Day 9: Conversation

Something I will never grow tired of.

I will never grow tired of true, honest, heart-felt conversation. I'm not one for much small talk. I get bored very quickly talking about current events, pop culture, or the doings of people I don't know and will never meet. I like for my words to mean something. I like for my time to mean something. I like to get to know people. I like learning where they come from, how they process and communicate and adventuring into applying the things I've learned into those relationships.

It's kind of like time-series decomposition. (Everybody gasp; I'm applying something I learned in school to life.) In time-series decomposition, you take a data series and identify the patterns so that you can use those patterns to make an educated guess about the behavior of the data in the future. I do that to people. If I've spent a lot of time with someone, I can generally have conversations with them in my head and be at least close to what they say in reality when I have that conversation. But in order to know someone like that, you have to have conversations. Meaningful conversation.

And I look forward to each and every meaningful conversation that may come my way in a day.

Day 8: Games

I love board games. I love card games. In fact, I think the only card game I've ever played that I don't particularly enjoy is Rummy. After playing Continental (and it's close relative Phase 10), Rummy bores me.

Some highlights:

Alibi. It's like Clue, only way more fun. No board. Instead of what, like, 20 possibilities there's like 45. And there's no board. You can ask whatever questions you want, but everyone gets to know the answer so you have to be way more careful about the way you phrase the questions.

Pinochle. I grew up playing it with my family every holiday. It's complicated. It's strategic. And you have to have exactly 4 people for maximum fun. I will never stop loving this game. But I may never be able to find 3 other people willing to play.

25 Words Or Less. It's like Catch Phrase only harder. You bid for the least amount of words to describe the five words on the card. We ditched the timer 'cause it made it too hard and it becomes an amazing game of careful phrasing.

Linq. I never get to play this game because I may be the only person in the world that likes it. Two people get a word on a card and everyone else has to bluff. Everyone gives clues. The two that have the word have to guess each other and everyone else has to guess which two people have the words. Easy if you have the word. Challenging if you don't. Fun either way.

Duck Feet and Golf are fun card games to just pass the time. I like Settlers and Monopoly every once in a while, but only if I'm in a non-competitive mood or I usually just get angry.

Day 7: Celebrity Crush

I've never been much for celebrity crushes. It mostly seemed like a waste of time, so I never bothered. Upon pondering it just now, I've come up with him:

Mostly because I was just watching the YouTube video of quite possibly my favorite song of all time (Goodbye Love/Halloween from Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway). He plays Mark. He's kind of the narrator and he sings a good portion of the above mentioned all-time favorite song. It's the only song I've ever heard that can consistently give me chills the 20th or 30th time I've listened to it. But only this version. Now I've definitely talked more about the song than him at all. His name is Adam Kantor. There. I said something.

Day 6: Film

So, I really just don't watch that many movies. I don't like investing so much time in something that rarely ends well. (And by "well" I mean that I feel like it was time well spent.)

While You Were Sleeping may be one of the only movies I will consistently watch over and over without getting tired of it. Beyond that, I have to be in the right mood to enjoy most movies. I like the Ocean's movies, the Bourne trilogy, The Proposal, First Daughter . . . and even staring at my movie shelf right now, I can't come up with a whole lot more. I'm just a hard sell for movies, I guess. I do enjoy more movies than those listed, but to really be a favorite of mine, it takes quite a bit.

Day 5: Channel Surfing

As I said in my 15 facts, I much prefer TV over movies. So this is a hard one. As far as current TV shows, I only dedicatedly follow 3:

• Chuck



• Psych



• How I Met Your Mother

I watch Criminal Minds from time to time, but the Chinese website I was watching it on got slow and complicated and missed the eighth episode of the current season and I haven't really been able to catch up since.

As far as syndicated or DVD-ed shows, I pretty much stick with detective shows with a bit of humor (probably the reason I like both Chuck and Psych). Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Remington Steele, and Moonlighting all fall into those categories.

Mostly, I just like character development. I like long-running shows where you get to know the characters (like ER . . . at least, the first 8 or so seasons) and they have inside jokes within the show you only get if you've been watching since the beginning (e.g., Monica and Ross's fake flip-off, Slapbets, or pineapples). Of course, I like the opportunity of romance between characters. But it really has to either be super thought-provoking (like Criminal Minds) or have some amount of humor to catch my attention for any period of time.

I like Chuck because of the strong relationships between Chuck and his family (including Morgan) and later on, between Casey, Sarah, and Chuck. I like Psych because of the long-term friendship between Gus and Shawn. Come to think of it, How I Met Your Mother, Friends, and Will & Grace are also shows I've enjoyed based on long-term friendships. Maybe I'm drawn to shows about groups of people that have been together for a long time (at least, parts of them).

Maybe studying my TV-watching habits is far more insightful than I expected or really wanted it to be.

Day 4: Música

I've been looking forward to this day. I was recently asked by a friend what kind of music I liked and I couldn't answer until much later.

I have a very eclectic taste in music. It's extremely hard to predict what I will and won't like because my opinion is so VERY unique. But in pondering the question my friend asked last week, I realized that I have three standards for the music I listen to:

1. Technical skill


2. Musical simplicity


3. Lyrical complexity

For the most part, every single piece of music I voluntarily own falls into these three categories. If a song in particular falls short of any of these, it means it excelled in at least one of the others to the point that it was worth it for me.

Technical skill: I have almost perfect pitch. If a singer has questionable (or bad) pitch, I probably won't give them a chance. It would take some SPECTACULAR lyrics for me to get past bad pitch. Even if pitch is good, if the tone quality of singer's voice is below average, I probably won't enjoy listening. Also, in most cases the singer has to have good annunciation or I won't listen. If I can't understand the words, I don't want to listen to the song.

Lyrical complexity: By lyrical complexity, I don't mean a lot of ambiguous metaphors. I'm usually pretty dense when it comes to metaphor. But I like big words. I like structure. I like to listen to a song and tell that the writer actually put some effort into crafting the song, as opposed to simply vomiting feelings onto a page and singing them.

Musical simplicity: I don't ask much from my music. I like fun melodies, but arrangement-wise, I'm drawn towards simple. I like simple chord progressions. I like minimal instrumentation. I like vocals, really, so the less drawing away from the vocals and lyrics, the better.

That said, it's really difficult for me to be able to just state artists that I like. I like songs, not artists for the most part. The only artist I can almost be sure to enjoy is Daughtry. Any other artist is basically on a song-by-song or album-by-album basis. I tend to like Lifehouse (I actually bought Smoke & Mirrors after seeing Lifehouse open for Daughtry because they were so good), some Switchfoot, Tim Hughes, and random Broadway musicals (which are far less of an artist and more of a genre).

I'm open to almost any genre of music, but will be turned off pretty quick by bad vocals or cheesy lyrics. To sum things up.

Day 3: Thirsty?

I have absolutely no self control when it comes to soda. If there is soda in the house (with the exception of anything diet or Coke or Pepsi), I will drink it. I don't like Sprite or 7-Up, but if there is some in the fridge, I'll drink it. I managed to shake my Dr. Pepper addiction last year and don't particularly care for it anymore, but Barq's root beer still allures me. But really only the first sip out of a can. After that, it tastes like anything else.

Smart Water is my go-to hydration drink. I discovered this at last Equip when I had to be outside in the heat and singing for hours without the option of a bathroom break. Smart Water hydrated me without over-fluid-ing me.

Vanilla lattes are my coffee shop drink of choice. It's the first thing I ever ordered at a Starbuck's and I've had very little reason to deviate since then (though I haven't had one from Starbuck's in forever).

I truly enjoy a good cup of a tea. If it's late at night, bed time tea or peppermint is ideal, but I prefer Twining's Vanilla Black Tea. This tea has a very special story for me. I had it once at a friend's house and fell in love with it, but she'd received it as a gift and didn't know where to purchase it. So I went to every grocery store within like a twenty-mile radius over a couple weeks and found that nobody sold it--not even World Market. So I went online and found it in six-pack boxes (as in, six normal-size boxes of tea to a package) on Amazon and bought a package. It shipped from England. I ran out in December and my mom bought me more for a Christmas present, but Amazon didn't sell it anymore. Somehow (I don't know how), she found some. It ships from Singapore. I don't really care where it comes from as long as I get to drink it forever.