Friday Fiver x 2, May 2nd 2008

I’ve decided to play along with the hlog (Hockey’s Ladies of Greatness) Friday Five each week as well as the traditional one – purely because there is usually a hockey question or two in there – and I need some way to get my hockey fix over the summer….

So from now on you’ll get to find out 10 exciting (or more likely, spectacularly uninteresting) things about me every Friday, not just 5. Lucky youuuuuu :)

Well, this week, it’s 9 – because this week’s Friday Five at hlog has 4 questions….. but you get the general idea….

Friday Fiver:

1. Describe where you grew up

I lived in the same house from birth until I left home at the age of 18, and my Dad still lives there now. It’s a 3-bed semi in an East London suburb called Buckhurst Hill - a quiet little place that’s technically still in Essex rather than Greater London, just, but its position on the Central tube line makes it very much London overspill. It’s a pleasant place with lots of greenery – we were a stone’s throw from Epping Forest, which was always nice for early morning walks - but nice and accessible for the big city for gigs and stuff. With hindsight it was a great place to grow up, but of course at the time, especially in my teens, I thought it was dullsville :)

2. Do you wear any jewellery?

Tons! Well, not like Mr T, but yes, I like jewellery and am rarely seen without at least a couple of rings, a couple of bracelets and a necklace or two. My favourite pick-me-up treat is to buy something beautiful and handcrafted from somewhere like Etsy – like the moon collage pendant I purchased from Ingrid Dijkers last month as a birthday pressie to myself. All my jewellery has meaning to me, I don’t just pick something because it looks pretty, which may well be why a lot of it doesn’t really look as if it matches :) I wear silver, copper, gold, glass, precious stones, plastic, wood, all together – and I could tell you at great length what each piece signifies, if you had a spare couple of hours to listen :D

3. What do you have too much of?

Scrapbooking supplies! I actively scrapbooked for less than a year back in 2005, but during that time I bought SO much stuff. I have managed to re-purpose a lot of it for the sort of papercrafts I do still enjoy, like visual journalling etc, and I have given LOADS of stuff away. But I still have a fair bit, either stuff that I think I might be able to use one day (but I bet I never will), or papers/embellishments that are SO old fashioned or naff that I am too embarrassed to even give them away :S

4. Who is a fool?

According to my 5 year old, everyone. He has just started calling everyone a “FOO” in true B A Baracus style whenever they annoy him. It’s actually very rude of him, and I should tell him off, but it’s kind of cute, so he’s getting away with it for the moment.

5. What's your nickname?

I have had a few over the years, but the main two are Topsy, which lasted from childhood to Uni days (I was a geeky kid into dinosaurs, Sarah => Tri-Sarah-Tops => Topsy), and Flo, which I picked up about 7 years ago, when I needed a screen name to grant me a little anonymity on the eBay powerseller forums, so that I wouldn’t get any hassle from my ex. My ebay ID at the time was “thebradleybunch” (my partner’s surname was Bradley – lots of kids between us – pun on the Brady bunch), and so a pal christened me Florence after Florence Henderson, the actress who played the Brady mom in the original series. Florence got shortened to Flo over time.


Hlog Friday Five:

1. How many pages was the longest paper that you ever had to write?

Probably not many – I was lucky enough to do my degree in Maths, a subject in which we are encouraged to find the concise and elegant solution, not waffle on for 1000s of words and waste a ton of paper :D I did do an ‘A’ level in Politics & Economics though…plenty of rain forests slaughtered for that one.

2. Who is your favourite French-Canadian NHL player?

I’ll go for Alex Burrows – he has been whipping it up a storm on the shutdown line this past season with Kes. It has been great to see him really come into his own this year. The kid’s got a great sense of humour too.

3. What is (are) your preferred pizza topping (s)?

Goats cheese and red pepper ….. or just a grand pile-up of veggies (but hold the mushrooms and olives)

4. How much water do you drink a day on average?

If I am at work, tons – maybe 15-20 glasses. Purely cos I get bored sat at my desk all day and so I break it up regularly with trips to the water cooler. Plus it seems to be a very dry environment. At home, or out and about, I drink less because I’m usually rushing around busy, and eating/drinking properly is often way too far down my list of priorities.