{"id":2495,"date":"2008-08-12T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/?p=2495"},"modified":"2008-08-11T21:27:11","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T01:27:11","slug":"slightly-more-serious-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/2495","title":{"rendered":"Slightly More Serious Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some more answers to the <a href=\"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/2481\">questions various and sundry asked of me<\/a>. I&#8217;ll think I&#8217;ll keep taking questions through the week, so feel free to ask other questions in the comments.<\/p>\n<p>Vince asks:<br \/>\n<em>How did you decide on your career choice?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t. In fact, I still don&#8217;t know what I want to be when I grow up. I fell into my job quite by accident. I was working in a microbiology lab in NIOSH and although I loved my co-workers, I didn&#8217;t like the work I was doing at all (PCR &#038; cell culture = BORING!), so I took my current job as a stop over until I decided what I really wanted to do, since microbiology wasn&#8217;t it. Although things were rocky for awhile, and in the intervening years did the classwork for my MPH (Masters in Public Health) I&#8217;ve actually come to enjoy my job in recent years. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve developed a unique skill set, and for my job I get to do a variety of tasks, almost all of which I thoroughly enjoy: teaching, writing, and problem solving.<\/p>\n<p>So if I decided to move on from this job, I have no idea what I&#8217;d do next, because I don&#8217;t think there are many other jobs out there like mine.<\/p>\n<p>Anne asks:<br \/>\n<em>How did you meet Michael?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s kind of a strange story. My boyfriend, roommate and I ran a local BBS. I was (unsurprisingly) message base sysop, although I eventually learned enough to run much of the back end as well. Because the community was small, and many of us knew each other, we threw a pizza party at our house, for our users. Michael came over as part of that group, and I remember thinking along the lines, &#8220;gee, too bad I&#8217;m not single.&#8221; We became friends, and over the next nine months for so, I realize that the relationship I was in was not good for me (to say the least) so I ended that relationship and immediately started dating Michael. My parents weren&#8217;t happy with my jumping from one relationship to another. Most of my friends didn&#8217;t know quite what to think, except that my previous relationship hadn&#8217;t been very good for me. But they accepted it, because that&#8217;s what friends are for, and Michael and I have been together ever since.<\/p>\n<p><em>Firefly, Farscape, or Battlestar Galactica?<\/em><br \/>\nFirefly. However, we still haven&#8217;t watched any more than the miniseries of Battlestar Galactica. <\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t think the order will change. The only show in competition with Firefly is Deep Space Nine. Now that&#8217;s a tough call for me.<\/p>\n<p><em>What book do you read for comfort?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, it depends, partially on what I&#8217;ve read recently, and partially what I&#8217;m in the mood for. The first two books I&#8217;m likely to reach for are <em>The Hobbit<\/em> or <em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes<\/em>. Those have been my favorites for years. I think I reach for them when I want to get lost in a story.<\/p>\n<p>After those come <em>The Phoenix Guards<\/em> by Steven Brust or <em>Small Vices<\/em> by Robert B. Parker. Those come up when I&#8217;m in the mood for entertaining writing.<\/p>\n<p>The other books in the mix are &#8220;The World&#8217;s Best Folktales&#8221; by Joanna Cole or the entire <em>Thieves&#8217; World<\/em> original series. Joanna Cole is good when I can&#8217;t concentrate, and Thieves&#8217; World is good when I&#8217;m feeling particularly bleak.<\/p>\n<p>Those are all books I can read over and over again, so what I choose really depends upon what I&#8217;m escaping from and what I want to escape to.<\/p>\n<p><em>Exactly how many feet of snow will they have to have in hell before you drink Swallows Nest Soup?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know about feet of snow, but I&#8217;d have to be starving to death I&#8217;m pretty sure.<\/p>\n<p><em>What do you have against cephalopods?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Cephalopods are fine, and in fact fascinating. I&#8217;m disturbed only by the uses to which some people put these creatures in their imagination. I mean really, beaks? You&#8217;ve can&#8217;t be serious.<\/p>\n<p><em>If you won the lottery (for a buttload of money), would you: a) keep working, b) chill out for the rest of your life, or c) do charitable work?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Keep working. Even a buttload of money doesn&#8217;t buy health insurance. And I don&#8217;t do well with nothing to do. But I&#8217;d probably take a lot more time off. The thing that makes vacation is that it&#8217;s time away from something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some more answers to the questions various and sundry asked of me. I&#8217;ll think I&#8217;ll keep taking questions through the week, so feel free to ask other questions in the comments. Vince asks: How did you decide on your career choice? I didn&#8217;t. In fact, I still don&#8217;t know what I want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-sequiturs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-Ef","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}