Answers the Fifth and Final!

And on the last day of the month, we wrap up with Ask Me Anything! August 2014. Fun round, as always; and equally "as always", I hope to get more nifty questions next time out!

Quince asks: How do you feel about the series Dr. Who?

I haven't really seen enough of the newer version to have a solid opinion, but what I have seen is fun, and sometimes spooky, and sometimes downright creepy, and often funny, and sometimes deeply emotional. The Daughter is quite the fan, although her enthusiasm seems to have waned a bit because she loved David Tennant and didn't care much for Matt Smith. The new guy? Jury's out, I suppose.

My main familiarity with the Doctor comes from when I watched the show on PBS, way back in the 1980s. Doctor Who is kind of like James Bond, in that the first one you see tends to be your favorite, or at least heavily shapes your expectations for the rest. My first Doctor was Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor. Loved that guy. I also liked Tom Baker a lot, but Davison was first -- I liked his blend of Doctorish alien weirdness and human compassion.

Of the current crop, I suppose Tennant's my favorite, because I like the balancing act he does in portraying the fact that even for a being like The Doctor, who has seen just about everything, there's still a lot of very strange stuff that can make him cock his head a bit and say, "What?!" in that wonderful Brit way of his.

Doctor Who is generally best approached as a show about normal people being taken on a guided tour of the weirdest parts of the Universe. At least, that's my take on it.

The rest are from Roger:

Hey, new homeowner: what's the best thing about owning your own place? The worst? Any buyers' remorse yet?

Buyer's remorse? No. None. After living in apartments for 17 years, we're still basking in the glory. The worst thing is simply the fact that we can't just pick up the phone and call the rental office when there's an issue of some sort -- we have to think it all through ourselves. But that's fine. Having space to live and breathe, privacy, and a room for the books? That outweighs everything. I also think it's good for us as a family, since we're now no longer forced to spend all our leisure time together in the same room.

What thing do you do that you KNOW drives The Wife and/or The Daughter crazy, but find that you do it anyway?

Knuckle-cracking. I like to think that I'm not a terribly anal person, but there are things I get anal about, and I can really fly off the handle sometimes if I'm not paying attention. My tendency to underestimate the time it takes me to cook some meals by significant amounts. And my very weak sense of smell makes me a bit more tolerant, shall we say, of less-than-acceptable conditions regarding the cat box.

Do you think of yourself as sensitive? What meaning of sensitive do you think of when hearing the word?

I try to be. To me, "sensitive" means "takes consideration of the feelings of others before acting". I really try to do this. I don't want to be the person people dread having to deal with. Sometimes I fall short, but when I do, I almost always try to atone later.

Bats, the mammal variety: have you had them at the abode or at The Store? If so, how do you deal with them?

We haven't had bats yet, that I can recall! The boring answer is that we have a pest control service with whom we are contracted. If we observe unwelcome beasties, we call the pest control folks and they show up and do their thing. Luckily, our pest control problems are very sporadic, and always of the "How did that thing get in here?!" variety.

Are you going to register your books with the Copyright Office? Why or why not?

Ummm...am I supposed to? Seriously, I need to research this. Do I need to register them? Anybody know?

When you read something, or listen to something, how often does it bring you to some totally unrelated song, or story?

Quite often. My brain is always making connections between things I'm doing now and stuff I've read or seen or heard someplace else. This doesn't bother me. I like being able to make connections like that. It helps me find meanings in things, and I think it gives me a better background from which I can say things of my own. I make connections between unrelated things all the time. It's how I'm wired.

OK, I think that does it for this round of Ask Me Anything! Thanks for all the questions, and start drafting some for February 2015! (And really, you don't even have to wait, if you don't want. Questions are always welcome.)