Erika - Plinky Answers

What’s the most awkward movie you’ve watched with your family?

2009-03-03T11:42:54-06:00

Oh goodness. I am sweating just thinking of it. My family, including aunts/uncles/cousins, were at my parents' house in Key West and my dad and uncle came back from Blockbuster with this one. Ay yi yi. I think Jonathan was with me...we got the hell out of there as fast as possible.

List the contents of your pockets or purse.

2009-02-20T07:39:48-06:00

Cell phone

Wallet

Lollipops
for Evan emergencies

Blackberry

Saline spray
Winter is dry.

Name a book that changed your mind or opened your eyes.

2009-02-17T08:00:00-06:00

It's kind of sad, but I would say that this book opened my eyes to the fact that not everyone is "middle class". I know not everyone agrees with the author's agenda but it gave me much more perspective on how America really works.

List any magazines you read.

2009-02-17T07:57:42-06:00

Newsweek
I don't know why I like this magazine so much. I feel like there is so much happening every week and this makes me feel like I don't miss 90% of it.

Redbook
I was surprised to like this magazine, a gift subscription from Patti a few years ago.

Parenting
This magazine is fun and bright and smart and realistic.

Longest road trip

2009-02-13T07:29:23-06:00

My junior year of college, Josh, Karl, and I went to visit Staci and Jeff, friends of ours who had graduated a couple of years before, for Easter. They lived just over the Kentucky state line from Cincinnati. We left around dinner time in Josh's Subaru. I slept a lot, but I remember the guys taking No-Doz and Karl complaining that his pee was thick. It was like a 10 hour drive and we drove all night, arriving around 3 or 4am.

I remember driving across very flat plains, with nothing on them, literally the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden seeing a gas station with a cow on the sign and that was our landmark to make a right turn. Oh lord I thought we'd never get there.

When we did get there, early Friday morning I think, I believe we discovered that Staci and Jeff had just gotten a new puppy. Like, on Thursday. So when they went to work that morning, the puppy barked and barked and barked and we couldn't sleep. I also remember getting dressed up to go to midnight mass with them on Saturday to find out the church wasn't having it. They also were the first ones I knew with cable or DSL and it was so cool that it was "always on" although it was slow compared to what we use now.

Technically my longest road trip would be any of the many times we drove to Key West to visit my grandparents (almost 1,000 miles even) (including a Spring Break trip the same year with 7 sorority sisters and one sorority sister's boyfriend), but I couldn't pick just one.

Have you gone a day without your cell phone?

2009-02-12T09:42:30-06:00

Oh...awful. It was in 2004. Jonathan and I were living in our first house, just down the street from the train station, and he was teaching and coaching basketball an hour from home, in the opposite direction of my hour commute. I left my cell phone at home but figured it was no big deal. That evening when I got off the train at 6pm, I didn't have my keys. I looked everywhere, but couldn't find them. I couldn't get into my house or my car.

A fellow passenger gave me a ride (I KNOW!!!) to the gas station across the street from our townhouse. I tried to call Jonathan's cell phone from the pay phone there but the gym where he coached never got a signal. I called my in-laws' house, just down the street from the school where he was, but no one answered. I called information and got the number for a co-worker friend who lived near me. I finally called her (running out of change!) and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she answered.

And then she couldn't hear me.

After a few "hello?...hello?"s, she gave up and hung up. I tried again and she still couldn't hear me. I was almost at the end of my rope. I had to go into the store and ask the clerk if I could use her phone since the one outside wasn't working. She was rude (I'm sure people bugged her about it all the time) and it sent me over the edge. I went outside and sat on the sidewalk crying because I had to go to the bathroom and our dogs had been stuck inside our house, WHICH I COULD SEE FROM WHERE I WAS SITTING, for 12 hours.

The pay phone rang, and it was my friend, who had seen the number on Caller ID, and the phone miraculously worked. Her husband came and got me and took me to their house where she fixed me a grilled cheese sandwich.

Worst day ever.

(My keys, by the way, had fallen out when I put my bag through the x-ray machine at work that morning, and the police had them in the Lost and Found when I went looking for them the next day. I believe I kissed the guard who gave them back to me.)

Name a piece of advice you've been given that you think everyone should hear.

2009-02-11T07:27:01-06:00

It's so cliche, but my mom always says "This too shall pass." It's so true. Sometimes I have to repeat it to myself several times during the day just to make it through, but most things aren't worth getting upset about because they do pass.

What’s your favorite room in your home?

2009-02-06T07:41:40-06:00

My favorite room in the house is Evan's bedroom. I love the paint color, and the curtains (which I designed myself), and the shades on the window that make it dark in there, and the race car bed in the corner, and the nice bright Ikea dresser and bookshelf that are anchored to the wall so he can't tip them over, and the new carpet. I love how he likes to play by himself in there and can always find a forgotten toy to entertain himself. He has a white noise machine, and a space heater (in the summer time, a window unit a/c), and the lamp has a dimmer AND a timer so that it shuts off every night after he fall asleep. Everything is just perfect in there, his own little cave.

Recall when you first started using the Internet regularly

2009-02-05T08:41:58-06:00

Our local newspaper had a "bulletin board" that you dialed into and it just scrolled text. You had a username and everything. I think this was 8th or 9th grade. It was addictive. To search the web you used webcrawler.com (no Google) but it was slow as hell. That was when AOL charged by the minute.

By 10th grade, AOL was unlimited and only like $20 a month and EVERYONE had it. We would rush home from school just to IM all night long. We had a second phone line but it still drove my mother crazy! I remember how the AOL profiles had character limits so you would abbreviate and delete all the spaces to include all the stupid quotes you wanted.

Name a bizarre gift you received

2009-02-03T19:53:34-06:00

The strangest wedding gift we got was a small, smudged glass and five dollars. I feel terrible making fun of this gift, from older relatives of Jonathan's, but...it was definitely off the wall.

Name a book you started reading but never finished

2009-02-03T19:51:15-06:00

Lord, but this book was scary. I don't know which was worse, the murders Truman Capote wrote about or the detached, unemotional way he wrote about them. I think I was pregnant with Evan, and it got to the point that I couldn't even have this book in my room after dark.

If I had easy access to a helicopter, I'd fly to Fuquay-Varina this weekend

2009-01-30T09:46:14-06:00

Well first of all, the idea of a helicopter is heavenly right now because it means I can travel with my kids without any other passengers. But I'd pick my hometown because I've been involved in the preliminary planning of my ten year high school reunion later this year, and it has made me want to spend time with some old friends. A five hour drive just ain't gonna happen!

How I'd spend $1,000

2009-01-28T08:58:47-06:00

Okay, first of all, we will pretend that there are no day care or credit card bills to take care of, or plane tickets to buy for two (possibly three) Florida weddings this year. I would spend $1,000 on: a home base for our Roomba, a small flat screen TV for our bedroom (to save space), carpet installation upstairs, and a daily dog-walker for our two dogs.

If I were a superhero, I would certainly not wear tights

2009-01-27T14:00:27-06:00

If I could have a superpower, it would be to be in two places at once.

When I realized I was a grown-up

2009-01-25T09:27:51-06:00

The first time we paid for our own plane tickets to visit my parents.