I could write about this past weekend, about Kung Fu Panda at the IMAX (an early Father’s Day present for my husband), or Harry’s red-letter day at the water park, where he would have made me ride the kiddie water slide with him 50 times back to back if I had not steered him away gently toward ice cream and the wave pool.

But inspiration has been deserting me lately. So instead, I will join Shep in a 5 – question meme.

First, the obligatory posting of the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me” or something of an equally pithy nature.
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature. Be warned!
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions, or there will be trouble.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.

Now, the questions that Shep asked me, with answers:

1. We all know you love to read – when looking for a book to read, what grabs your attention?

I have a list of must-read authors, and even though I am not much of a serial afficianado, I have a few I follow. So, if we are assuming that I am in my established buying pattern, I will buy just about anything by Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connolley, Douglas Preston, Bill Bryson, Lincoln Child, Carol O’Connell, P. D. James, Alexander McCall Smith, and Eoin Colfer. I will also buy anything in Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, even though I don’t always purchase all of their works. I also read a lot of non-fiction science and history books. Interestingly, I don’t go for much historical fiction unless it’s historical mystery.

If I am looking for something new, I don’t know that I really have rules. I am a huge fan of mystery and espionage novels (I cut my teeth on Higgins and Forsyth). I like well-written non-fiction, particularly accounts of historical events or the history of science. Although I am not a huge biography fan, I often like memoirs, though not those of famous people. I spend a lot of time reading the jackets of books in airports, and I am pretty quick to try a new author at least once. I am fascinated by books on neurology and psychology – Phantoms of the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran rocked my world.

2. I know you’ve been burned out on the SCA for a while, what if anything would get you back playing again?

Oh, that’s an easy one. Fighting. I mean, I love my friends and I love the company, but ultimately I see most of those people outside the SCA. I don’t need the SCA for their friendship – at least the ones that matter. I have already starting coming back because the fighting jones is just too much of a draw. Coming back from another layoff has not been easy, but I can’t seem to walk away from it. There’s just no replacement in my life for it. We have started to play at about a tournament a month, and when the heat of the summer is past, gas allowing, we hope to get back to playing at a reasonable level.

3. What were the three biggest differences for you from being Queen in an established Kingdom Like Meridies, and being first Queen of Gleann Ahbann?

Interestingly, I felt free to experiment as Crown of Meridies. In an established Kingdom, if you misstep, you know the Kingdom will shake you off as soon as you step down. We felt less free in our GA reign because first and foremost, our reign had to REALLY be about the Kingdom and not about us. EVERYTHING was being set up from scratch. It had to be about what the Kingdom wanted as a vision of itself and less about ours. It was the reign to set the tone of the Kingdom, to solidify it’s character and identity. The scrutiny of the Crown was intensified, and the pressure was stifling, even as the enthusiasm of the populace was at a much higher pitch.

We were nobodies in the Meridian reign and the established Peers were much quicker to step in with discreet commentary and advice – even when we didn’t agree, it was invaluable. By the second reign, we were both Peers with established households and we found that people were more reluctant to offer opinions unsolicited (at least directly to us). We had to really WORK to get input. It was counterintuitive, and it was horribly isolating. We had a lot more guidance the first reign than the second, which is normal for second time reigns, BUT we were in a situation where that second-time reign was NOT a standard reign, and that guidance was needed. Badly.

And that brings me to this – this was NOT a standard reign, and even though I had gone through this before during Calontir’s Kingdom transition I was not prepared for the fact that even the most expected, most amicable, most necessary Kingdom transitions are sheer social chaos. Every person is trying to claim their little piece of ground in the Kingdom’s history. During a normal reign it is impossible to make everyone happy, in a first reign it seems nigh unto impossible to make ANYONE happy, because there is this temporal IMPERATIVE to everyone for something to be a first. But realistically you can’t give that to everyone. So we crossed our fingers and held our breath, but it took an huge emotional toll. Much more so than our previous reign. I was more tired, more disillusioned, after the First GA reign.

I guess those are the big three – but I have to add the obvious. When we did the First GA reign, we were reeling from personal loss. On one hand, it may be one of the only things that carried us with sanity through those horrible months after Katrina. Both the support from our SCA friends, and the outside demand to keep moving and keep planning toward that goal carved us a path through a lot of uncertainty. But it didn’t leave us with a lot of reserves when it was over. That wrinkle makes it really hard to separate the differences between the two. It permeated everything.

All I know is this – every time we sit the throne, we lose our house. Call me crazy, but I am going to be pretty circumspect before I do it again.
4. I know your secret (or not so secret) of being a They Might Be Giants fan, how did that come to be?

My first serious live-in boyfriend and my best male friend were both TMBG fans, so I kind of got acculturated to it. I am also a fan of that kind of intelligent absurdist humor – both in writing and in music. If that isn’t enough, I saw them live in Columbia, MO, and it was HANDS DOWN the best concert I have ever seen. We brought them out for five encores. The only thing that came even remotely close was Carlos Santana and Rusted Root at the Riverfront. If I wasn’t hooked before I saw them live, I certainly was afterward. They are even better in person.

5. You are well traveled both inside and outside the SCA – if you couldn’t stay where you are now, and had to move tomorrow – where would you go and why? answer inside and outside the SCA and they can be two separate answers.

Truthfully SCA wise I am exactly where I want to be. Choosing another Kingdom would be hard. Meridies and Calontir immediately leap to mind, BUT, I learned a lesson when I went back to Calontir for grad school that you can never really go “back” places. Your heart keeps telling you that you can, and somehow it’s hard to fight the idea that you can step in where you left off. It’s difficult. Even more so than transitioning to someplace new. I have friends in the Midrealm and Northshield (deep connections there), Trimaris, and Ansteorra. I also have an affinity for Aethelmearc, Ealdomere and the Outlands. So it’s easier to say where I do NOT think I could fit in, as much as I LOVE the people there, I think An Tir, Atenveldt, East, West and Atlantia would do me in. I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around their culture.

Real-life, I can tell you that I love Hawaii with a passion almost unequalled by anyplace on earth. I have never felt more totally in tune with a place as I have the times I have spent there. I also have a deep attraction to Washington D.C. for the cultural mix and Boulder, Colorado for the easy-going attitude, and the scenery. And, as eager as I was to leave after grad school, I miss Columbia. It is the perfect mix of small town and small city. Low unemployment, low crime, low cost of living, world-class healthcare and a user-friendly government. Hard to beat that.

If I were to leave the country, there are three of our northern neighbor cities that I could easily live in – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (even IF I would have to learn more than my street-sign French). Growing up on the border and having French-Canadian roots no doubt influences this. And I have a short list of cities in Europe that I would be willing to relocate to if the right financial package came along… 🙂

So, there you go – my answers, or in some cases, non-answers.