interviwed by devreux
The interview parlor game is back.
1. What's your favorite tea? Favorite coffee?
I don't have a single favorite tea, but there's a short list. I should clarify that my tea experience largely involves tea bags, not loose tea; I know you can get some really great stuff in loose form and I just haven't explored that world yet. (Where do you start? It's overwhelming.)
Stash makes an orange spiced black tea that I'm quite fond of. Most orange tea is decaf and non-black; this isn't. This is strong and bold and tasty and well-blended. I'm also fond of spearmint (not peppermint!) tea and chai.
I don't like the taste of coffee. I've encountered some nice-smelling flavored coffees but didn't like the taste (too coffee-y). I don't know if coffee is a lost cause or if there is some property of the bean or roast or something that is commonly used and that I don't like. (For example, I spent a long time thinking I didn't like beer, when what I really don't like is hops. I don't know if there's something like that going on with coffee.)
2. I don't know if your vision has ever been significantly better than it is now, and I've never seen you in contact lenses, presumably because they can't make 'em strong enough. Do you have any meaningful concept of what your own face looks like without glasses? (I had a post once back here on the subject.) Do you remember people's faces at all well, or do you recognize people more by some other method?
My vision has always been pretty bad. (For which I think, given the current state, I'm grateful; I'd rather have never had than have had and lost.) I have had two contact-lens episodes in my life, once in first grade (wasn't my idea, didn't work) and once in my 20s. The latter time required glasses as well; the advantage (reason to try the experiment) was that they'd be much lighter. This ended up being worst of both worlds, not a happy compromise, so when facing the prospect of contact lenses at Pennsic after nearly a year of wearing them at home, I instead punted and went back to my old glasses.
I don't really have a good concept of what my face looks like without glasses, no. Interesting question, and I enjoyed reading your post about it. My passport photo (for which I was required to remove the glasses) is horrendous, but that's because the guy said something to me and snapped it as I was responding. Bah. So I can't judge from that, other than that my face is rounder than I thought it was.
I am terrible at recognizing faces. The sooner someone speaks the happier I am; I recognize a lot of people by voice. I think there's a strong visual component to this, but I think there's a neural component -- I've heard of a condition that boils down to "face blindness", and it's a parsing or memory thing, not a vision thing. What I've read about it resonates a lot. You know how sometimes people will use Photoshop to put friends' or coworkers' or celebrities' faces on other people in photos for humorous effect? That never works on me. I don't know who those people are if you just take a face (often not even hair). Gah. And sometimes I fail to recognize even people I know well in an unusual context; for example, I once didn't recognize my own rabbi until he spoke, because we were in a grocery store and he was wearing a cap, t-shirt, and jeans. And I never, ever see the resemblance when someone says a baby looks just like its father (or mother, or Aunt Mabel, or whatever).
3. Have you ever seriously considered a vegetarian lifestyle?
Vegetarian, no, though "no meat except fish" would work well, I think. I'm practically there now, though we do eat meat for Shabbat and occasional other meals. I eat fish three or four times a week.
Part of the challenge of any dietary change is that I'm not the only one who's affected, unless I want to cook two different dinners each night. But Dani isn't the only reason I don't go straight veggie; my perception is that it's a lot more work to eat vegetarian and healthily than it is to do what I'm doing, and I don't have the offsetting commitment to some ideal (health, ethical, religious) to motivate me to do that work. Once I get past "vegetarian 101" (rice + beans = complete protein; so does tofu; dairy is good but the doctor says to go easy), I find I don't really know just what I'm supposed to eat day to day. I grok the veggie part; it's the other things (protein, calcium, iron, ...) that bring me up short.
4. What would you be doing with your time if you weren't in the SCA?
Probably more of what I started doing when I began to back off from the SCA -- stuff with my congregation, religious studies, maybe a little more board-gaming, possibly a little more TV-watching (well, Netflix). The barony choir is much more interesting to me than my synagogue's choir, but if the former weren't available to me I might join the latter.
5. If you could eliminate one negative aspect of your personality by sacrificing one positive aspect, would you do it? What characteristics would you give up/lose?
In thinking about this for a while, I think the answer is "no". I don't think traits can be so easily isolated; I think it's all, good and bad, tangled up in one big ball that makes "me". I do try to work on the things I see as negative, but since that's a gradual process there's time for the system to adapt. And as for the positives, well, I want to hang onto the things I'm getting right, even though there are also things I'm getting wrong. So while I can certainly identify negatives I'd like to lose and there are some positives that seem minor enough that I'm tempted to think I'd win that trade, I'd be too chicken to actually make the deal. I'd rather keep the warts I know than find out I have new warts to get acquainted with.
1. What's your favorite tea? Favorite coffee?
I don't have a single favorite tea, but there's a short list. I should clarify that my tea experience largely involves tea bags, not loose tea; I know you can get some really great stuff in loose form and I just haven't explored that world yet. (Where do you start? It's overwhelming.)
Stash makes an orange spiced black tea that I'm quite fond of. Most orange tea is decaf and non-black; this isn't. This is strong and bold and tasty and well-blended. I'm also fond of spearmint (not peppermint!) tea and chai.
I don't like the taste of coffee. I've encountered some nice-smelling flavored coffees but didn't like the taste (too coffee-y). I don't know if coffee is a lost cause or if there is some property of the bean or roast or something that is commonly used and that I don't like. (For example, I spent a long time thinking I didn't like beer, when what I really don't like is hops. I don't know if there's something like that going on with coffee.)
2. I don't know if your vision has ever been significantly better than it is now, and I've never seen you in contact lenses, presumably because they can't make 'em strong enough. Do you have any meaningful concept of what your own face looks like without glasses? (I had a post once back here on the subject.) Do you remember people's faces at all well, or do you recognize people more by some other method?
My vision has always been pretty bad. (For which I think, given the current state, I'm grateful; I'd rather have never had than have had and lost.) I have had two contact-lens episodes in my life, once in first grade (wasn't my idea, didn't work) and once in my 20s. The latter time required glasses as well; the advantage (reason to try the experiment) was that they'd be much lighter. This ended up being worst of both worlds, not a happy compromise, so when facing the prospect of contact lenses at Pennsic after nearly a year of wearing them at home, I instead punted and went back to my old glasses.
I don't really have a good concept of what my face looks like without glasses, no. Interesting question, and I enjoyed reading your post about it. My passport photo (for which I was required to remove the glasses) is horrendous, but that's because the guy said something to me and snapped it as I was responding. Bah. So I can't judge from that, other than that my face is rounder than I thought it was.
I am terrible at recognizing faces. The sooner someone speaks the happier I am; I recognize a lot of people by voice. I think there's a strong visual component to this, but I think there's a neural component -- I've heard of a condition that boils down to "face blindness", and it's a parsing or memory thing, not a vision thing. What I've read about it resonates a lot. You know how sometimes people will use Photoshop to put friends' or coworkers' or celebrities' faces on other people in photos for humorous effect? That never works on me. I don't know who those people are if you just take a face (often not even hair). Gah. And sometimes I fail to recognize even people I know well in an unusual context; for example, I once didn't recognize my own rabbi until he spoke, because we were in a grocery store and he was wearing a cap, t-shirt, and jeans. And I never, ever see the resemblance when someone says a baby looks just like its father (or mother, or Aunt Mabel, or whatever).
3. Have you ever seriously considered a vegetarian lifestyle?
Vegetarian, no, though "no meat except fish" would work well, I think. I'm practically there now, though we do eat meat for Shabbat and occasional other meals. I eat fish three or four times a week.
Part of the challenge of any dietary change is that I'm not the only one who's affected, unless I want to cook two different dinners each night. But Dani isn't the only reason I don't go straight veggie; my perception is that it's a lot more work to eat vegetarian and healthily than it is to do what I'm doing, and I don't have the offsetting commitment to some ideal (health, ethical, religious) to motivate me to do that work. Once I get past "vegetarian 101" (rice + beans = complete protein; so does tofu; dairy is good but the doctor says to go easy), I find I don't really know just what I'm supposed to eat day to day. I grok the veggie part; it's the other things (protein, calcium, iron, ...) that bring me up short.
4. What would you be doing with your time if you weren't in the SCA?
Probably more of what I started doing when I began to back off from the SCA -- stuff with my congregation, religious studies, maybe a little more board-gaming, possibly a little more TV-watching (well, Netflix). The barony choir is much more interesting to me than my synagogue's choir, but if the former weren't available to me I might join the latter.
5. If you could eliminate one negative aspect of your personality by sacrificing one positive aspect, would you do it? What characteristics would you give up/lose?
In thinking about this for a while, I think the answer is "no". I don't think traits can be so easily isolated; I think it's all, good and bad, tangled up in one big ball that makes "me". I do try to work on the things I see as negative, but since that's a gradual process there's time for the system to adapt. And as for the positives, well, I want to hang onto the things I'm getting right, even though there are also things I'm getting wrong. So while I can certainly identify negatives I'd like to lose and there are some positives that seem minor enough that I'm tempted to think I'd win that trade, I'd be too chicken to actually make the deal. I'd rather keep the warts I know than find out I have new warts to get acquainted with.