Welcome to my Life

Last year some of the blogs I read participated in The Great Interview Experiment. I was a little too late to the party and didn’t have the opportunity to participate.  So, when I noticed Neil was hosting The Great Interview Experiment again this year, I was quick to jump on the band wagon. Neil believes that everyone is someone, and we all have a story to tell.  What better way to meet new ‘someones’ that I probably would have never found on my own.

I was given Alejna who’s corner of the blogiverse is Collecting Tokens. When I got there and read some of her posts, I realized that the basic premise behind the GIE held true.  From the outside looking in, it looked as if I had been given a blogger I would not have found on my own. First impressions were, OMG we have nothing in common, what am I going to ask her?

I sat down with Alejna over a couple of days, and had the following conversation with her via email.

HI!!  Neil gave me your name for The Great Interview Experiment.  I’m sorry it’s taken me a bit to get in touch with you, I’ve been moving into a new house and searching for clothes and shoes and stuff.

So, a little bit about me, so you know who is interviewing you.  I have two daughters, ages 12 and 10 but they seem to think they are 18 and 16.  I work at a car dealership in St, Louis as the payroll administrator, so that means twice a month I am everyone’s best friend.  I have a boyfriend (and isn’t that such a jr high kind of word) who has two children too, so we are a busy family with a full schedule.

So, that’s me in a nutshell.  Let’s find out more about you.

Thanks for that! It’s hard to imagine that you can fit in a nutshell, with all that you have going on. And hopefully your new house is bigger than a nutshell, anyhow.

Actually we live in 2 houses, his and mine. Not quite ready to but this circus under one big top.

1. You have such a unique name, is there a story behind it? How did your parents chose that name for you?

You know I’ve been meaning to write a post about my name for years not, I’ll get around to it sometime.  In brief, though, my parents spelled my name in Esperanto. (I mention it a bit here)

2. Would you rather go back in time and change anything about your life, or go into the future and see how your life will be?

Ah. I guess I’d have to pick look into the future, though I’m not sure I’d want  too clear a view. I mean, I have a few questions, like “when will Theo sleep through the night and what will I have to do to make that happen,” and “will I ever finish this damn degree?” But for the most part, I’d prefer to live life as it unfolds without, for example, knowing that my house will be even messier in 5 years.

On the other hand, while there are many things that I have regrets about, and many things that I wish had never happened, I would be afraid that changing any of those things, bad as they were, would lead to unforeseen ramifications. The trouble is, I am happy with who I am and where I am today, and I know that my past led me to be where I am now. I think about things like “if X hadn’t happened to me when I was 7, then I could probably have Y.” But then I might not have gone to school where I did, met my husband when I did, and all those things along the way that have led me to have a family and a life that I love. (Sorry, is that too sappy?)

No, that is not sappy at all, I feel the same way, although there are a few times I’d like to go back in time and slap myself for being a bonehead.  And as for Theo sleeping through the night, the first night he does, you will stay up all night worrying something is wrong. From then on, you won’t get a full nights sleep until the kids are out of the house.

You’re funny. Somehow we lucked out and got a good sleeper as a first child. And eager as I am to get a full night’s sleep, that doesn’t mean I want the baby time to end with the second one.

3. What was your favorite holiday as a child? What is your favorite holiday as an adult?

As a child, Christmas was my favorite holiday, hands down. And it wasn’t just about the presents. (Though, come on! Presents!) (uh,yeah, it totally is about the presents, at least for the kids!) I loved the lights and decorations and the music. My family had lots of traditions, and I loved every bit of it. There were rituals. The order that we’d open stockings. Using the good china. Eating special foods. (special foods as in a gazillion cookies and candy and the extra 5 pounds that comes with it.)

As an adult, I’ve been pretty turned off by the commercialism. (It starts earlier and earlier we’re going to end up with Christmas in July literally) I spent close to 5 years working in retail, and it’s hard to escape the cynicism about “the season” when you have to deal with the crankiness shoppers who are annoyed that the store is closing early on Christmas Eve. (uh. poor planning on their part shouldn’t constitute an emergency on your part.)

I guess my favorite holiday has become Halloween. The goth in me likes the darkness, and I love to decorate with black and spiders and bats. Plus I love to dress up, and make up costumes. I started having a Halloween party a few years back, and I get really into planning things out so that most of the serving ware (and even the food!) is black and/or orange. I’m the only one I know who has special Halloween linens. They have spiders. They were on our bridal registry.

Now that I have kids, though, the magic of Christmas is coming back for me. I’m excited about passing along the traditions.

My kids don’t seem to get as excited about Christmas as I did.  Growing up we were up at 5:00 even though we couldn’t get up until 6:00.  My kids sleep till 8:00 at which point I can’t stand it any more and wake them up.

My kids do have Halloween pillowcases and those are the only holiday pillowcases they have.  And I still dress up with them, that’s half the fun.

4. Say I’m coming to your area for a visit.  What would you suggest I do/see/eat while I’m there?

There are lots of fun things to do in my general area, though most are a bit of a trek from my house. (If you want to come over to my house, we can watch some DVDs. Do you like martial arts movies with kick-ass women?) (I guess those are better than those sappy predictable chick flicks, although there is nothing wrong with those either.) Out here in the boonies we have farms and apple orchards, which can be fun to visit in the summer and fall. But I’d recommend you see some of Boston. There are lots of beautiful spaces and historical spots. There are also lots of great pubs, restaurants and microbreweries. If the weather’s nice, I’d suggest a day on the Freedom Trail, and then perhaps a dinner at John Harvard’s or the Boston Beerworks. If the weather’s bad, and even if it’s nice out, the Museum of Fine Arts is great place to go, too. There are also just cool places just to walk around and take pictures, in Boston and in Cambridge. Walk around Newbury Street, stroll along the Charles River, take the T over to Cambridge to visit Harvard and MIT. While you’re at MIT, have lunch at the trucks. Clover Truck is my favorite.

It sounds like there are several things to do that I would enjoy. I am pretty sure my camera and I would love to spend a day or ten in the country at the farms and apple orchards.  While I’m sure Boston has an attitude all it’s own, there is a quiet beauty about the country side.

5. I went digging around in your archives, and by that, I went back to the very beginning because I always like to read a writer’s first posts, and I saw a post where you mentioned NLP courses.  My father did a seminar on NLP several times, and I attended one.  How will you, if ever, use NLP in your chosen profession?

Nylon Lamé Pants? I’m not sure they’re really appropriate to wear in academia. But maybe if I go out to a disco… (cool, she has a quirky sense of humor like me. We have a common ground, besides kids,)

Oh, fine. Natural Language Processing. (But did you really think I could go through this whole interview without mentioning pants?) My own research area is in intonation, and there are plenty of ways in which intonation can inform Spoken Language Processing. It is not inconceivable, given the scarcity of academic jobs, that I will someday get a job that will involve NLP. The sort of research I do could contribute to speech recognition systems, and can potentially improve aspects of computer-human interaction. I can also see plenty of room for using NLP methods in my research, such as for analysis of corpora.

Oof. That was tough. I don’t really blog much about my academic work. Is anyone still awake?

I will admit that in asking the question I was talking about the Natural Language Processing, but your nylon Lame sound so much more interesting.  You do mention on your “About Me” page that you find the word ‘Pants’ quite funny. There has to be a story behind that, right? Care to share?

The whole story is probably a bit long to share here, though I have written about it before.  The short version of the story is that I like to play with words, and I tend to get carried away with themes. In the case of pants, it started as another joke but then I pushed it further to amuse a friend who was sick at the time, and who claimed that ‘pants’ was the funniest word in the English language. From there, the pants pretty much took off on their own. (Which is not to say they take themselves off. Self removing pants would be an interesting invention, don’t you think?) (have you seen what kids are wearing these days? Self removing pants aren’t much of a stretch.)

6. What part of blogging has surprised you the most?

I wasn’t expecting to really get to know people through blogging. I thought it would be fun to write, that it would be all about me. Along the way, though, I have met some really great people. What’s more, they have become real people to me. I’m deeply, emotionally involved with my blogging friends, even though I have never met most of them in “meatspace.”

7. One last question. If you could invite three people (dead or alive) to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

I’m not sure I’d want to invite dead people to a dinner party. Are we talking zombies, here? Oh, right. I get it.

I guess the top of my list would have to be Jon Stewart. Because he is smart and funny and I love him.

Beyond that, I’m a bit hard-pressed to think of who I’d like to meet. For the most part, I’m not interested in celebrities. So maybe some dead people, then. Maybe a couple of authors. Jane Austen might be fun to chat with. And then there’s Sarah Caudwell, who wrote four of the funniest novels I’ve ever read before dying. Or I’d actually love to have dinner with my great uncle and his life partner, who both died before I could get to know them. They were both actors, and had been friends with E. F. Forster. I’d love to hear their stories. (and they would fit right in at your halloween party too. Good choice. Probably win ‘best constume’)

But if we’re going to have dinner with Jon Stewart, maybe I’d rather just have him and his wife over. I bet she’s really cool. And I’d want to have John (my husband) there, seeing as he loves Jon Stewart, too.

Well, if I ever make it to Boston, I’ll be sure and invite myself to one of your zombie dinners as long as you promise to use all the black and orange utensils and invite your uncle and his partner.  Just from the few words you used when you talked about them, I was intrigued and would love to meet them, zombie attitude and all.

Absolutely! Just be sure wear protective headgear. Hopefully they won’t be zombies, because I’d hope for better conversation than moans and groans and shouts of “BRAINS!”. Or maybe they’d at least be quite well-behaved zombies. (oh, what fun is there in well-behaved zombies?) In either case, I think it would be an occasion for the good china.

Alejna, thank you for your time. This has been a real pleasure.

Thanks for your time! And your patience. I’m sorry I’ve been so slow to respond. (That may be my most frequently typed phrase. “I’m sorry to have been so slow to respond.” Ack.)

I’ll hopefully have a chance to visit your blog now, as well! Is your own interview up yet somewhere?

I was interviewed by Heather at Singing With My Heart, and my interview can be found here.

It was fun to participate in Neil’s experiment this year.  I did meet someone I would not have found on my own.  And while on the surface it appeared that we would have very little in common, once I got to know her, we had several things in common.  I think in the grand scheme of things, we all have basic principles in common, it’s the others things that make us unique and interesting.

Alejna, it was truly a pleasure to get to meet you.  I hope you enjoy our interview.

If you would like to read other interviews, a list of participants can be found here.

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