weekend of work” so I’m writing this now in case I don’t have any more free time until next week.

Do you believe in extraterrestrials or life on other planets?
Of course there are other thingies and whatnots out there. Have you not seen the TV? I was watching an excellent documentary the other day, it was called “Star Trek” I think, and they had lots of pictures of extraterrestrials. Here’s one (copyright probably CBS/Paramount).

Not human, as shown in the documentary “Star Trek”

What type of pet or pets do you not want to have?
I wouldn’t want a duck-billed platypus as a pet. I would think that they’d be quite hard to take care of!

High-maintenance pet.

(Picture from State of the Environment, Tasmania website, credited to Dave Watts).

If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?
I’d be bluey-purple. I like that range of colours. Or alternatively I’d be white, because no-one would use those much and I’d exist a long time.

What type of transportation would you be? Why?
Transportation? I’d don’t really fancy dragging people from place to place. If I had to be a mode of transportation, maybe a little boat, cutting through the waves in the sunshine. That might be nice. Except I wouldn’t know if it were nice or not, because I’d be a boat, and boats aren’t aware of such things.

From superyachts.com, for sale now at only £6.5m. I’ll take two!

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
Oh dear, this tricky question again. I’m grateful I’m still alive and kicking. I’m looking forward to the hopefully successful completion of this weekend’s big project at work.

See you next time when I will be “sharing my world” once again!

I can’t believe a whole week has gone by already, and it’s time once again for me to Share My World, part of Cee’s Share Your World feature.

Here’s the badge, which I must remember to pop on my sidebar.

If you were an ice cream cone how many scoops and flavours would you be and why?
Mmm, ice cream. What to choose, what to choose? I think we’ll start with cool mint choc chip. Add to that a bit of plain old creamy vanilla and add in a bit raspberry and I think we have the perfect cone.

Unless the raspberry clashes with the mint choc chip, in which case it’ll be gross.

Are you left or right handed?
I’m right-handed. Very right-handed. I can count on the fingers of one hand the things I can do with my left hand. I’m counting those things on the fingers of my right hand as my left hand is not up to the job.

Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say?
I rehearse to the point that I have an idea what I want to say, and I decide up-front my opening line. A bit like when I’m giving a talk – have an idea, an outline, and know how you’re going to open and the rest will flow naturally.

I hate making phone calls. “Dread” might be a better word. I put them off as long as possible, so you can imagine what the past few months have been like, buying a house. Calls to the solicitor, estate agent, changing my address with a gazillion people. It’s never-ending!

How many rings before you answer the phone?
I actually stopped answering the land line phone ages ago. I was getting multiple junk calls a day, until I registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and then they largely stopped. My mum uses a code – a certain number of rings, hang up, then she rings again so I know it’s her.

As for my mobile, I’ll answer it as soon as I fumble it out of my pocket. Sometimes I accidentally answer it while it’s in my pocket.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I’m grateful that in the three days I took off from work last week I actually got a lot done, rather than just vegging out like usual. I bought and constructed some bookcases, and they are actually really good, sturdy things. Unbelievable considering they only cost £22.99 from a warehouse chain store – I’m very impressed. Here’s a picture of one I put in my bedroom.

Finally “the gang” has found a new home!

I even registered with the local doctor! I needed antibiotics for my eye, which I had to pay for. £7.85, if you can believe that. It’s gone up since my last prescription back in the 90s. As a new patient the nurse did a full work-up including a blood test and now they want to monitor my blood pressure. I tried to tell her that it’s been “borderline danger level” for years and coming back to have it taken again in 4 weeks isn’t going to make any difference, but she wasn’t for swaying 😦 .

In the week coming up I’m looking forward to – nothing in particular. Let’s just get through it in one piece, shall we?

That’s me for this week. Tune in again next week, when I will be Sharing My World once again!