Perhaps I talk too much.

[3rdragon]

The Five Questions meme from operafloozy.

1. A cat, a platypus, a mortician, a bartender, and a zoologist are walking down a street. What happens next?
The mortician turns into a basset hound, the bartender into a brown bear, and the zoologist into a giraffe, and the five hero-animals go off into the sunset to combat the high occurrence of crime, evil, and burnt toast, and to uphold justice in their city.

2. Why did you choose to apply to Smith?
Well, I looked at Smith because my guidance counselor was very excited about it. I was sort of dubious about it because I wasn't sure that I wanted to be this far away, but I really liked the school. As for why I applied - well, the deciding factor was really that the application was short. And free.

3. What's your favorite outdoor area that you've been to?
Wow. Ask a hard one, why don't you?
I would say that I have multiple favorite places, or none. There are places that I remember very fondly, and places that are my favorite for specific things, but no overwhelmingly absolutely FAVORITE place that I can point out.
So I'll describe a variety of places.
My favorite place to go camping is Rickett's Glen State Park, in Pennsylvania. I've gone camping there with one or both parents almost every year since what seems like forever (Maybe since the year I was born. There's a story about our family camping there when I was a very small child, and one cold morning I screamed for about an hour straight and could not be comforted until my parents realized that I was too cold - despite being wrapped up like a mummy - because I couldn't generate enough body heat to warm up my clothing.) Notable exceptions would be the year we went to Maine, the two years we went to Virgina, and the trip to OZ/NZ. Anyway, Rickett's Glen is on top of a mountain. There's a man-made lake with a beach (it used to be the most marvelous beach in the world because there were springs, and so not only could you play in the sand, you had a stream running through your castle/countryside/lock system, but the springs weren't there when we went a few summers ago, and I haven't seen them since) and islands (the largest one, in the middle-ish of the lake, has blueberries on it and an excellent climbing tree). There are lovely wooded bits, and nice bike trails, and the Falls Trail, which follows two streams down the side of the mountain as they cascades off hunks of rock and whatnot.
One of my favorite places, certainly, is an island in the middle of the Delaware River. I've only been there once. It was a place we camped on a canoeing trip. That day had been a pretty awful one for me; the canoe I was in had tipped in a fast bit of river, and being helpless in a current that strong was completely terrifying for me. I think I spent most of the afternoon in some degree of shock, and when we arrived at camp that night I had the charming prospect of figuring out how much of the stuff in my backpack was ruined (my first copy of The Raven Ring suffered pretty badly, even though I'd packed it in a ziplock bag, and - well, let's just say that if you ever have your period during a long canoeing trip, make sure that most of your supplies are in a drybag), but the campsite was incredibly beautiful. You had to scramble up a bank to reach it, so you couldn't see the site from the river, but you could hear and see the river from the site. The ground was covered in a carpet of dead leaves, and the trees were something tall with pale bark that rose straight up for twenty or thirty feet before branching into glorious crowns of gorgeous green leaves that glowed when the sun hit them. I think that they were beech trees, but I honestly don't know. The whole place gave me a bit of a feeling of Lorien. The night was fine, and a bunch of us slept outside. I awoke to sunlight streaming through green leaves.
There's a place in Fairmont Park, in Philadelphia, by the Wissahickon Creek, where my family used to go on picnics sometimes. There's a stable nearby, and I would watch the horses, and then we would go down and play in the river, moving rocks to make a dam, or skipping stones.
There are many places in New Zealand that I found to be incredibly beautiful; one that comes to mind is a pebbly beach where we camped one night, by the side of Lake Taupo, I think. We walked along the beach, and made rock piles, and cooked dinner and ate it outside, and then played with the long-exposure settings on my camera as the sky grew dark. I have a picture of that one, although this particular one mostly just shows the water and the sky.
There was another place in NZ that we camped, outside of Auckland, on our last night down under, where we just left the city and started driving west, looking for somewhere to spend the night. We wound up on a road up a mountain, and there was a place to pull off and we were tired, so we just stopped there. In the morning we discovered that it was lovely in an rain-forest sort of way, with mist and palms and giant leaves. But perhaps I remember that one so well because it was the last.
In the center of Philadelphia, there's a thoroughfare called the Ben Franklin Parkway. It starts at the Art Museum and goes to City Hall (or the other way 'round). About halfway between the two is Logan Circle, which is a roundabout with a fountain in the middle. It's not an especially beautiful place, although as an example of urban park-type spaces it's quite lovely. But it's right between two science museums and the big downtown library, and it makes me think of all the things I love about Philadelphia.
I rather suspect that in the future, the path along the Mill River here on campus will be on this list, but at the moment it's a bit too quotidian.

4. What's the first book that pops into your mind when I ask this question?
The Wizard Test, by Hilari Bell. It's one of the ones I'm reading right now, and it's sitting in a bag on the floor next to me in case the internet ceases to be interesting before Talia and Aprille get up.

5. This is question number 50. What was your favorite question so far? (if you want, you can answer that one, too)
I like the one about the characters in the Japanese RPG with the pennywhistle and the whisk, but I won't answer that because I feel uninspired (See: Miriam hasn't answered #1 or #3 in her own questions yet).
I also like the one about take your eye off the monitor and describe the first thing you see in exactly fifty words, but I'm not going to answer that one either because I'm currently sitting out in the hallway and the most interesting thing in my likely field of vision is a trash can, of the sort that occurs in all Smith houses. And probability says that I would be describing carpet or wallpaper, because that's most of what's in front of me.
I would be quite fond of my first one if I had a good answer for it.
Later: yes, I quite like my first one.


I'll warn you all that posting a comment will make you eligible to be ninja-questioned, meaning that I may ask you five random questions at some point in the future when you aren't expecting it.

Comments

[operafloozy.livejournal.com]

Great answer to #1. Burnt toast i a serious problem.

(comment!)