Parick's Saturday Six Wimbledon Edition

If you want to play, go to Other Journals and click on Patrick's Place.

1. Yesterday, I [PATRICK] linked to the journal "Mall Of America," a collection of photos from shopping malls of the 1960s and 1970s.  What store do you associate most with your childhood in terms of happy memories and why?  Is the store still around?

I've never thought that shopping for clothes was more fun than playing sports, so my favorite store from the past was The Toddle House. They served soft drinks and hot chocolate. And if you had enough money you could get a hamburger or a hotdog too. The one I loved was across the street from the skating rink where I spent every winter in junior high school. I think I was fascinated by it because it was actually a little house -- barely ten feet tall, ten feet wide and maybe twenty feet long. It looked like a playhouse that a rich family would build for their spoiled children. Only not quite as nice.

There were only eight seats at a counter. And their hot chocolate was just okay, but it tasted absolutely wonderful when your feet and hands were frozen.  And I could usually scrape up enough change to buy some after playing "pom pom keep away" for hours with the cute boys from the Catholic school. Hmmm, whatever happened to Tommy Joyce?  Amazingly the little building was still there last time I drove by, but it had changed hands many times, and I don't remember what it was called anymore.

2. What song makes you the most emotional and why?

What kinds of emotions are we talking about? You mean playing the same tune over and over and wallowing in your sadness over a lost love?  Like I'm going to confess to that.

On the other hand, Love Train and almost every other R and B tune can make me so happy I will get up and dance. Until Coors beer started using Love Train in their commercials.  That made me cry.

In general, music makes me happy.  I instantly get into a better mood when I hear one of my favorite tunes. Except when they use them in commercials. Asswipes. So I guess I'm bipolar when it comes to music.

3. Take the quiz:  What year were you born under, and what year should you have been born under?

Okay, I'm confused.  A short trip, I know. But I went back to Patrick's to click on TAKE THE QUIZ and have it send me someplace for a -- QUIZ, but there was no link.  So now I have to make sense of the question, which doesn't seem to make sense. What year was I born under? Like a rock or something?  You mean what sign was I born under? The zodiac thing or that Chinese habit of naming every year after a  goat or a horse or a dog? 

Hmm, nobody's answering.  So let me just say that I'm a Scorpio, I'm too lazy to look up my Chinese affiliation, and considering the ages of the people I hang out with, I was born twenty years too soon.  And leave it at that.

4. What time do you typically wake up each day?  What is the latest you're normally able to sleep?  How many hours of sleep do you get in an average night?

I wake up around six in the morning.  I hate to sleep later than 8:00. But I will laze around in bed until ten on the weekends.  I get about six hours sleep each night.

Now that I've revealed this, will someone with a clipboard ring my doorbell and want to spend the day observing me now?  

5. What frightens you the most about getting older?

That I will live a long time.  No thank you.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #56 from Debi:  If you found the house of your dreams, right price, then discovered that a murder or suicide had taken place in the house, would you still consider buying the house?

First of all, I would sense something was wrong in the house from the moment I stepped in it. It's happened before. I have never felt the actual presence of a ghost or anything, but I have felt that something was wrong.  So finding out that someone had died badly in the house would just confirm what I had already sensed. Usually it's just a bad hot water heater.  Or a crummy furnace.

In case you can't already tell, I definitely wouldn't buy a house where there had been a murder or a suicide. I have noticed that learning there was a natural death doesn't seem to cause the same bad vibe. Cosmic.