Week #4: Answers

Great travel themed questions T! Here are my answers...

What are your favorite things to do on vacation?
Oh man, I LOVE to lay in the sun. Teresa, we really do need to go on a vacation together. Patrick and I could spend the day reading by the pool and you could go exploring with Jason! Since I do a bunch of work related travel, if vacation doesn't include some serious relaxing, it's not a vacation!

What three places are at the top of your bucket list to visit?

I've been lucky enough to check some amazing spots off of my travel bucket list in the last few years, I have to say, this question was harder than picking desert island movies! I love to travel and there are still so many parts of the world I want to visit and/or go back and see again! 

Here are a three that have been on my bucket list for a long time...

Since I was a little, I've dreamt of visiting Salzburg, Austria and going on the Sound of Music tour!  (Yes, I'm a huge dork, this shouldn't surprise you.)

I'm not much of a hiker, but climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro has been a goal since I started studying Africa in college. 

And lastly, Scandinavia, as that's what a lot of my heritage is, I'd love to go see where my family came from! 

Photo above is me in Australia, a bucket list spot I checked off the list. 

Week 4 Questions

Since I’m leaving for Argentina on Thursday this week’s questions are about travel!

What are your favorite things to do on vacation?

Eat and relax! When we travel in the city (which is common, we are total city people) I love to have no agenda, just wander around different neighborhoods on foot and try to find the best food. Most of our vacations revolve around discovering the best restaurants and eating whatever is local and recommended. I also like to window shop and go to the spa :)

When we are in more remote locations I like to go on long walks, swim, and read. I’m not much of a sunbather (I burn and get overheated, sadly) so Patrick and I tend to do our own thing during the day, he likes to lay in the sun and I like to explore more.

What three places are at the top of your bucket list to visit?

1)  Turkey!! We are dying to go to Istanbul and travel all around the country. 2) Go back to India. I traveled a bit in India after college but really only scratched the surface, Patrick and I would both love to spend more time there. 3) Vietnam – we have friends in Vietnam and have heard it’s an incredible place to visit (and eat!), we’d love to do a family vacation there with Mylo. 

Week #3: Answers

Thank for the great questions this week Jenny!

What do you do to cheer yourself up?
 
Besides the normal stuff: baths, wine, chocolate, Netflix… I like to have something fun to look forward to. We love traveling so this is usually a trip of some sort. It doesn’t have to be a big one, even a weekend in Cannon Beach or the San Juan's is something that I enjoy planning and it gives me something fun to think about during weeks like this one when it’s pouring rain and dark before I leave work.

My quick trick for getting in a better mood is smiling, even if it’s forced at first. I read once that smiling/laughing is proven to alter the brain responses to stress and even releases endorphins that act as a natural pain reliever.  So if I’m in a bad mood I’ll Google funny videos or meme’s just to get me to smile and laugh.

If you were stranded on a desert island, which 5 movies would you want to have with you? 

These are the five movies (okay, there are two trilogies in there) that I could watch over and over and over.

Bourne Identity

Lord of the Rings

Pride and Prejudice

Little Women

When Harry Met Sally

Weel #3: Questions

We're back, with another round of questions.

In light of the Superbowl sadness that's currently consuming Seattle, my first question is:

What do you do to cheer yourself up? 

I've found that music really effects my mood. Yesterday I lit one of my favorite candles and I spent  the morning singing along to 80's music.

Also, doing things that are sporadic and random always make me happy. Like in this photo, we'd been working long days for a week and a half in Maui, so on our last night there, I jumped in the ocean and went swimming with my clothes on.

Also, in college, Teresa was known to put on a pair of cat ears to study and I've taken up that habit. You just can't be sad with a pair of cat ears on!

If you were stranded on a desert island, which 5 movies would you want to have with you? 

My choices are:

Two for the Road (My favorite Audrey Hepburn movie, here's my post on why I love it)
10 Things I Hate About You
Moonrise Kingdom
The Fall
Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Although, don't hold me to this for long! Even though I came up with the question, this was harder than I thought... I think my answers would be slightly different even if you asked me tomorrow.


Incase you missed it, you can see our last two weeks of questions here.

Week #2: Answers!

It's our second week of asking and answering questions.  Incase you missed it, you can read Teresa's answers to her questions this week here.  And below, are my answers to the same questions!


If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Reading Teresa's answers to her own questions this week made me laugh, and realize, this is probably in part why we are such good friends! Her answer for the first question could have been written by me!  Energy and musical talent are always my response to this question. Unless, it can include magical powers in which case I would choose the ability to travel in time.

But to add my own original answer, I'd say that I wish I didn't care as much what people think about me. I hate it when ANYONE is even slightly unhappy with me in any way. When someone has a even a small criticism of my work, I have the hardest time not taking it personally. Basically, I need a thicker skin.


What do you value most in a friendship?

Again, I totally agree with Teresa's answer on loyalty! So important.

But for me, in the last few years I've really come to value low maintenance relationships. As my life has been more and more unpredictable, I value the friends who I can go for months without seeing when I'm out of town, yet when we get together again, were able to pick right back up where we left off.

We'd love to hear your answers to the questions in the comments! OR let us know if you have a questions for us to ask next week.


Photo above, Teresa and I a few years back with some of our former college roommates and lifelong friends.

Week 2: Questions!

Time for the second round of our questions! Here are last weeks questions from Jenny and my answers if you are interested. I'm borrowing mine this week from that awesome Modern Love column I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. (ps. did you see the hilarious follow up in the New Yorker?)

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

I wish I had more energy. I’ve always been a fairly low-energy person who needs tons of sleep and gets sick easily if I get overly busy. I wish I was one of those people who actually gain energy by doing more and more. I have a lot of ideas and aspirations but just getting through my daily routine is an accomplishment.

Also, I’d love to be musical in some way, I can’t sing or play any instruments.

What do you value most in a friendship?

Confidentiality. I want to know that when I tell somebody something they aren’t going to go blab it all over the place. Despite the fact that my main hobby is blogging, I’m actually a fairly private person and it takes a lot for me to open up to someone. A friend that can keep a secret is priceless and rare.

These days I also value someone that actually finds what I say interesting. My life is currently a series of mundane details about child rearing, a desk/office job, and watching a lot of TV. It’s fun to find a friend who has some of these things in common and actually finds it INTERESTING to listen to these details of my life (which would not make a good book or TV show!). 

Question Responses

Here are my responses to Jenny's questions!

What is your ideal date night? 

Gosh we have never been very creative when it comes to date nights. We both LOVE going to the movie theater so our go-to date night is dropping in a pub for a quick snack and then heading to see a movie. These days we don’t get to do this often so we are particular about what type of movie we’ll see—pretty much only something that HAS to be seen on the big screen (our favorite movies are spy/action like the Bourne series) since we watch most of our movies at home on the couch. I usually sneak some cans of champagne in my purse. 

If we are feeling fancy we might go to a concert or see a Broadway show.

What are some of your first memories of me in college? 

Man Jenny had a good response for this one! As she knows all too well, I have a TERRIBLE memory. Seriously it’s notoriously bad. We hung out last night and that’s about the only thing I remember from the past 12 years. J

Well let’s see… I never really learned to cook until after college because Jenny pretty much cooked everything for me for four years. We “shared” groceries and I’m fairly confident I owe her a few thousand dollars still. We would always be “workout” partners at the gym and mostly just sit on the mats and stretch for an hour chatting. On a regular basis we would walk the mile or so all the way down to class and then decide to go get coffee instead. Jenny is probably the fastest reader I've ever known, I was always so jealous at how quickly she could get through our required reading in college!

This is fun! I’m on deck for next week!

Questions...

So, we're starting a new thing!

Did I get your attention with this wonderful old photo of T and I?  This was taken our freshman year of college, right before a formal. We'd only met a few months before. Crazy to think that was 2002!

Anyway, this new thing we're starting...

We've had a list of great questions from a reader that we've been meaning to get to for awhile (sorry Callie!) and have been trying to figure out the best way to answer them. And we realize that there are so many things from our lives that get left out of the blog. So we decided that answering some questions every week, from readers, or ones we come up with ourselves, would be a great way to share a bit more about our lives, both past and present.

This is how it'll work. Each week we will take turns asking each other questions. We'd also LOVE to have you all respond to the questions in the comments, OR feel free to ask one too!  Here's our first question...it comes from Callie!

What is your ideal date night? 

I'm curious to hear Teresa's answer too! Jason and I have been in a bit of a rut when it comes to doing things together.

And question #2:

What are some of your first memories of me in college? 

I'm interested to hear what stuck out to Teresa from when we first met. Like I said above, we met when we moved into the same house together as freshman at the University of Washington.

For me, a few of my first memories of Teresa were her dislike for leftovers-when I had just moved in and had yet to go grocery shopping, she eagerly gave me her tandoori chicken from the night before, basically cementing a lifelong friendship. I also remember her watching Regis & Kelly every morning before class and that she had multiple pairs of the exact same Lucky jeans, and she loved Yankee Candles and The Strokes.

OK! Those are the questions I pick! We'll hear Teresa's answers later this week.