On time for a change

1. Which of the following is your favorite store and why?  
A) Wal-Mart
B) Target
C) K Mart
D) Sears
Target, almost by default, as I'm not much for shopping.  I loathe Wal-Mart.  Ever notice how every Wal-Mart you go into looks like the one in Tupelo, Mississippi no matter where you are?  K-mart and Sears are boring.  Target has decent prices.  My soon-to-be wife is addicted to Target as well.

2. How far does your closest friend who's not in the same town as you live, and when was the last time you saw them in person?  Hmm, ambiguity.  Do we mean "closest" in terms of distance, or "closest" in terms of overall chuminess?  I'll go with my buddy Dwight who lives about twenty-five miles south of me, though we grew up in the same town together.  I last saw him in early December when we went to a college basketball game together, but we talk frequently.

3. Have you ever gone on a date with someone you met online?  Would you?  Would I?  I'll go even further and tell you that I'd marry someone I met that way (on April 22, 2005...) the whole story is here, and yeah, it gets a little mushy in the end, but so what?  And while it's true it was as much as a newspaper meeting as anything, we did get to know each other on the Internet before we ever met in person.

4. What is your favorite novel and what makes it stand out for you?  Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises."  I love the description of Spain during the Festivals.  I love the dialogue.  I love the story.  It just fits me.  I want to be Jake, except with all my "parts" working.  I read this book once every year.

5. You get snowed in at your home for three days.  You have power and telephone service, but no way to leave the house.  How will you amuse yourself?  Read.  Sleep.  Get caught up on the three thousand vieotapes of shows I have.  Surf the Internet.  Talk to people.  Become really sad when the snow melts.

6. A fellow journaler you consider a friend disappears from J-land.  Visitors leave comments in the journal but they get no response.  You send the journaler an E-mail to make sure everything is okay, and despite the fact that you see that it has been read, you get no reply.  What do you do?  Hope he/she is doing well and that they eventually reconnect with the world.  I think it's important to realize that in situations like this that there are very clear boundaries that have formed.  It's normal to be curious but when something like this happens, there's so much more going on than one could ever realize by just being Internet pals.