I’m all excited because I’ve always dreamed about this. Well, okay, I really was interviewed once in real life at one of our worse performances of Brazilian music but that was real lame, and I’m still not sure if that was a real newspaper person since there never was anything in the paper afterwards. I think she pulled a joke on me especially since she asked me for an autograph. (That had been my first and maybe only autograph ever. See, how famous I am? That comes from performing only in your house. Without an audience.) At least I could have pretended to be interviewed with a real microphone since I have a couple of those.

So, this interview was hosted by Beck of “Frog and Toad are still Friends” who was so kind to send me a bundle of questions over when I screamed “Me too, I wanna be interviewed, pretty please, me too!” in her comments. She also was interviewed (obviously this is a meme) and here’s the link to her answers. When I put myself forward like this I didn’t realize that this was a meme, and since I have been waiting for almost a week before answering the questions, you probably all have done this anyway. If not I’ll send questions to the first five people who write a comment that they want me to. But I warn you it’ll take me awhile for sure.

So, here at last the interview:

1. If you could have one person you’ve lost touch with call you up and invite you to dinner, who would you want it to be?
Argh. I’m really not sure. There are a lot of people I have lost touch with over the years. I could choose someone really nice who obviously isn’t mad at me, a friend of mine in college days. He is a cello player, he was the only one of my male friends who ever called me again after I got married and the reason we lost touch is the time-and-energy-factor only since he sent me and e-mail just three months ago (but hasn’t written since).

I could choose someone whom I haven’t seen for ages like my best friend in elementary school. As I said, there are a lot of options. I’d probably vote for meeting a friend of mine from the German equivalent of high school who decided to move away and see the world for a time, and then never wrote again. I’m thinking about her often and the last time I met another friend of hers (in 1992) he hadn’t heard of her either.

2. Which actress – past or present- should play you in the movie version of your life?
First of all I don’t really think there should be a movie version of my life since the book would be so much better anyway. Second, I don’t know actresses at all. But then, since the actress doesn’t have to look like me because the movie wouldn’t look like my life anyway, I could choose someone really beautiful like Audrey Hepburn or Alyson Hannigan. (Feel free to point me towards actresses who look like me.) But then in a movie version anything could be changed. Maybe I’d end up a blonde anorexic actress or something.

3. What one thing about you has changed the most since childhood?
Um, my first impulse – doubtless prompted by the word anorexic in the last paragraph – was to say my weight. But that’s not important. I’ve become happy, calm and much more patient. (And of course that’s only one thing.)

4. If you could keep only one book that you currently own, which one would you pick?
After thinking that if I could only keep one it wouldn’t matter anyhow and just leave me pen and paper I’d say “Gaudy Night” by Dorothy L. Sayers. Though it would be really cruel to leave me without books. Really cruel. This book is the one that I come back to again and again ever since I was a teenager and read it for the first time in an abridged German version. After re-reading it once or twice a year since then I realized just a couple of weeks ago that this book has shaped a lot of my opinions about the world. And only when I went to look up when I had bought it in English did I realize that I don’t own it in English and have read in an abridged version for years.

Of course one would think that a heavy book like the bible would be a good idea but I think after a while every book would seem stale.

5. Which one thing gives you the most comfort?
Faith and hope (and yes, that is one thing too). If we’re speaking about more tangible things I’d say my bed.

Phew. Thank you Beck for making me think real hard.

I won, I won! Well, to be precise I got tagged by De. The Thinking Blogger Award got me thinking for a couple of days. First, I didn’t really got how it works and then I had to think of whom to tag. And then, thanks to the research power of a librarian I actually was pointed to the origin of the Thinking Blogger Award at the Thinking Blog. And as one might guess from the new and improved title of my blog I’m all for the thinking.

A little light thinking always makes my day though I reserve the heavy thinking for Sundays and professionals. It was easy to come up with a list of bloggers that I wanted to give the award to but then I found each one of them already got one: De, Jen, Mad, Chani, Her Bad Mother and Beck. And I didn’t really know if I wanted to tag bloggers who think or bloggers who make me think. Then I briefly considered tagging the whole of my blogroll including the blogs that I read which are not on the blogroll. Then I shut down for a day or two (My motto at the moment is “Relax and Refocus”, and I’ll tell you why in a day or two. Promise.)

So, I was looking for bloggers who think (or whom I think to be thinking), whom I read and who don’t have a Thinking Blogger Award yet. And then it hit me! They don’t have to be bloggers who read my blog! I might have to tag them by e-mail but that made the whole task much easier. So I’m giving a Thinking Blogger Award to (drum roll please!):

Christine Kane, who always makes me think. Her blog is what mine wants to be when it grows up minus the animals and plus the child. Okay, maybe I’ll have a cat someday.

Jory DesJardins who writes deep and insightful posts and is living proof that a blog doesn’t need to be updated ten times a day to be extraordinary.

Frau Kaltmamsell who is one of the few German bloggers whose blog I genuinely like and who is thinking about everything that comes her way, be it food, people or poker. (Mostly people of course.) And who is living proof that even blogs which are updated a couple of times a day can be thoughtful.

Lia, also living in Germany but not German who tends to write short observational posts. She writes that her blog is meant to be like overheard pieces of conversation…

And Nneka who is writing about spirituality applied to life (and who’s on the “meditation diet” too).

Writing this post was really hard. For one I’m sick and my brain is only barely functional, but for two I had a hard time leaving people out. On the other hand (there’s always another hand for me, isn’t it?) this is a chain-letter-like meme so eventually everybody will get included.

Now I have to decide whether to write e-mails informing those five bloggers or just waiting for them to find me through backlinks. What would you do?

Technorati Tags: Thinking Blogger Award, thinking

Ha, I really got tagged this time. Granted, asking somebody “And whom do you tag?” is about as subtle as jumping up and down, frantically waving and yelling “Pick me! Pick me!” on top of you lungs, but still, officially and personally tagged for the first time. Oh, by Meno. Why couldn’t I have reacted to a meme where you don’t have to think, like that itunes-meme I was thinking of stealing. So, questions and answers (and no multiple choice)

1. If you had to choose one vice in exclusion of all others, what would it be?
I didn’t know you get to choose the vices. I’d say over-indulgence. But I could have said beer. But that’s not a vice. Isn’t it?

2. If you could change one specific thing about the world, what would it be?
I would give all people complete awareness and enlightenment. But I think it doesn’t work that way.

3. Name the cartoon character you identify with the most.
Cartoon character? As in animated? I’ll copy this one from Meno and say Daria. I haven’t watched the show on a regular basis, but I liked her a lot.

4. If you could live one day in your life over again, which day would it be?
Well, only if you force me to. Maybe May 1st, 1994, when after our second date, my husband-to-be and I realized that we’d be staying together. It was spring, we went to the station hand in hand, and sat down on a bench looking at green and yellow fields and trees. Sigh. Though I don’t know, I spent the rest of the day working on my dissertation.

5. If you could go back in history and spend a day with one person, who would it be?
A writer I would have loved to meet, but who probably wouldn’t have been that interested in meeting me, would be Carolyn Heilbrun.

6. What is one thing you lost, sold, or threw away that you wish you had back?
Um. No regrets. New things are always so much more exciting.

7. What is your one most important contribution to this world?
Teaching people they can be creative, and that there is another lifestyle apart from being a “muggle”.

8. What is your one hidden talent that nearly no one knows about?
If I have one, it is hidden to me too. Though I may have a very hidden talent for drawing. I never draw, so I’m not good at it, but when I concentrate, sometimes one glances a sparkle of talent, inherited from my father and grandfather.

9. What is your most cherished possession?
This means things, doesn’t it? My piano. Though my computer comes in a close second. I have lived without computer and without piano. Without piano was worse. But then, why should I have to choose? (And if I only had the money, I’d buy a new piano in a split-second.)

10. What one person influenced your life the most when growing up?
Obviously my mother. (If Meno finds that exorcist, send her over to my place too, please.) Second, maybe Dorothy L. Sayers.

(I know it said one person, I’m not stupid, I have listened, but almost everybody is highly influenced by her mother. To say otherwise would be lying. But my mother is not the person that shaped my thinking much.)

11. What word describes you better than any other?
Confused? I’ll settle for complex. Ah, no, now I got it: woman.

Phew, describing a person with one word. I’m certainly not a one-word-person. Even when people are asking me for my sign I’ll say, “Leo with ascendent Sagittarius, but I’m not that fiery, because I have that Saturn on my moon in Aries, and then there’s this whole bunch of planets on top of my horoscope with all that scorpionic and plutonic influence, but my family is very fishy…”)

Okay, I’ve done it. That’s a tough one. So, anybody who wants to do this meme, feel tagged. I’m especially tagging De and Liv, who probably have better things to do with their time. (Psst, and if you’re to cool for memes? Just ignore it.)