8 Things About the 7 Imps: Part Two
May 31st, 2007 by Eisha and Jules
Welcome back! Believe it or not, we got tagged a third time for this meme, by Jone of Check It Out!. That’s what happens when you procrastinate on responding to the first tag. Good thing we’d already planned a sequel.
Here’s part two of our response to the 8 Things Meme. This time, we’ll be listing 8 things not many people know about each other. Mwah-ha-ha-ha!
The rules, again, are as follows:
Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
eisha: Here’s my list of 8 Things You May Not Know About Jules. I’ll try to keep it clean…
* I call her by her nickname, Jules, on the blog; but I’ve always called her by her actual first name, Julie, in person. Sometimes when blog readers meet me and ask “Where’s Jules?” I don’t immediately know who they’re talking about, because I only recognize that name in print.
* She is a Simpsons fanatic. Seriously, rabidly hardcore.
* She wants to learn to play the piano. And she is just as deeply passionate about music as she is about books, especially folky/bluegrassy/indie singer/songwriter type women like Gillian Welch, Sam Phillips and Patty Griffin.
* Big stone things, like statues or castles, make her nervous. That statue of Athena in Nashville’s Parthenon freaks her out.
* She’s a very talented actress. Not just in the shadow-interpreting children’s theatre group she started, but I mean as a straight-up, regular stage actress. I especially loved her performance as Millie in Picnic.
* She already told you she was a die-hard Barry Manilow fan. But she didn’t mention that she even went to a concert when she was very young, and had a big homemade sign that said “Julie loves Barry!” or something. A random guy let her sit on his shoulders during the song “Oh Julie” and Mr. Manilow saw her and WINKED AT HER.
* The two cats she had when we lived together are the reason I don’t ever want to share living space with another cat. Ever. Sorry, J, but your love made you blind to their evilness. I think your husband will back me up on this. And most of our friends. But it’s a testament to your inherent goodness that you loved them anyway.
* I think she’s the reason my husband and I finally started dating. We’d all been friends together for a couple of years (undergrad), and B. and I had this very difficult chemistry/tension thing going on, which made it hard to be just friends; but we kept dating other people which prevented us from becoming more than friends. I didn’t realize how obvious, or how annoying, this had become to those around us, until… One lovely spring day Julie and I were walking across campus, and she was relating some very sweet and flattering thing B. had said about me, and then… she turned to me, literally knocked me to the ground with her notebook, and yelled something like “WOULD YOU TWO PLEASE JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY???” I’m not sure of her exact words because my ears were ringing from the force with which she had just hit me in the head with her 3-ring binder (it was a hefty one – she was always a good student and a diligent note-taker). But I got the gist, and we started dating that summer.
Jules: Here’s my list of 8 Things You May Not Know About Eisha. I’ll also try to keep it clean . . .
* Even though she’s always looked very young for her age, for some reason she was repeatedly cast as old ladies in Maryville College stage productions. (Hmmmm, come to think of it, I even directed a show once and cast her that way, too. Guilty as charged).
* She was a teetotaller all. through. college. Seriously.
* She never actually sneezes but stops just short of them.
* She really wants a dog.
* She seriously loves Bonnie Raitt’s “Angel from Montgomery”, Lucinda Williams’ “Hot Blood,”, and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” But don’t even bring up Tori Amos around her (and she was even that way about Tori back when her lyrics actually made sense and she wasn’t admitting to talking to the fairies who fly around her). In fact, she doesn’t quite care for piano-based rock altogether (think Elton John or Ben Folds). Oh and we figured out that we were at the same Camper Van Beethoven and 10,000 Maniacs concert in high school, though we didn’t know each other then. One final music-related fact: I saw her the day Jerry Garcia died, and the news really bummed her out.
* Don’t ever jokingly call her “Ishtar.” I think she got that a bit too much when the movie was out. Oh, and speaking of her name, notice that she never capitalizes the initial “e” of her name, if she can get away with it.
* She makes a really good omelette and wicked good strong coffee (which is how all coffee should be). And she loves turnip greens.
* Two final things in one: I don’t know if I’ve ever told her this, but she’s the primary reason I wanted to study children’s lit. When we were roommates, she’d bring home beautiful picture books from her library job and leave them on what passed as our dining room table, and I’d read them. And I got hooked. I also think I love coffee as much as I do because of her. In college, before it became really hip to do it and before there was a Starbucks on every corner, we used to drink coffee all the time — mostly in her dorm room after play rehearsals — and sit and talk and laugh. Because of that, I think, I’ve always associated coffee with sitting down with a friend and catching up, like giving a little gift to yourself in the middle of a busy day, as corny as that might sound. That might sound odd, but drinking coffee has that association in my mind, and now I’m hooked (in a good way). And I’d never thought of coffee as a treat ’til I met her (I mean, you should have her whip you up her variation of Mexican Coffee some time — half hot chocolate, half coffee, some vanilla, some cinnamon, a bit of Kahlua. Mmmmmm).
Guess we have to tag others now . . .
eisha: Aw, Jules. I’m torn between feeling all gushy-mushy about the sweet things you’ve said, and guilt over finding out that I’m your big caffeine enabler friend. I had no idea. Everyone else thinks my coffee is too strong.
Anyway, since everyone and their pet parakeets have done this meme already, and since we had so much fun doing it for each other, I think we should tag other bloggers who also have an opportunity to list 8 heretofore unknown things about their co-bloggers if they want to. Of course, participation is optional. 7-Imp hereby tags:
The 6 Blue Rose Girls who haven’t already been tagged (at least, not that I’ve seen – could be wrong though):
Grace
Alvina
Anna
Libby
Linda
Meghan
And hey, why not…
John and Hank of Brotherhood 2.0.
Thanks to everyone who tagged us. It’s been cool reading everyone else’s fun facts.
The Greens! Brilliant tag! That should be fun if they take it up.
This was fun, reading a bit more about both of you. It’s interesting proof that cat and dog people can be friends, though I guess co-habitation with animals was a strain.
Well, jules and eisha, you have just been made honorary members of the Holmes Family.
My son is a Simpsons line-memorizing machine…he and jules could have extended conversations using only dialogue from the show. (If I had a puppy for every time I’ve heard “Release the hounds!”) …Hey, if I really did, I would give ALL of them to eisha, so she could release them on those Ishtar people.
And my husband? Huge fan of “folky/bluegrassy/indie singer/songwriter type women.” Owns the 1st LP of all the greats including Bonnie Raitt…and I mean, bought with 1970’s dollars when they first came out. The sound track to our dating life was Emmylou Harris, and Rosanne Cash. Now we slow dance to Lucinda Williams. Car wheels on a gravel road…
And coffee? I discovered it on ski trips in Germany, when I stole my daughter’s hot chocolate with real whipped cream to mix into my cup of hot joe. Now, I make do with chocolate milk, but if there were other needy souls, I’d go back to the loaded version.
Nice tags, BTW. Those Green boys better get with the program. You two have seriously raised the bar.
Eisha and Jules,
Loved your responses to this meme. I’ve been tagged four times this week–twice by Michele at Scholar’s Blog, once by HipWriterMama, and once by Cloudscome. And Cloudscome tweaked the “8 Things about You” meme to a different “4 New X 2” version. So I am off to respond to that tag.
And, Eisha, cats CAN be wonderful pets! I know from experience.
Loved finding out more about you two cool ladies. Jules, every girl needs a great friend who will bop them on the head when The One is right there. Eisha, that coffee is sounding really good.
Athena freaks me out, too! What is with her giantess toes?! And ruby red lips?!
~bryn
I *need* some Mexican coffee. That sounds perfectly lovely.
Mexican coffee IS yummy, people – and easy! Just fill your mug with half coffee (brewed with a little cinnamon), half cocoa (I make mine with real milk now, but back in the dorm days plain ol’ powdered worked fine), add sugar and cream if you need it for the coffee, a drop of vanilla, and kahlua to taste.
now i’m craving it too.
it’s not that i HATE ALL CATS – i had cats as a child and i have met many sweet and lovable ones since. but tolkien and gandalf ruined me for living with them. mostly tolkien – gandalf was the brawn in their little operation, tolkien was definitely the brains.
Yeesh. Here’s the thing: My cats can be weird and rather evil (as my husband put it, Tolkien is kind of a tool — the cat, not the author), but I had no idea they completely turned you off to ever living with the other sweet cats of the world, Eisha.
Sorry, man. Bummer.
My poor cats, ’cause now that I have two children, I’m not as patient with them as I used to be. I kinda don’t need one more thing that needs me right now. In fact, Tolkien (the cat, not the author) is now with my mother-in-law and much happier there, much happier when not around Gandalf (otherwise known as Five Stomachs) — the cat, that is, not the wizard. I think Tolkien is just a misfit (the cat, not the . . . . ah, screw it), and he needed the love and adoration that only my mother-in-law can give him.
All cats deserve the love and attention that Little Willow can give them. I’m kind of a half-assed pet owner, now that I have kids, and wish Little Willow were my neighbor and could come shower them with love.
For the record, I managed to survive (and fall in love with) Rome, even with all the stone statues and buildings. But my husband (purposefully) didn’t warn me about The Pantheon coming ’round the corner, and I did gasp a bit.
The best news of all is that I’m an honorary member of the Holmes family. Woo hoo! Sara, my husband and I LOVE “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” — we listened to it a lot when we were first married, and I think that turned him into a Lucinda fan, too. Have you heard “Hot Blood”? SO funny, so wonderful.
— Jules, who as a child was a member of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club and received “BarryGrams” every month
Dude, I’m allergic to cats anyway, it’s not that big a deal.
YAY! Turnip greens!
What I like best about all of this is the small and random collection of things about myself that I thought were weird are kind of universally weird. So, if they’re weirdnesses other people have, that makes them… normal!
Oh, unfamiliar feeling there!
Not only was I a teetotaler, I couldn’t even really figure out coffee… The omelette’s sound good, though.