Thursday, April 7, 2011

I'd Like to Know

I'm just a bit burned out. Just a bit. Today I'd like to keep things super-simple because I get the feeling that everyone else is burned out, too. We have a lot on our plates, so today it's question time! Just two. You can answer one or both.

Q: What do/did your parents do for a living?

Q: What’s something you know you do differently than most people?

I look forward to your answers!

30 comments:

  1. My answers are:

    My dad is a soil scientist for the Forest Service. My mom is a middle school librarian.

    I know I like really strange food. I'd eat cow's tongue if I could, calamari, escargo, sashimi. Most people in my friend sphere gag at these things. :)

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  2. My father was a barber - back in the day before barbers became stylists. He died before I was born. My mom is retired now, but had many positions when she worked at the Tooele Army Depot.

    I hate long nails. I used to bite my nails, but now I just keep them trimmed very short. If I see any white or extra part of the nail I must trim them or I will bite them.

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  3. Mary, I used to bite my nails, too. Now I keep them very, very short. Looks like we share that boat. :)

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  4. My mother was a reluctant SAHM. {She would much rather have been working but back in the 1930s, married women with children didn't do this.} My father was a police officer back in the days when they had to be over six feet.

    What I do differently from most people I know is to prefer an ebook {a Kindle in my case}rather than a paper book.

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  5. My dad is now an elementary school teacher; mom stays at home to raise their adopted set of children (20 years younger than me and my brother).

    Not sure what I do differently than most people. I hate ice in my drink and would rather drink something warm than put ice in it.

    Also, I've eaten cow tongue, and it's really quite good! I had cow heart a few weeks ago, and it was also very good.

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  6. My mother was a school teacher, and my father was an auto-body car guy then he became a teacher. He is also a master carpenter and built all our houses.

    I dry my clothes on the line, iron, and mend. Most people use the dryer, and throw stuff away if it gets ripped.

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  7. I think my mother was a librarian at some point in the distant past. My father is a programmer at the SA Weather Service.

    Um... there are so many things. Well, I like to rearrange things that are out of order. Such as the chocolates and things they have at the tills in supermarkets (I don't know if it's just South Africa that has this), while waiting, I pack them. As in shifting things until they are in perfect rows and taking an ill-placed Bar-One in the Now bar section and putting it where it belongs.

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  8. I don't watch a lot of TV like most people.

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  9. My late father was a chemical/nuclear engineer. Mom stayed home (1950s/60s); later she became head of the local genealogy library and still works there 35 years later.

    Different from most people...hm. I refuse to travel by airplane, yet have racked up 82,000 miles so far by car, train, and ocean liner, and have traveled from Washington state to Britain and back without benefit of a plane.

    -Alexandra MacKenzie

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  10. Yes. Nice antidote to the burn out. This feels calm.

    Both my parents were college professors. My dad taught Classics (Yale/Wesleyan) My mom taught English Lit, with a specialty in Shakespeare (U. Conn.)

    I love to cook, but I can't follow a recipe. But I lie and tell people I did, so they won't be scared it will be weird.

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  11. My mom is an addiction treatment counselor. My dad has worn many hats: 20 years in the Army, social work, teaching, and he was once a volunteer fireman. :)

    I don't know how rare this is, but I only wash my hair once or twice a week. Right around the fourth day, people are always telling me how good my hair looks, and asking if I just got it done. Nope. Just haven't washed it in days!

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  12. My dad was an insurance underwriter, and managed regional sales teams for a couple different insurance companies. He retired in 2000. My mom worked off and on managing a retail clothing store. She passed away form ovarian cancer in 2001.

    I think differently from most people. Occasionally it results in clever ideas, but a lot of the time it results in things-that-make-you-go-huh?

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  13. My father was a US Marine for 23 years and then he retired and did a variety of things. Currently he works part time at a parochial school. My mother worked a variety of jobs while raising her many children and lately has worked in public health.

    I've been told that I tie my shoes "upside down" which I think is because I taught myself how to do it so I don't actually know how normal people tie their shoes.

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  14. My Dad was an engineer for the phone company and sold firewood out of our yard. My Mom was a homemaker.

    I can't abide off-brand cotton swabs. It's Q-tips or nothing, baby.

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  15. (You don't have a Mexican grocery there where you can buy cow's tongue?)

    My dad was a college professor and author of non-fiction. He had to retire early for medical reasons but he continues to write, guest lecture, and present at conferences. My mom was a reading tutor for many years, home-schooled my brother and partly me, and continues to be a freelance editor and a master of creating indexes for non-fiction books.

    I follow my own way of doing many things, but I'll go with this: I know when something is done being cooked by the smell exclusively.

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  16. My mother was a music teacher and marching band director.

    I sometimes eat (veggie) burgers upside down. I find it's easier to set the burger down on the larger top part of the bun.

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  17. My dad was in the Air Force and retired a full colonel. Retired because they wanted to promote him to general and send him to wash.d.c. He didn't like that idea. Mom, stay at home mom for 5 kids. I loved even in college coming home to find her at home and sitting down to chat about my day.


    I'm more of a logical thinker than emotional thinker.

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  18. This is awesome, you guys! I'm getting to know you just a little bit more. :)

    Summer: I'm glad I'm not alone!

    Anne: I wish it was warm enough here that I could hang dry everything. Sadly, 8 months out of the year it's just too freaking cold.

    Nevets: I should look for it at the store, yes!

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  19. Man, I know I've seen lengua de vaca in the local ads. (No, I'm not kidding. I was kidding when I said I was going to buy it, though.)

    Oh, I know. HAGGIS. DH and I keep saying we want to do a haggis truck at a Scottish festival one day. (I've had it twice and liked it fine, though it was just liver, I think.)

    My dad was a computer-aided design engineer. Now, according to LinkedIn, he's a "Lead Technologist." My mom used to teach seventh grade language arts, but now she's an academic coach.

    My parents are made of buzzwords. This is most alarming.

    I talk differently than most people—faster, I'm told. (I sound fine to me!) In high school, I thought people just didn't like my jokes until a friend told me, "You're really funny, but you talk so fast that by the time I get your jokes, you've moved on!"

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  20. My dad is a metal worker and my mom is a pediatric intensive care nurse who's retiring in about two weeks!

    I've been told repeatedly (and don't ask me by who) that I have a funny way of putting my pants on.

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  21. What do I do different than others?

    I've been told I fiddle with everything, from clicky pens, to pop cans, phones, basically if it is in my hand- I fiddle.

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  22. Mom/Dad, both gone... Dad was a tail gunner in a B-17, then a husband, sheriff's deputy, tool engineer, and judge. Mom was a homemaker then worked in a butcher shop for 20 yrs after dad died. She ended up being a crossing guard.

    Luckily, I can still stick my whole hand inside the Pringle's can so I can get the last of the chips hiding in the bottom...

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  23. My father was a wool-mill foreman. Before that he was a cotton-mill foreman. And apart from being in the War that was all he ever did. My mother was mostly a housewife although she did have a couple of jobs when I was growing up and money was tight: she assembled electrical (or it might have been electronic) components and later worked in a fish factory. She brought home scampi for the cat; we never got any and I was in my twenties before I first tasted the stuff.

    As for your second question, I use my knife and fork as if I was left-handed but I’m not.

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  24. My Dad helped maintain and service Spitfires when he was in the Fleet Air Arm. My mom trained as a hairdresser, although she worked as an assistant in the tax office.

    I love the smell of petrol, creosote, and extinguished candles.

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  25. My late father was a driver for most of his life, mainly cars for garages. My mother was a seamstress and, after I and my brothers were born, a teacher.

    My oddity is that I prefer being a househusband to having a full time job.

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  26. My dad retired from the Denver Fire Department after 30 years. Now he's enjoying not working, even though he works around the house (among other things) just as hard as he did when he was employed.

    I snap my fingers differently than anyone else I know. When I snap my fingers, I use my thumb and index finger. I'm not sure how or why I do it, but I always have. My wife loves to tease me about it.

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  27. Oh, and Mom was lucky enough to stay at home and take care of us. She's an incredibly skilled seamstress though, and she sewed all my kids' Halloween costumes. She now sews quilts that she donates to a hospital for cancer patients (I believe). What makes her sewing ability even more amazing is that she's completely blind in one eye and fairly blind in the other one. She sews with her head very close to the material so she can see, and still she ends up with this incredible stuff.

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  28. My Dad works for the Indian Civil Services..My mom used to teach, then worked for a company that developed teaching modules..Now she is between jobs and is waiting for her US visa so she can come visit me..*fingers crossed*

    One thing that I do different from other people :hmm..ok I am embarrassed to admit this, but here goes: I've lived in the U.S for 7 years but haven't gotten a driving license yet. And I live in SoCal where EVERYBODY drives. I promise myself every year that this will be the year.

    Hopefully, this summer..:)

    Lavanya

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  29. Mom's a librarian, one of the only at the library that has worked at shelving, at the circ desk, at the reference desk (subbing), and now in tech services. So proud of her :)

    Dad's head of maintenance for a group home of mentally disadvantaged people.

    The thing I know I do differently from everyone is how I hold my pencil:

    I stick the part near the nib between my ring and middle fingers, under my middle finger, under my index finger, with my thumb tip touching my index finger tip. And, like a lefty, I drag my hand across the page and get all kinds of ink and graphite stains.

    It's a painful way to write sometimes, but I can't do it any other way. That's how I taught myself.

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  30. My parents owned a silk-screen printing shop when it was a very new thing to do. (They've been retired for over 2 decades now.) Mom spent her early years as a secretary as well, because in those days women could only be secretaries, nurses, or teachers. (Or flight attendants.)

    Weird things I do: no TV since 1982, eat sandwiches and cookies in a circle, always grade papers in green ink rather than red.
    @Jordan -- real Scottish haggis is very, very good -- but only if you eat it hot. (It's not good cold. ick.)

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