mikao's world

Interview #7

The seventh interview of this series comes from the reader of this blog whom I have known the longest, Jen of Meditatio:

1. What is unique about the town you are currently residing in?
"It's the Lutefisk Capital of the World. :)

2. What was the hardest thing to deal with in college?
The hardest thing was probably the way I was treated by a lot of my IV friends when I was diagnosed with depression. Their response was "Oh... I'll pray for you." My non-Christian friends were the ones who spent hours listening to me whine (which was what helped) and who made sure I was eating, sleeping, and taking my meds. My third year, some of my IV friends finally asked me what they could do and I think things got better after that point. There is such a stigma with depression in Christianity and the Church needs to learn how to deal with it.

3. What is one of your favourite memories from your high school years and why?
My favorite memories are probably from all the Girl Scouting things I did. Backpacking in the Sierras and going days without a shower while doing CIT training taught me to be creative as did competing with my troop at TEQUE. (It's a camping skills competition in the Santa Cruz mountains.)

4. If you could visit with any relative or ancestor whom you have never met (living or dead), who would you chose and why?
Probably my paternal grandmother. My dad says I am the spitting image of her and am alike in temperment.

5. What food would you prefer not to ever have to eat and why?
LUTEFISK!!!!!!!!! It's fish jello and smells like rotting cod.

6. If you had a choice between winter forever or summer forever, which would you pick? Why?
I'd have to go with summer if it wasn't dreadfully hot all the time. Winter has a certain stark beauty to it but I really need the color of plants in bloom or I get sad. Winter gets to be too much like Narnia under the rule of the White Queen.

7. Who is the person you admire most, and why do you admire them?
I'd have to say it's probably my friend Jill. She's an MBA studying to be a Lutheran pastor and she is the most "outside of the box" person I know. She is an awesome prayer warrior and knows so much about the strangest things. She is also just sooooo positive.

8. If you cold go back and change one thing about the last year, what would you change?
I wish I hadn't blown the psych test for candidacy (though my tester had more to do with that than my own issues) -- it made me defensive for my candidacy panel interview and it's making my new candidacy essay harder to write because I am afraid of how everything I say will be interpreted.

9. Tell us about three blogs on your blogroll and why you read them regularly.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Ellen is an IV-Link worker in Sarajevo. She actually emailed when I did a survey about two years ago and I started reading her blog. We have some interests in common and I actually met her in December of 2002 when she was home to see her folks. I read her blog because I love seeing what life is like in a different country, she writes alot about the Bosnian language (and I'm a linguistics fiend), and I love what she writes about faith and evangelism.

Echo: Krissy is the duckie goddess. :) She and I have been online friends for about 4 years now. She has consistently saved my butt whenever I have attempted a new CMS and she is always the first one to offer support when I'm really having problems. I read her blog because she usually has something interesting to say and she finds the coolest links. She's a knitter and we can complain about our various yarn projects together. :)

Marginalia: Brianna was my first hostee and has grown to be one of my dearest friends. We are essentially clones of each other in a lot of ways except for nationality (she's Canadian), denomination (she's Anglican and I'm an Episco-Lutheran), and our studies (she's a classicist and writer -- I'm a geeky Church historian and ministry person). I love what she has to say about poetry and faith and life in general.

10. What is your favourite word in the English language?
Esoteric. It describes its meaning: "of or relating to that which is known by a restricted number of people" or "hard to understand". It isn't in common usage and that makes it even cooler.