Writing prompts from Microbie
Jan. 9th, 2023 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve661. What was the first vacation you went on as an adult? (IE – without parents, etc)
I was struggling with this, but then I reframed it as "the first time you traveled somewhere major without parents, for an extended period of time." Because it wasn't exactly a vacation, though some of it was. At the end of my Senior year in high school, I took the Alliance Française concours de français (as I did basically every year in high school) thinking that the prize for winning was a French dictionary or novel or something. No, in fact, for three of us in the Chicago suburbs, it was a six week Alliance Française course in Paris, along with plane tickets, room and board at a Catholic hostel for girls on the Ile St. Louis, and $1,000 -- all donated by the McCormick (of McCormick Harvester, we shot the striking workers that set up the Haymarket "riot" in 1886 fame) family, who lived in a penthouse apartment in Chicago with literal marble floors. My parents and I had to go there to get the plane tickets and check from their lily-white hands.
I'd never been on a plane before. A five year old in the seat next to me informed me very knowledgeably about air sickness. But I didn't get sick.
The Alliance Française course itself, on Boulevard Raspaille, was actually not interesting partly because the prof was a hardened sexist misogynist asshole and I couldn't pipe down. But Paris! We were there for Bastille Day and literal dancing with PCF (parti communiste français) members in the streets at night; the other two girls and I dove into international friendships and ate cherries and brie and baguettes on the banks of the Seine; an Egyptian woman in her early 20s tried to explain to me Islamo-Marxist-feminism; I went to the Cimetière Père Lachaise to see the Mur des Federailles, where the Communards were executed (also where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried, though I don't care about those, or at least I don't care about Jim Morrison). I hung out with Fourth Internationalist comrades and then got the chance to skive off from the rest of the course at the Alliance Française and go to the Schwarzwald for the first International Socialist Youth Camp, organized by the FI. Which was AMAZING for someone who had never known any revolutionaries of my own age. And I got to do a lot of informal simultaneous translation between young French comrades and young comrades from the Brit delegation (of whom, to my shame, I said, ALOUD, when I met, "My god, you really do sound like Monty Python"). A lot of the translation was in aid of gay hook-ups. After the camp, I went back to Britain with the Brits and stayed in squats in Hackney and somewhat filthy apartments in Brixton and got seriously ill and got better and went on a 250 mile march around British airforce bases hosting American MX cruise missiles, with the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, called the Bases Tour. I was the pet Yank, who made anti-nuclear and pro-Central American solidarity speeches at various stops, like Milton Keynes. I made some of my best, most enduring friendships on that march, but had to leave in the middle, to get my stuff in Paris and fly home. At least the last day in Britain, I was in London for the British Miners' Wives demo. I wish there were transporter devices, because it sucks that so many of my close friends are in Britain, and none of us are rich.
2. What streaming service do you use the most?
I use enough of them that it is faintly embarrassing to list them. I don't have cable, or TV at all. In descending order, Amazon, Netflix, Acorn, (my niece's) Hulu (account)... Kanopy, which is for documentaries and is virtually free for five titles a month (if you don't already use it, you might love it, Microbie!)
3. What is your favorite outdoor activity?
I had to think about this for a while. I am not really an outdoor person. But my answer is: being on a boat. A huge ferry, like the ones between England and France, or Sweden and Poland, for that matter; a car ferry, like those on the Great Lakes and off the coast of Canada; a smaller motorized boat like the three hour whale watching expedition we went on near Monterey. I like being on boats, for hours or almost days at a time. I'd like to see if I liked longer trips, too.
4. Have you ever been to the emergency room?
I had never even been in a hospital except to visit someone until last year during The Cancer. Then in the middle of that, I had to go to the ER because I had what turned out to be a kidney infection that almost went septic. They kept me overnight, pumping a "bolus" of antibiotic into my veins. I had a whole year of having things pumped into me via painful IVs, from the total hysterectomy in December of 2021 to that ER visit.
5. Favorite brand of chips?
Crunchy Cheetos!
6. Favorite place to eat at the mall?
I never go to malls, and the malls I've been to more have restaurants than food courts. I guess the last place I went to eat that was in a mall was a P. F. Changs with my uncle? That was years and years ago. My mother was a fan of Orange Julius restaurants, in malls.
7. Do you enjoy leftovers?
No. I am very, very bad at eating (restaurant) leftovers, unlike my stepmother, who seems to enjoy them more than the restaurant meal itself. She hates cooking, though. I like eating leftover food that **I** cooked, however. Mostly soups.
8. Which do you prefer, desserts or appetizers?
I am just going to quote Microbie here: "I never understand these dichotomy questions." But for me, I think it splits about 50/50.
9. Do people spell your name wrong often?
My name is very short -- four letters -- and while it is almost never misspelled, it is mispronounced probably 90% of the time -- or 90% of the first time someone says it. I've gotten over being annoyed by it, but I do correct people.
I was struggling with this, but then I reframed it as "the first time you traveled somewhere major without parents, for an extended period of time." Because it wasn't exactly a vacation, though some of it was. At the end of my Senior year in high school, I took the Alliance Française concours de français (as I did basically every year in high school) thinking that the prize for winning was a French dictionary or novel or something. No, in fact, for three of us in the Chicago suburbs, it was a six week Alliance Française course in Paris, along with plane tickets, room and board at a Catholic hostel for girls on the Ile St. Louis, and $1,000 -- all donated by the McCormick (of McCormick Harvester, we shot the striking workers that set up the Haymarket "riot" in 1886 fame) family, who lived in a penthouse apartment in Chicago with literal marble floors. My parents and I had to go there to get the plane tickets and check from their lily-white hands.
I'd never been on a plane before. A five year old in the seat next to me informed me very knowledgeably about air sickness. But I didn't get sick.
The Alliance Française course itself, on Boulevard Raspaille, was actually not interesting partly because the prof was a hardened sexist misogynist asshole and I couldn't pipe down. But Paris! We were there for Bastille Day and literal dancing with PCF (parti communiste français) members in the streets at night; the other two girls and I dove into international friendships and ate cherries and brie and baguettes on the banks of the Seine; an Egyptian woman in her early 20s tried to explain to me Islamo-Marxist-feminism; I went to the Cimetière Père Lachaise to see the Mur des Federailles, where the Communards were executed (also where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried, though I don't care about those, or at least I don't care about Jim Morrison). I hung out with Fourth Internationalist comrades and then got the chance to skive off from the rest of the course at the Alliance Française and go to the Schwarzwald for the first International Socialist Youth Camp, organized by the FI. Which was AMAZING for someone who had never known any revolutionaries of my own age. And I got to do a lot of informal simultaneous translation between young French comrades and young comrades from the Brit delegation (of whom, to my shame, I said, ALOUD, when I met, "My god, you really do sound like Monty Python"). A lot of the translation was in aid of gay hook-ups. After the camp, I went back to Britain with the Brits and stayed in squats in Hackney and somewhat filthy apartments in Brixton and got seriously ill and got better and went on a 250 mile march around British airforce bases hosting American MX cruise missiles, with the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, called the Bases Tour. I was the pet Yank, who made anti-nuclear and pro-Central American solidarity speeches at various stops, like Milton Keynes. I made some of my best, most enduring friendships on that march, but had to leave in the middle, to get my stuff in Paris and fly home. At least the last day in Britain, I was in London for the British Miners' Wives demo. I wish there were transporter devices, because it sucks that so many of my close friends are in Britain, and none of us are rich.
2. What streaming service do you use the most?
I use enough of them that it is faintly embarrassing to list them. I don't have cable, or TV at all. In descending order, Amazon, Netflix, Acorn, (my niece's) Hulu (account)... Kanopy, which is for documentaries and is virtually free for five titles a month (if you don't already use it, you might love it, Microbie!)
3. What is your favorite outdoor activity?
I had to think about this for a while. I am not really an outdoor person. But my answer is: being on a boat. A huge ferry, like the ones between England and France, or Sweden and Poland, for that matter; a car ferry, like those on the Great Lakes and off the coast of Canada; a smaller motorized boat like the three hour whale watching expedition we went on near Monterey. I like being on boats, for hours or almost days at a time. I'd like to see if I liked longer trips, too.
4. Have you ever been to the emergency room?
I had never even been in a hospital except to visit someone until last year during The Cancer. Then in the middle of that, I had to go to the ER because I had what turned out to be a kidney infection that almost went septic. They kept me overnight, pumping a "bolus" of antibiotic into my veins. I had a whole year of having things pumped into me via painful IVs, from the total hysterectomy in December of 2021 to that ER visit.
5. Favorite brand of chips?
Crunchy Cheetos!
6. Favorite place to eat at the mall?
I never go to malls, and the malls I've been to more have restaurants than food courts. I guess the last place I went to eat that was in a mall was a P. F. Changs with my uncle? That was years and years ago. My mother was a fan of Orange Julius restaurants, in malls.
7. Do you enjoy leftovers?
No. I am very, very bad at eating (restaurant) leftovers, unlike my stepmother, who seems to enjoy them more than the restaurant meal itself. She hates cooking, though. I like eating leftover food that **I** cooked, however. Mostly soups.
8. Which do you prefer, desserts or appetizers?
I am just going to quote Microbie here: "I never understand these dichotomy questions." But for me, I think it splits about 50/50.
9. Do people spell your name wrong often?
My name is very short -- four letters -- and while it is almost never misspelled, it is mispronounced probably 90% of the time -- or 90% of the first time someone says it. I've gotten over being annoyed by it, but I do correct people.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-11 05:39 am (UTC)