A dream, a quiz, and a thought

Patrick's Dream Last Night
Patrick had a dream last night that we were in Palatine (the Chicago suburb where we grew up) and we were at my house there, and there was a farm. He accidentally killed 2 pigs, and asked me to bury them. I did a bad job, and the farmer found them, and he thought "I should have buried them myself".

Moral of the story: Don't ask me to bury your dead pigs!

And answers to follow-up questions:
1. No, he did not kill me for not burying the pigs well
2. The farmer is unknown
3. He doesn't know how my house was involved other than we could park in the driveway which was extra wide (there was a two car garage and then a 3rd car spot on the driveway itself - perfect for a teenager!)
4. My house was not the farm itself, but it may have been in the backyard

A Quiz Marisa Sent Me
Marisa sent me a quiz this morning. I won't blog the whole quiz, but here are a few things I thought were interesting:

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I was named after Grace Kelly. I never really knew why, my mom wasn't obsessed with her or anything as far as I know. My middle name is Elizabeth, which was my great-great grandmother on my mom's side's first name. (Like if you go straight up the line of women in my family... my mom's mother is Ann, her mother was Almina, and HER mother was Elizabeth).

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I always comment that I would not be friends with me. I don't think I'm a particularly nice person.

WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? I try not to say "no" to anything... but this is something I'm not very likely to get excited about.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? I'm not much of a cereal eater... I like lots of them though, hard to have a favorite. I enjoy Froot Loops, Honey Nut Cheerios, Life, Capt'n Crunch, etc. The last time I had cereal was probably in college though... and even then very very rarely.

DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No... I wear sneakers to work every day and I NEVER untie them. Actually I was slightly annoyed earlier this morning because one came untied and I had to retie it. But with my running shoes... EVERY SINGLE TIME. No matter what. I always untie them. Two reasons: (1) so I don't hurt the heel of the shoe when I try to put my foot in, and (2) so I can tie them tightly enough and appropriately to support my foot.

DO YOU THINK YOU'RE STRONG? PHYSICALLY OR MENTALLY? I do actually. I think I'm both physically and mentally strong. This often gets challenged (physically) when I try to "fight" Geoff and he picks me up and throws me (gently!) on the ground or otherwise shows me how weak I am compared to him. Most of the time my levelheadedness make me feel strong mentally, and when I'm running or leg pressing a lot of weight or something cool like that I feel totally strong physically!

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? In someone I actually meet, their intelligence. I judge it almost immediately, based on whatever information I have to go on. Usually throughout my relationship with any given person, I continue to judge their intelligence up or down (this sounds bad. I don't know how to make it sound not bad. I guess it IS bad.) If I haven't met them (i.e. someone I see in a store), I will typically notice who a person is with - kids, friends, significant other, etc. If they are alone I will note if they look like they're talking on the phone, in a rush, etc. I rarely notice physical appearance, and even less often, what they're wearing.

RED OR PINK? Pink! I LOVE pink... bright pink, light pink, any pink. This is new, in the last 3 or 4 years. I used to hate it. I try to get EVERYTHING in pink... I have a pink hat, rain coat, suitcase, etc. I tried to get a pink KitchenAid mixer, but Geoff wasn't a fan... he let me get a pink spatula and a pink knife instead. So I think in our kitchen I'm going for black / stainless steel... with a little bit of pink accent thrown in there where I think I can get away with it!

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Well this is a very recent discovery (like I realized it yesterday), but I am annoyed that I have to have a numerical metric to be truly effective at doing something. Like I can save money easily because you can look at your progress over time on a chart. I can plot the number of miles I have run in a week, month, year on a pretty little graph. I can't measure my relationships with people or with God that way... they're not quantifiable! So that makes me feel like I can never be good at them... although I know that I CAN and probably am. I just can't measure it. So I don't like that I have this metric obsession with all that I do. It's not necessary. (also - this probably isn't my least favorite thing about myself overall, it's just something that's bugging me a little)

WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I definitely miss the college environment! I miss my sister the most though of any one person... I think I feel even further from her because she's in Spain, so it's hard to talk on the phone with her. Anyone else, I can call up at any time... but not her!

FAVORITE SMELLS? Nothing strong! I don't like strong smells anywhere... flower shops make me feel like I'm going to throw up. I like vanilla okay. (incidentally, I read yesterday that chocolate chip cookies make women more likely to go shopping, even if it's not in the budget). I thought of this later (when it was lunchtime so people have food at their desks) - I LOVE the smell of onion and/or garlic cooking in butter or oil!

FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? College football! Even better, Big 10 football, and the ultimate prize is Northwestern football. :) Bonus points for winning!

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No... oddly, both Geoff and I have perfect vision. I do have these weird prism glasses though... they are a prescription but not a normal prescription. I have a muscle issue with my eyes (don't remember exactly what, it's been 5 or 6 years since I've been to an eye doctor) where sometimes it is hard for me to focus (especially when I'm tired) and I will wear these glasses to make it easier to focus. I will often go 6 months without wearing them though. If anyone else puts them on, they are like 3-D glasses in an IMAX movie. So weird.

FAVORITE FOOD? This is hard! I love food. Recently I have had an affinity for any pasta made with Italian sausage. I have discovered that I find ground beef has little flavor in anything but hamburgers (to me anyway), and I prefer substitutes - sausage in pasta, ground turkey in tacos, etc.

LAST MOVIE YOU SAW? Pulp Fiction. I am embarassed to admit that, because it was such an awful movie in the sense of language, violence, sex, etc. I found it amusing though... it's hard to say if I really LIKED it, but I'd say more it was interesting. I watched it because my coworkers all love it and quote it constantly. One of them loaned it to me and so I watched it, so at least now I can understand their references to it. Incidentally, my sister and I weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons when we were little and to this day we both refuse to watch it because we're not "allowed" to. (that was the only show we weren't allowed to watch, except for The Nanny which my mom banned simply because she did not like that woman's laugh)

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? When are you going to Alaska? I can't remember! We're going on an Alaskan cruise with my parents the summer of 2009 (I think... nothing's set in stone yet). I am reading A Thousand Splended Suns for book club... it's by the author of the Kite Runner, which I loved, and I love this one too! I'm about halfway done. I want to check out a few non-fiction books from the library - perhaps one or two about dreams, and a couple of personal finance books. I'm thinking of starting a personal finance blog (as though there aren't enough of those on the internet already!)

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I can fold my tongue in half and open and close it quickly like a venus fly trap. NOT like most people who can sort of roll it in half so that it makes a little O in the front (although I can do that too), but this is literally folding it in half so the edges of the right side meet up with the edges of the left side, right down to the center. It hurts my throat/neck though after I do it a few times in a row, so I don't do it often. I just did it once to test just now, and it hurt just that once!

A Thought
As you might have caught above, I'm thinking of starting a personal finance blog. I LOVE personal finance. And I'm constantly getting more and more interested in it. I think I send Geoff a new chart daily ("look at how our power bill goes down in the winter as our gas bill goes up!" "here's our projected net worth in 2043!" - two ACTUAL examples from this week). And we have set very aggressive financial goals for the next 2 years (because really, who can set precise goals on a longer time frame than that). So it'd be fun to track that, share what I know, and get advice/comments from others. I'll keep pondering it, and we'll see what happens! Let me know what you think of the idea. There are already about 648914365 personal finance blogs on the internet. And this time, that number might be real.