Words and Xmas memories
Dec. 4th, 2003 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenOkay, I admit these interest me.
List gotten from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jess79:
Age: 29
Where did you grow up? Queens, New York
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks?
Stream.
2. What's the thing you push around the grocery store?
Shopping cart. Although I'm having serious MST3K flashbacks right now ("With my customers, who knows?")
3. A metal container to carry a meal in?
Lunchbox.
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in?
Frying pan.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people?
Couch.
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof?
Gutter.
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening?
As a rule, porch. But having learned a smidge of architecture for Garden District tours I would now be particular in correctly identifying a porch vs a gallery vs a balcony vs a patio. But in general it's a porch.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?
Coke.
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup?
Pancake.
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?
Hero. Sub comes second. In N'awlins it was a Po'Boy. Anyone who calls it a wedge makes me want to slap them. I don't know why.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach?
Men wear clothes at the beach? ;) (Swimsuit. Or a thong ;) )
12. Shoes worn for sports?
Sneakers.
13. Putting a room in order?
Assuming we're not going for all-out cleaning, then that would be tidying up.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark?
Firefly or lightening bug. I use those interchangably.
15. The little insect (arthropod) that curls up into a ball?
Pill bug.
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?
Seesaw.
17. How do you eat your pizza?
Fold it in half, let the oil drip out of the narrow end, then chow down point to crust.
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Ebay.
Thanks I'll be here all week. Seriously that'd be a yard sale or a tag sale. Sometimes even a garage sale.
19. What's the evening meal?
Dinner.
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
Basement.
21. That plant that kids throw at each other because it sticks to clothing?
Errr - what? Kids in my neighborhood threw rocks. And jellyfish. I remember there were these round pokey things that *could* stick to clothing, but we didn't make a habit of throwing them at each other and since they only grew in the neighborhood I grew up in I don't even remember what they were called.
22. Those little balls of froth on plants in spring, which contain some moth or other's eggs?
Again here I think I'm going to have to bow out as a city chick who doesn't even know what this is.
23. Girls' lower-half underwear?
Panties or underwear.
24. Boys' lower-half underwear?
Underwear or shorts.
24. The cloth you had when you were little and always slept with, and perhaps sucked your tongue with?
If I'd had one of these it would have been called a security blanket. But I did not. I had a security pillow.
What? 8)
25. Warm knitted top typically made of wool?
Sweater.
26. Baked in an oven, made of flour, butter, an egg, milk:
Um... can I get some steps here? I can think of a few things this could be but it's hard without a recipe. As it is this could be anything from crackers to Yorkshire pudding.
27. A single thistledown seed flying free.
Again city girl. no thistledown in my area.
28. Place where you. Er. You know. Use the euphemism:
Bathroom.
29. The thing that you walk on that runs paralell to the street:
Sidewalk or, in New Orleans, banquette.
30. The sometimes grassy area in the middle of the street which separates both sides of the traffic:
Neutral ground.
There, wasn't that fascinating? Which reminds me that one of these days I should tell y'all the jellyfish story.
Speaking of nostalgia:
Do you have a favorite carol/hymn?
Gabrielle's Message, hands down. Oh Holy Night would come second. After that... hmm. Would I Saw Three Ships count in this category?
What are your three favorite holiday songs? If there's a particular version, name the artist
Well, other than the ones mentioned above - damn there's a lot. I mean I love The Nutcracker, Snoopy & The Red Baron (Christmas Bells), Carol of the Bells, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, White Christmas, I'll Be Home For Xmas (which always makes me cry), I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You (and admittedly I like the Sheryl Crow version), Angels We Have Heard On High, The Little Drummer Boy (the most favorite Xmas song ever for Older Brother), Silent Night, God help me but I have to admit to liking the Feed the World song even though I know it's stupid for them to be singing about no snow in Africa this Christmastime, Jingle Bell Rock, Rudoph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Twelve Days of Christmas (more to sing than to listen to) - have I mentioned there's a lot? I realize I was supposed to narrow this down to 3 but that's just not possible.
What I don't like is Bruce freaking Springsteen and that God-damned Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Forcing me to listen to that piano in the background sends me right up into a belltower, I'm telling you right now.
And, of course, no Christmas is complete without Dominick the Donkey.
What's your favourite holiday movie?
March of the Wooden Soldiers!!! The good one, with Laurel and Hardy. None of those crap remake ones they tried to do later. After that would be a Christmas Carol with George C Scott.
What's your favourite holiday TV special?
Can't narrow it down to one. Charlie Brown Christmas would probably rank highest on the list. Next would come the Seasame Street Christmas special, the good one, from the pre-Elmo days, where it addressed the all important question of how does Santa get into your house if you don't have a chimney (something us city kids had to worry about).
After that, Rudolph, The Year Without A Santa Claus ("I'm Mr Heat Miser I'm Mr Sun! I'm Mr. Green Christmas, I'm Mr 101!") and I have to admit Olive, the Other Reindeer has also won a place of honor on the shelf.
What's your favourite holiday tradition?
Don't have a single one. My family has tons of traditions. When I was growing up the first set was the Good Deed Wreath, which we worked on during Advent. The way this worked was that we did our weekly Advent prayers, then everybody's name was put down on a piece of paper and folded up. The paper was mixed up and then we each drew one. Whatever name you got was the person you had to (secretly) do a good deed for that week. At the next week you would say what you did and you'd get a loop added to the Good Deed wreath, which was just this chain of construction paper. It sounds cheesy to describe but if I ever have kids I'll do the same thing with them to get them into some of the proper spirit of the holidays.
Next comes the Christmas Eve Pig Out, which is a tradition Older Brother and I started back when I was in elementary school during a time when clearly my Mom was not on a diet and/or just eager to get the two of us out of the house. However it worked, OB and I were sent down to the local Walbaum's with a sled and some money with which to buy all the junk food we wanted. We loaded up. There was candy and cake and ice cream with sprinkles and Magic Shell and whipped cream and ice cream cookies and chips and Doritoes and you name it.
Come Christmas Eve, what we then did was go to the 5:00 Mass, then hit McDonald's for dinner, then come home for the pig out. As the years have gone on we've scaled this down a bit (thus sparking the second tradition in my family, which is the one where we all secretly place bets on who's going to be the first person to say "Boy that first pig out was insanity! We sure don't do that anymore!") and naturally it's also affected by what family members are actually in town, but the pig out happens every year and if you're in town you don't miss it.
Other traditions in my family are the Predictions. This started out as a Thanksgiving tradition but it moved to Christmas when that turned into the holiday my brothers and their families (and me, for that matter) were more likely to be in town for. Basically what this is is every year we sit down and think up predictions for what's going to happen in the next year. This can range from anything from who we think will be the next president, to what we think will happen in our jobs, or if one of us is going to take a trip or what have you. There's really no limit. We start off by looking at the last year's predictions and marking down which ones came true, then we do a round of new predictions, then we randomly re-read some of the older predictions, thus sparking the related traditions with this which is 1) Elder Brother and Older Brother yet again arguing about whether or not EB owes OB money from the Eagle Scout wager they made back in the 80s (which is in one of the predictions, hence why it would come up) and 2) yet another year of wondering what the Hell I, personally, meant in a prediction from when I was about 3 years old which says, and I quote, that as of the next year "[TBQ] will still be wasting" (with, you know, my actual first name in place of [TBQ])
Finally another tradition, though one that we haven't done since I was a kid, was Older Brother and me sitting beneath the Christmas Tree while he would read from this Schoolastic Book of Christmas poems and stories. There's a handful of stories and whatnot in there (like a snippet of the Little House on the Pairie part about the Christmas Laura and her sister got the cakes with white sugar and the brand new pennies and cups of their very own) and OB would read them all, but the favorite one was a poem that starts out with - and I know this off the top of my head mind you - "It's nearly Christmas, it's Christmas Eve, and it's snowing all over the place!" I'm telling ya, I might not be able to quote everything in there by heart but if you were holding the book and named a title I could definitely give you the jist of damn near every plot point.
When I was younger and we still lived in Queens we would also have the tradition of the triple-whammy Christmas. First it was opening presents at our place, then we went to my Grandma's on my Dad's side, which meant Italian cooking which meant you ATE. There was appetizers and pasta and lasagna and sausages and meatballs and bracciole and salad (and, if you were a kid, you had all this with grape juice, which is why to this day I automatically knew what Elder Brother was talking about the other week when he said "I'm telling ya, grape juice with pasta puts me right back at Grandma's again" even though Dad, ironically, didn't) and then there was dessert which was another ton of food and usually included that thing I never remember the name of but it was little dough balls drenched in honey, piled into a pyramid and then covered with colored candy dots (candy dots of color? ;) ). Plus cookies and all sorts of things that would, according to Grandma, quote, "Help with digestion" even if it was, say, a hot fudge sundae.
Then it was over to Aunt Margaret's, who was my Mom's sister, for the maternal side of the family which would include more food, including Aunt Peggy's sausage and peppers which was to die for, and dancing and hanging out with my 3,498,278,536 cousins (can you tell this is the Irish Catholic side of the family?) and this would be the place where we would sing The Twelve Days of Christmas by everybody getting an index card with a random collection of days on it and that would be the part you had to sing (with everybody joining in on five golden rings). You would think from doing that year after year I would better remember the order of Days 12-6. You would be wrong.
And of course there's other stuff from when I was a kid. Like putting out cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph and getting a note and a hoofprint back in return. And not sleeping on Xmas Eve because I was so excited about all the toys I'd be getting. And calling up that phone line to hear about Santa's preparations and where he was in the sky. And - this one we still do - putting up the tree while listening to Christmas records and drinking hot chocolate.
And every year, without fail, we watch March of the Wooden Soldiers. Which also leads to every year, without fail, my Dad starting to sing the "Duuuuuuh DUN! Duuuuuuuuh DUN!" of Barnaby's theme which results in me, two seconds later, going "Dad CUT IT OUT ALREADY!"
So all in all I'd say I liked Christmas =)
Okay, I got chatty there. *cough* Now to grab a shower and make some corn muffins. Not at the same time.
List gotten from
jess79:Age: 29
Where did you grow up? Queens, New York
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks?
Stream.
2. What's the thing you push around the grocery store?
Shopping cart. Although I'm having serious MST3K flashbacks right now ("With my customers, who knows?")
3. A metal container to carry a meal in?
Lunchbox.
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in?
Frying pan.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people?
Couch.
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof?
Gutter.
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening?
As a rule, porch. But having learned a smidge of architecture for Garden District tours I would now be particular in correctly identifying a porch vs a gallery vs a balcony vs a patio. But in general it's a porch.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?
Coke.
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup?
Pancake.
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?
Hero. Sub comes second. In N'awlins it was a Po'Boy. Anyone who calls it a wedge makes me want to slap them. I don't know why.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach?
Men wear clothes at the beach? ;) (Swimsuit. Or a thong ;) )
12. Shoes worn for sports?
Sneakers.
13. Putting a room in order?
Assuming we're not going for all-out cleaning, then that would be tidying up.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark?
Firefly or lightening bug. I use those interchangably.
15. The little insect (arthropod) that curls up into a ball?
Pill bug.
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?
Seesaw.
17. How do you eat your pizza?
Fold it in half, let the oil drip out of the narrow end, then chow down point to crust.
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Ebay.
Thanks I'll be here all week. Seriously that'd be a yard sale or a tag sale. Sometimes even a garage sale.
19. What's the evening meal?
Dinner.
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
Basement.
21. That plant that kids throw at each other because it sticks to clothing?
Errr - what? Kids in my neighborhood threw rocks. And jellyfish. I remember there were these round pokey things that *could* stick to clothing, but we didn't make a habit of throwing them at each other and since they only grew in the neighborhood I grew up in I don't even remember what they were called.
22. Those little balls of froth on plants in spring, which contain some moth or other's eggs?
Again here I think I'm going to have to bow out as a city chick who doesn't even know what this is.
23. Girls' lower-half underwear?
Panties or underwear.
24. Boys' lower-half underwear?
Underwear or shorts.
24. The cloth you had when you were little and always slept with, and perhaps sucked your tongue with?
If I'd had one of these it would have been called a security blanket. But I did not. I had a security pillow.
What? 8)
25. Warm knitted top typically made of wool?
Sweater.
26. Baked in an oven, made of flour, butter, an egg, milk:
Um... can I get some steps here? I can think of a few things this could be but it's hard without a recipe. As it is this could be anything from crackers to Yorkshire pudding.
27. A single thistledown seed flying free.
Again city girl. no thistledown in my area.
28. Place where you. Er. You know. Use the euphemism:
Bathroom.
29. The thing that you walk on that runs paralell to the street:
Sidewalk or, in New Orleans, banquette.
30. The sometimes grassy area in the middle of the street which separates both sides of the traffic:
Neutral ground.
There, wasn't that fascinating? Which reminds me that one of these days I should tell y'all the jellyfish story.
Speaking of nostalgia:
Do you have a favorite carol/hymn?
Gabrielle's Message, hands down. Oh Holy Night would come second. After that... hmm. Would I Saw Three Ships count in this category?
What are your three favorite holiday songs? If there's a particular version, name the artist
Well, other than the ones mentioned above - damn there's a lot. I mean I love The Nutcracker, Snoopy & The Red Baron (Christmas Bells), Carol of the Bells, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, White Christmas, I'll Be Home For Xmas (which always makes me cry), I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You (and admittedly I like the Sheryl Crow version), Angels We Have Heard On High, The Little Drummer Boy (the most favorite Xmas song ever for Older Brother), Silent Night, God help me but I have to admit to liking the Feed the World song even though I know it's stupid for them to be singing about no snow in Africa this Christmastime, Jingle Bell Rock, Rudoph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Twelve Days of Christmas (more to sing than to listen to) - have I mentioned there's a lot? I realize I was supposed to narrow this down to 3 but that's just not possible.
What I don't like is Bruce freaking Springsteen and that God-damned Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Forcing me to listen to that piano in the background sends me right up into a belltower, I'm telling you right now.
And, of course, no Christmas is complete without Dominick the Donkey.
What's your favourite holiday movie?
March of the Wooden Soldiers!!! The good one, with Laurel and Hardy. None of those crap remake ones they tried to do later. After that would be a Christmas Carol with George C Scott.
What's your favourite holiday TV special?
Can't narrow it down to one. Charlie Brown Christmas would probably rank highest on the list. Next would come the Seasame Street Christmas special, the good one, from the pre-Elmo days, where it addressed the all important question of how does Santa get into your house if you don't have a chimney (something us city kids had to worry about).
After that, Rudolph, The Year Without A Santa Claus ("I'm Mr Heat Miser I'm Mr Sun! I'm Mr. Green Christmas, I'm Mr 101!") and I have to admit Olive, the Other Reindeer has also won a place of honor on the shelf.
What's your favourite holiday tradition?
Don't have a single one. My family has tons of traditions. When I was growing up the first set was the Good Deed Wreath, which we worked on during Advent. The way this worked was that we did our weekly Advent prayers, then everybody's name was put down on a piece of paper and folded up. The paper was mixed up and then we each drew one. Whatever name you got was the person you had to (secretly) do a good deed for that week. At the next week you would say what you did and you'd get a loop added to the Good Deed wreath, which was just this chain of construction paper. It sounds cheesy to describe but if I ever have kids I'll do the same thing with them to get them into some of the proper spirit of the holidays.
Next comes the Christmas Eve Pig Out, which is a tradition Older Brother and I started back when I was in elementary school during a time when clearly my Mom was not on a diet and/or just eager to get the two of us out of the house. However it worked, OB and I were sent down to the local Walbaum's with a sled and some money with which to buy all the junk food we wanted. We loaded up. There was candy and cake and ice cream with sprinkles and Magic Shell and whipped cream and ice cream cookies and chips and Doritoes and you name it.
Come Christmas Eve, what we then did was go to the 5:00 Mass, then hit McDonald's for dinner, then come home for the pig out. As the years have gone on we've scaled this down a bit (thus sparking the second tradition in my family, which is the one where we all secretly place bets on who's going to be the first person to say "Boy that first pig out was insanity! We sure don't do that anymore!") and naturally it's also affected by what family members are actually in town, but the pig out happens every year and if you're in town you don't miss it.
Other traditions in my family are the Predictions. This started out as a Thanksgiving tradition but it moved to Christmas when that turned into the holiday my brothers and their families (and me, for that matter) were more likely to be in town for. Basically what this is is every year we sit down and think up predictions for what's going to happen in the next year. This can range from anything from who we think will be the next president, to what we think will happen in our jobs, or if one of us is going to take a trip or what have you. There's really no limit. We start off by looking at the last year's predictions and marking down which ones came true, then we do a round of new predictions, then we randomly re-read some of the older predictions, thus sparking the related traditions with this which is 1) Elder Brother and Older Brother yet again arguing about whether or not EB owes OB money from the Eagle Scout wager they made back in the 80s (which is in one of the predictions, hence why it would come up) and 2) yet another year of wondering what the Hell I, personally, meant in a prediction from when I was about 3 years old which says, and I quote, that as of the next year "[TBQ] will still be wasting" (with, you know, my actual first name in place of [TBQ])
Finally another tradition, though one that we haven't done since I was a kid, was Older Brother and me sitting beneath the Christmas Tree while he would read from this Schoolastic Book of Christmas poems and stories. There's a handful of stories and whatnot in there (like a snippet of the Little House on the Pairie part about the Christmas Laura and her sister got the cakes with white sugar and the brand new pennies and cups of their very own) and OB would read them all, but the favorite one was a poem that starts out with - and I know this off the top of my head mind you - "It's nearly Christmas, it's Christmas Eve, and it's snowing all over the place!" I'm telling ya, I might not be able to quote everything in there by heart but if you were holding the book and named a title I could definitely give you the jist of damn near every plot point.
When I was younger and we still lived in Queens we would also have the tradition of the triple-whammy Christmas. First it was opening presents at our place, then we went to my Grandma's on my Dad's side, which meant Italian cooking which meant you ATE. There was appetizers and pasta and lasagna and sausages and meatballs and bracciole and salad (and, if you were a kid, you had all this with grape juice, which is why to this day I automatically knew what Elder Brother was talking about the other week when he said "I'm telling ya, grape juice with pasta puts me right back at Grandma's again" even though Dad, ironically, didn't) and then there was dessert which was another ton of food and usually included that thing I never remember the name of but it was little dough balls drenched in honey, piled into a pyramid and then covered with colored candy dots (candy dots of color? ;) ). Plus cookies and all sorts of things that would, according to Grandma, quote, "Help with digestion" even if it was, say, a hot fudge sundae.
Then it was over to Aunt Margaret's, who was my Mom's sister, for the maternal side of the family which would include more food, including Aunt Peggy's sausage and peppers which was to die for, and dancing and hanging out with my 3,498,278,536 cousins (can you tell this is the Irish Catholic side of the family?) and this would be the place where we would sing The Twelve Days of Christmas by everybody getting an index card with a random collection of days on it and that would be the part you had to sing (with everybody joining in on five golden rings). You would think from doing that year after year I would better remember the order of Days 12-6. You would be wrong.
And of course there's other stuff from when I was a kid. Like putting out cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph and getting a note and a hoofprint back in return. And not sleeping on Xmas Eve because I was so excited about all the toys I'd be getting. And calling up that phone line to hear about Santa's preparations and where he was in the sky. And - this one we still do - putting up the tree while listening to Christmas records and drinking hot chocolate.
And every year, without fail, we watch March of the Wooden Soldiers. Which also leads to every year, without fail, my Dad starting to sing the "Duuuuuuh DUN! Duuuuuuuuh DUN!" of Barnaby's theme which results in me, two seconds later, going "Dad CUT IT OUT ALREADY!"
So all in all I'd say I liked Christmas =)
Okay, I got chatty there. *cough* Now to grab a shower and make some corn muffins. Not at the same time.
