10 Things I Love to Do -- Part II

[Link to KK Texture Tuesday]

Continuing the list from the other day: 

6.  I love to watch a good movie.  Don't we all?  Don't you love it, when you're transported out of your ordinary life for a couple of hours?  Some of my favorites:  Cinema Paradiso; Casablanca; Jean de Florette; Love, Actually (a bathtub CD, but an excellent one).  I could go on but will save further discussion of movies for another day.

7.  I love to travel.  Well, okay, actually I don't like the traveling part at all, but I like it once I get to where I'm going and am settled in my home-away-from-home and able to relax and enjoy a new place.  My husband and I have a long list, which we're hoping to be able to start checking off:  London, Paris, Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice), Greece to Istanbul, St. Petersburg . . . the list goes on.  Hope to be blogging about these places soon.

8.  I love to play computer games, RPGs* in particular.  Okay, I've said it.  I'm sure it seems somewhat incongruous for someone who's supposed to be an academic, but I've been playing them since my ex went into the computer industry in the late '70's.  I've played everything from the original Bard's Tale and Castle Wolfenstein to Assassin's Creed:  Brotherhood and Dragon Age II, both of which are calling my name right now, but I don't have time to play.  :(  I love the experience of becoming immersed in a world for a few weeks or months, building up a character that's a reflection of yourself (I always wind up a human Paladin), and living out an interesting story that's much more exciting than your real life could ever be.  More on that another time as well.

9.  I love to write.  But you probably knew that.

10.  I love spending time with my husband.  I have been blessed, this late in life, to find the man of my dreams, an excellent man, who supports me in everything I do, who allows me to be who I am, and who takes care of me in the ways I like/need to be taken care of.  I hope I return the favor to him, every day.

This has given me lots of ideas for future blog posts.  Thanks, Cat!  I invite you to do the same, on your blog.

[*Role playing games, mostly of  the fantasy kind.]

10 Things I Love To Do -- Part I

[Linking to The Simple Things]

Cat at The Whimsical Gardener (a lovely blog -- go visit!) joined my blog yesterday (thanks, Cat!) and when I went off to explore her site, I came across her "10 Things I Love to Do" post.  She invites others to write a similar post as a way of letting their readers get to know them better . . . so here goes, in no particular order, some appropriately illustrated with photographs:

 1.  I love to read; I started when I was four, and I have never stopped.  Because I've been an English professor for 30 years, and an English major before that, I can be a little picky about what I read, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy what my friend calls "bathtub books" (books it's okay to drop in the water while you're reading in the bath) -- they just have to be the right kinds of books.  I love "the classics" (though I certainly haven't read all of them), and I love mysteries (by James Lee Burke and John Lescroart especially).  I'm sure I'll talk more about books as time goes on.

2.  I love Shakespeare, reading, watching, reciting . . . .  In the picture above is a volume of Shakespeare that I picked up when I was about 12 and has never left me since; it has traveled from the Midwest to the East Coast, to the West Coast, and up and down California in the last 40 years.  I love everything about Shakespeare, and especially I love to teach it to students who are positive they hate Shakespeare . . . and then they find out that, really, they don't.  Surprise!

 3.  I love taking pictures.    No, this is not me, but some crazy guy I caught while out with a class at Bean Hollow.  The surf was incredibly high, and our teacher forbade us from going anywhere near the waterline, but this guy was not with our class and went right down there.  This picture encapsulates some of what I love about photography -- the "ah" moment, frozen in time, forever.  It's a thrill when something comes out right.

4.  While we're on that picture . . . I love being near the ocean.  I have lived within a mile or two of the ocean for the past 40 years, and at this point, I don't think I could live away from it.  I'm not the kind of person who hangs out on the beach, but I love driving or walking along the cliff, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, and knowing it's there, the "vasty deep" (1 Henry IV) that rolls on forever.

5.   I love having flowers in my garden, having them in my house, taking pictures of them (see tulips, above).  I don't know what it is about flowers -- yes, they're beautiful, they're fragrant, but it's more than that.  They bring happiness, whether they've been given to me or I've given them to myself.  My favorites:  lilacs, peonies, ranunculus, tulips.  Oh and dahlias, which I fervently hope are making their way to the surface of the garden this year, because last year, they didn't.  :(

This is clearly going to be a long post, so I'll stop here.  To be continued, on another day . . .