delphipsmith | Festy goodness, and random acts of kindness

It took me nearly 10 years to get my B.A. because I juggled work and school and paid for it all on my own. And then I went to the graduation, knowing I still had one semester of Statistics to complete, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see Hillary Clinton do the commencement speech that year.

It's like the universe was rewarding you for your persistence :)

That's a nice idea (see my rant about today!). I'm not sure 12 people actually read my LJ anymore. Hardly anyone seems to post anymore.

Anyway...something you don't know about me? Apparently I can crawl into the trunk of my car. *g*

Ha! Yeah, I saw that -- go you :)

I told my mom the story when she came by for the tomatoes and she laughed so hard she was brushing away tears. I mean, I was just kind of flapping there like a beached whale as I tried to inch back out! lol

Just the sort of time one is grateful no one was around with a smart-phone lol!

Yeah, I was really glad no one was out walking their dog or anything. I don't think any cars drove by but frankly I wasn't listening, too worried I was going to be stuck there forever! lol

That sounds like a fascinating idea. Anyway,as you may not know i am a big jazz music fan. But my tastes have become more eclectic over the years so anything takes my fancy, jug bands, classical, film scores, whatever. Now for something nobody else knows and not in my LJ bio.

I once won a writing competition. I was a kid in junior school and it was a comp hosted by Cadbury's, a famous British chocolate company, and had a certificate for it plus a year supply of chocolate. I cannot remember what the story was though,and i wish i still had the story and the certificate. It got lost in moves across the country. No wonder i was a fat kid.

There , revealed to all the world now. Well at least the LJ corner of that world.

Edited 2014-08-16 08:31 (UTC)

A year's supply of chocolate?? I would LOVE that! I don't have your address, so PM it to me and I'll add you to the list :)

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18. At 16, after getting behind the wheel in Driver's Ed, I realized that I was just not ready to drive yet. (Kind of mature of me to realize that, really.) I dropped it in favor of a study hall in the library instead. When I was 18, I finally felt ready, and my uncle Eddy taught me how to drive. Of course, now I drive like I'm running laps at Indy!

Making up for lost time, clearly lol! When I took driver's ed the instructor was always annoyed when it was my turn -- the car was an old one and had a bench seat in the front (do they even make those any more?), so by the time it was scooted up close enough for me to reach the pedals, the instructor's knees were somewhere around his ears ;)

What a fantastic idea!

Okay then...this is tricky as I don't think there's much about me you DON'T know.

Right, here's a couple: I don't like whisky. I know, ME! Who knew? Also, I know how to scuba dive - I have a certificate and everything! I just don't get to do it. *pouts*

Whaaaaaat?? Clearly we need to work on educating your palate. Next time you're in the vicinity let me know and we'll set up a tasting for you. Scuba diving would be neat -- I went to Hawaii years ago and all I could do was snorkel (and not very well, I kept breathing in when I should breathe out and vice versa :P

Great idea. Nothing about this post is new (I need a cup of coffee for that, having just gotten up) so here goes.

There are so many things that you don't know about me, in fact, there are tons of things I don't know about you as well.

Like a previous poster, I didn't get my driver's license until I was older ... 32 as I failed my high school driving course due to lack of driving practice. (My dad had a van and I was too scared to learn to drive in it, especially with my dad in the co-pilot seat.)

I bought a brand new car (stick shift cause it was cheaper) on a Saturday, paid it all off by cheque, before I even had a beginner's license, let alone a REAL driver's license. I got my beginner's on the following Thursday. Things were a bit tense at work in case I DIDN'T pass and everyone disappeared until the first brave soul found out I HAD passed and then the word got out and people crawled out of the woodwork to congratulate me. I arranged for the car insurance that same day, since the dealer couldn't put a plate on an uninsured car, and two days later, I went with my girlfriend and her husband to pick up my car. She drove it home for me, since I had never driven a manual transmission car. In fact, I hadn't drive ANY car at all for 14 years.

I had to enter the car through the back of my Mazda 323 several times during our cold Canadian winters when the doors froze. Not the locks, just the seals around the door frame. Fun times.

See, now that's planning ahead: buying a car before you have a license! How long did it take you to learn to drive a stick, once you had the car?

In exchange I will tell you something about me: I once tried Rocky Mountain oysters and lamb fries and LOVED them until I found out what they are, and my favorite things to cook are linguine with clam sauce and Thanksgiving dinner (if you enjoy cooking, Thanksgiving dinner s like the Olympics!).

I bought the car the first Saturday in June (4th or 5th) and got my driver's license the 2nd week in August (I think it was the 11th) ... so about 2 months. My girlfriend took me out for a couple of weekends to practice in my car before I started driving lessons at CAA (Canadian branch of AAA) on an automatic. I used the 9th and 10th lesson for the test and to get the car back to their office since I didn't want to take the test on my car.

I figured I had enough to worry about during the test without shifting at the wrong times. :)

Thanks for sharing facts about YOU. The oyster part would have put me off. Have you ever tried sweetbreads. I was squicked when I learned what THAT was.

My mom used to make Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners like that. There were only six of us but my mom made enough for 12-16. She always forget to put a couple of dishes on the table but since there wasn't any room on the table to hold them, we had to switch things out at half time.

Have never tried sweetbreads because yeah, I know what they are :P We usually have about 10 people for TG. It's funny because I'm a vegetarian so I don't eat the turkey, but I love the tradition of cooking it. Just about every item is a family recipe: the pumpkin pie is my great-grandmother's, the creamed onions are my dad's favorite, the apple pie is my mom's. And I have to make 2 pans of stuffing because Mr Psmith and his brothers insist on their grandmother's stuffing with giblets and broth while I do my grandmother's celery/sage/onion/pecan version for me.

But the best part is that since we host the meal, we get ALL THE LEFTOVERS. Mmmmmmmmm...

Oh, PM me your snail mail address!

Edited 2014-08-19 02:17 (UTC)

We were 2 different dishes of stuffing family too. My nephew started demanding the boxed stuff (Stovetop Stuffing) when he was about 5 or 6 while the rest of us loved my mom's giblet rice stuffing. These days I combine the two recipes into my favourite part of the Thanksgiving meal. I even cheat by using Zatarain's dirty rice boxed mix along with the Stovetop.

http://a-boleyn.livejournal.com/95739.html

I liked having the leftovers to eat all week too especially as I only ever had a sliver of turkey at the main meal while I gorged on the pounded and then breaded veal cutlets. My brother used to make a sandwich with the dinner rolls/buns and the cutlets. And I ate the garlicky, paprika sausage that she baked in a small casserole dish.

In later years my brother and SIL were not shy about asking for leftovers to take home and by the time they left, there wasn't much left over for US.

Ah, this is such a lovely idea :)

Fun fact about me: I speak a totally wrong dialect compared to where I'm from (not sure why, a combination of my parents being from somewhere else and me apparently being a bit weird), so when I meet someone new the conversation always go something like this:

They: so, where are your from?
Me: [my hometown] *waits for it*
They: oh? But you don't sound like you're from there?
Me: *sighs* no, I... Blah blah.
They: wow, that's really weird!
And so it goes.

I've probably had that conversation several hundred times, so I need to remind myself that they haven't heard it before. I guess it's an ice breaker, though :)

Edited 2014-08-16 15:07 (UTC)

That's really funny -- I wonder what Henry Higgins would make of you :) I've been on the East Coast for a really long time now, and when I go home to the Midwest or to see friends in Texas they all tell me I talk funny.

Oh, PM me your address!

I adore this idea!! How cool!

Hmm, something about me that you don't know? *ponders* You've got lots of nice things- have a bit of childhood angst :D

I am haunted by cruel things I did when I was a child (like 1st-3rd grade), mostly by asserting power over others when I felt I could. But the one I feel worst about is punishing a stray kitten that showed up at my house for scratching me by dropping it in the pond. He was fine- he was able to swim to shore, and we later rounded him and his littermate up and dropped them off at the pound, but to this day I feel awful for terrorizing the poor thing, for all that the cruelty was borne of frustration that the cat wouldn't accept my affection the way dogs did.

Between occasionally getting caught and later being on the receiving end of cruelty from others (thanks, middle school...), I figured out the empathy thing, made amends where I could, and in the process of doing so, figured out that being cruel was ultimately destructive and way less satisfying than making others feel good. It's also why I will always take time to pet a cat who doesn't run from me.

It's funny the things that stick with us. I have a couple of very vivid memories of mean things I did as a kid, too. But 's kind of nice that it became a reason for you to cherish random cats that wander through your life -- an example of lots of good coming out of a small bad.

Agreed. Putting it that way is a gift in itself! *scritches pups for good measure*

And for something less sad that you don't know about me, my best friend and I once defied our parents by sneaking out of a parentally-mandated event and driving to the next state because there was a Taco Bell. Yes, I grew up in a small town in the midwest- how did you guess? :D

Ha!! I feel your pain.

nursedarry and I once drove from our own (then-)smallish town to a VERY small town to see a high school performance of Camelot (I'm mad for that show, I would see it anywhere). We planned to arrive early so we could have a drinky or two beforehand (because high school musical). We drove around looking in vain for a bar; finally we stopped a passerby and queried. "Oh, you can't have a bar within 500 yards of a church," they said, "and there's nine churches in this town. So no bars." We may have cried a bit...

I feel a little guilty at jumping in here, since I have always taken such shameless advantage of your book giveaways.

When I was in my thirties, I went through a very confusing period of my life, where I got heavily into Wiccan rituals. I performed daily spells using candles, herbs, crystals, and oils. I created a range of bath salts during the time, and consecrated a friend's mirror using wiccan rituals.

It got a little tedious and expensive, and I ended up throwing it all away in a fit of Christian-based fear and guilt. I don't miss the mess, but I do miss all my fascinating books on spells and wiccan lore.

I, too, used to do the rituals and had a full complement of tools on my altar that I painted myself. After extensive reading on affirmations and the power of thought, I came to realize that the tools were only a focusing device and were completely unnecessary... as were the rituals. It is the thought, held firmly in the mind that creates what appears to be magic. Now my tools are all in the attic, but I do have a cobalt glass bowl filled with various crystals, because they resonate with me more than the wand, athame, and chalice did. Magic for me these days is more of a conglomeration of bits and pieces of various philosophies.

Funnily enough, I kept the crystals as well. I found them to be soothing and compelling to look at and meditate over. I also developed a love for sea glass, which TheHubs™ and I still collect whenever we find it.

I have a beautiful Carol Oster wand I bought at MistiCon, as well as the wand Sempra gave me a long time ago when we were friends. I treasure them as artifacts of my life, but I don't use them. They are more props now than anything else, but it was amazing just how much the Oster wand called out to me, and when I was given her interpretation of the creation of the wand, just how much it matched me.

I also still have my Tarot cards which, as you know, speak very clearly to me. As does my Pendulum board and crystal. I'm a bit out of practice with it, though; the other day poor Dahlra couldn't get through at all- it was all rubbish. I need to work with it more.

It is the thought, held firmly in the mind that creates what appears to be magic.

Yes!! Aleister Crowley said, “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” Now I don't know if he meant that you can just think something and it will happen, but I interpret it as saying that your will is the most powerful force you have, and that once you have command of that, you can do just about anything. Crowley may have been a bit of a nut, but I think he got that part right. The best thing about that definition is that it puts change within the grasp of anyone. For example, an abused woman finally decides to leave her husband: she finds the will to do it, and the magick that results is a new and healthier life.

Edited 2014-08-17 02:34 (UTC)

It takes more than just a passing thought; there has to be emotion behind it... which is probably another reason for all the claptrap of rituals and tools: it stirs the emotions. But again, with sustained thought, heightened emotions concerning it, and the full expectation in achieving the result, the result is assured. I've read that most people say that they tried a ritual for say, more money, and it didn't work. That's because they maybe spent 15 minutes doing the ritual... but they spent the rest of the entire day worrying about the bills coming in and thinking about how they don't have enough money to cover them! It's what you think of consistently that you get. Worrying is praying for what you do not want.

Oh my gosh, don't feel bad! You have no idea how happy it makes me to send my books off to a good home. I find Wicca very interesting -- it appeals to me on a number of levels: personal, spiritual, environmental. Some of the books are terribly cheesy and clearly written only to capitalize on a fad, but some are serious explorations and quite thought-provoking. Starhawk's Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics and Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America both had quite a big impact on me.

Drawing Down The Moon was one of the ones I had! The other one sounds fascinating!

I had some very serious ones and some very silly ones. I still love the tarot, and have four simply beautiful decks. One of them is the Major Arcana Mimimanderly created for my fic, The Sempra Deck.

Lucky you to have a custom-made Tarot! I bet it works much better for you than a store-bought deck.

Oh this is such a neat idea. I may have to 'borrow' it too. It looks like you haven't reached twelve yet so I'll jump in.

Hmmm... something about me. I am an only child of much older parents. Because my mother instilled in me a love of books and reading (she used to buy me a new Little Golden Book every week and read me a story every night at bedtime), I spent much of my free time as a child lost in the magical worlds of fiction. I believe my love of fanfiction was alive even then although I certainly didn't call it that, as I spent most of my free time when not reading, making up long detailed stories about my favorite TV shows like Bonanza (I had such a crush on Little Joe), Dark Shadows (Barbabas Collins was my first dark mysterious older man crush. I adored this show when I was a tween/teen but recently tried to watch it on Netflix only to find the early episodes really silly. :D), and Star Trek (here it was Ensign Chekhov--loved that accent). LOL now I've clearly given away how old I really am, I was a child of the sixties. ;)

Edited 2014-08-17 22:41 (UTC)

How lucky we are to have had moms that loved to read, and passed that love on to us!! I didn't watch Bonanza but I did have a mad crush on Nick Barclay from The Big Valley -- my first Bad Boy crush. My first dark mysterious older man crush was Spock :)

Wow offer a little surprise and BOOM it works-kudos on that.

Hmm we're new friends so a lot could be new to you about me. Seeing I'd be the 36th comment, 3 times as many as the 12 you noted, I'll give you three things about me you might not know! Just don't use them for blackmail. :P If you wish any elaborations, come to reply on my blog I'll post once I'm done checking other blogs then!

1. My geeky interest are pretty diverse as you can tell, like my interests in anime/manga/hentai but I'm also into video games (I currently play them on my Smartphone, PS2, Nintendo Wii, an old Game Boy Advance SP and on my laptop), cosplay, comic books, cartoons, baking, movies, collector card games, and board games.

2. But as much as I'm a geek I'm also a jock, a rare combo I guess. I used to play touch football, floor/road hockey, soccer, darts, baseball/softball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, badminton, while I tend to follow the major leagues of those sports along with mixed martial arts, golf, and lacrosse.

3. Finally I'm also a huge pro wrestling fan. I do watch the big North American feds like the WWE, TNA and ROH but at this time I'm heavily into puroresu or Japanese wrestling like NJPW and Dragon Gate for example. Go back and see my Anime North convention reports as I used to be one of the contributors to the Anime Extreme Wrestling shows that mix pro wrestling to anime, comic books, pop culture kids shows and video games. Even 2 years ago our Improv Comedy troupe got to also perform once in the wrestling ring that my friend Andy also came to see.

Enjoy!

There are 32 comments but half of them are from me, and others are responses to those, so I only have 10 people on my Random Things list so far. You make 11 :) It will be interesting and fun to find a surprise for you since we're so different!

Festy goodness, and random acts of kindness

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