Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

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My answer for this week is going to be short and sweet.

When I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy many years ago, I kept a dictionary open right next to it. There were so many new vocabulary words included in it that I kept having to stop reading to find out on what Earth the characters were talking about.

To be fair, I was in middle school when I read this series. Some of those words might be more familiar to me if I were to come across them again as an adult. But the memory of looking up words regularly during these hours of reading is a strong one for me.

If you’ve read this series, did you have the same experience?

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Wow, I came up with a lot of answers this week.

I love discussing:

History. The most interesting parts of it are the ones that chronicle how ordinary people live and how medical care has evolved and improved over the centuries in my opinion.

Art. If you want to talk about the possible meanings for a piece, I’ll happily jump into that conversation.

Ghost Stories. Whether they’re fictional or based on the personal accounts of real people, I find all of this stuff fascinating.

Fitness. I enjoy hearing about types of exercise folks do or don’t like and why. For example, I’ve never been able to get into jogging, but I love yoga, dancing, and weightlifting.

Astronomy. My favourite subjects here generally revolve around space exploration, the possibility of sending people to Mars, and the discoveries of new planets.

Food. Cooking, meal planning, the latest scientific understandings of good nutrition, and even the history of various foods/dishes all catch my attention.

Archeology. Learning how different groups of people lived hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years ago is always interesting to me. We’re such an adaptable species in general.

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I’m an adventurous reader who bounces around among all of the genres. While there are certain genres I visit regularly and others I only visit occasionally, it takes a lot to turn me off from a story entirely.

This is the fairly small list of topics that I refuse to read about.

Glorifying Prejudice. That is to say, I strictly avoid anything that makes it seem honourable to hate or discriminate against  others because they’re not like you in some way. Why not encourage inclusion and acceptance instead?

Preachiness. This is a universal nope from me no matter the subject matter or whether I happen to agree with the author.  If someone wrote a book that tried to browbeat its readers into believing that purple is the best colour in the universe, I’d stop reading before finishing the first page despite my deep love of that colour.

Hopelessness. I used to be a huge fan of stories like The Walking Dead or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. While I do still enjoy some horror in small doses, everything I read and watch needs to have a hopeful message included in it these days.

Dead Pets. There are far too many books out there that kill off beloved pets at the climax of the plot. I’ve had my fill of this trope until the end of time itself. Let Fido live!

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This question is a little subjective since foods that are common in one culture may be unheard of in another, but it’s still a fun topic to discuss!

If you also grew up in a family of fishers and hunters or in a rural area, some of the meat on list might seem pretty ordinary.

The rest of them I’ve tried on vacations or by picking up random pieces of produce at the grocery store and wondering if I’d like them!

The strangest foods I’ve eaten include:

• Turtle
• Venison
• Elk
• Oxtail
• Chicken hearts and livers
• Frog
• Gooseberries
• Lychee
• Dragon fruit
• Pomegranate

I was not a big fan of the lychee, frog, or pomegranates, but I enjoyed the rest of them.

But by far the strangest thing I’ve ever eaten is grass. When I was a child, I couldn’t figure out why cows ate grass but humans didn’t eat it. It seemed to me that a calorie was a calorie no matter where it came from. I loved lettuce, so I assumed grass would taste just as good.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t tasty. There was very little flavour to it at all, but the stringy texture of it convinced me that while cows might like grass, this human does not. 😉

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What I wanted to do:

It changed every year, and sometimes I had no idea what I wanted at all.

Generally, my dreams revolved around being a librarian, college professor, or bestselling author.

I love books, knowledge, and teaching things to adults. If the occupational outlooks for librarians or professors were better, I probably would have gone in one of those directions!

What I actually do: I’m currently a writer who is looking for ways to pivot back into the traditional workforce. Those plans were interrupted by Covid-19, so I’m still evaluating my options as far as job training, online courses, or additional volunteering goes to strengthen my resume as the economy (hopefully) improves. We’ll see what happens!

I’ve previously worked in all sorts of places, from retail to tutoring to office work. I enjoyed my office job the most because of how personable my bosses were there. Having wonderful bosses makes all the difference in the world.

Once I worked in a movie theatre that my coworkers swore was haunted because of weird sounds they heard and how certain objects like mop buckets tended to move around when certain people were cleaning. I preferred rational explanations for those phenomena, but I also didn’t look too closely into the shadowy regions of the employee-only zones late at night. Ha!

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Raise your hand if you read the fantasy genre!

There are countless things I love about these sorts of stories, but I have to admit that some of the names in them are pretty hard to get rolling off of my tongue.

There are often massive linguistic differences between names from real-life cultures I may not be well-acquainted with and names that were made up by the authors themselves.

The former have pronunciations that make sense once you understand a little bit about the language they came from and how vowels and consonants can and can’t be joined up together in it.

This isn’t always the case for the latter unless you have an author like J.R.R. Tolkien who creates entire languages for his worlds. While I definitely don’t judge anyone who skips that step when creating a fantasy world, it can make pronouncing the names of the characters in it trickier.

So I tried to keep this list pared down to names that trip me up due to them not being formed by strict rules of pronunciation.

• Daenerys
• Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander
• Tekilashan
• Numuhukumakiaki’aialunamor
• Kylarral-ten
• Tvlakv
• Drizzt Daermon N’a’shezbaernon.
• Zoenen Hoogstandjes

I found most of these names in this Reddit thread if anyone is interested in reading more.

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This week’s topic was tricky for me because I’m a minimalist. I don’t own a lot of physical stuff, and almost everything I do own is used regularly and heavily.

When I go on a trip somewhere or want to treat myself, I don’t buy knick-knacks to commemorate it. Instead, I do things like:

• Take lots of photos.
• Try new experiences.
• Order delicious dairy-free meals and snacks that are either unavailable at home or a bit too expensive to indulge in regularly.
• Create vivid memories by soaking in every moment of the experience.
• Buy a rare t-shirt, hat, socks, or some other article of clothing I happen to need that will also remind me of the good time I had there since all clothing wears out eventually.

Case in point, a few months ago I splurged on a box of vegan Boston cream donuts.

The bakery that makes them goes out of their way to source ethically produced ingredients and pay their staff fairly (which is wonderful!)

When you add all of those increased costs together, this place has to charge more than a typical bakery in order to make ends meet. So I view getting treats from them as a delightful detour from my typical diet.

The cool thing about that is how much more I appreciate them than I would if ate sugary donuts every single day of the week. And it makes my dentist happy, too.