***9/2***

How do people feel about receiving baked goods/kits to make said goods? Or other cooking items? Sounds good! (…in moderation. I’m currently having some weight issues, and I’m grumpy about them as I write this.)

Would you enjoy oil or vinegar flavored with herbs grown at home? Strange and exotic spices with recipes to try? Cookies made with carnation petals? All of those sound excellent!

What are your pet's names, and what are they named for? Seamus is the Boy’s dog originally (adopted before we were together), and his full name is Seamus Heaney Hislastname, after the Irish poet. Tiwa is my dog originally (again, adopted before we were together), and her full name is Tiwa Esperanza Mylastname – her first name is the language spoken on the Taos pueblo, which is where Tiwa came from. The middle name is Spanish for hope, which is very much what she represented in my life when she came into it. She’s my heart baby, and I don’t know what I’d do without her. The cats are The Professor and Mary Ann, from Gilligan’s Island; it just seemed to fit. The Professor’s full name is Professor Phinneas Hislastname; it just sounded appropriate. Mary Ann’s full name is Mary Ann Bastet Mylastname – I asked Bast to help us find the right cats for us, so it seemed appropriate to pay homage to Her in a name.

***9/1***

Who here is a complete, over the top, Alice In Wonderland fanatic? I think it’s neat, if creepy at times, but I’m far from an over-the-top fanatic.

Are you a Trekkie? If so, which series do you prefer? Do you have a favorite character? I wouldn’t call myself a Trekkie, but I like Star Trek, at least TOS and TNG and the movies. (KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!) I love the camp of TOS, and the storylines and character development of TNG. Favorite characters… hmm. Hard to choose among the characters in TOS. From TNG, Worf (though of course I had a huge crush on Wesley Crusher and Wil Wheaton back in the day).

Do you have phobias? I don’t think I have any full-blown phobias, but I don’t like buggie things crawling on me or flying into me, I’m not wild about heights when I’m in a precarious spot, and I have some mild claustrophobia, especially where crowds are concerned.

How do you like your mix CDs? Random? Stuff you know you'll like? Happy to be surprised on that point!

Would you rather get food or jewelry? Ooh, that’s tough. Given my current weight struggles, not-food would probably be better than food, but at the same time, homemade foodstuffs seem like a really sweet thing to include. Really, I would be abundantly happy with either.

Do you like children's toys, such as jacks, those little things you tilt around to get the ball in the right hold (wtf are those called?), the aforementioned caplet dinosaurs, cap guns, etc?: Do I like them? Yes. Do I really really want to receive them? Not so much. Well, maybe the caplet dinosaurs.

English candy/tea/marmite or other stuff that you love and can't easily get outside of England? I like Crunchie bars but I’m not sure I don’t like Violet Crumble more. Still, they’re yummy. Brits do tea right; I would enjoy that. Marmite? No thank you.

Fanfic as a gift* - yay or nay? Your fandom? Slash preferences?*well, a virtual gift obviously. You know what I mean. Ummmm… probably not. I like the idea of my witch writing something for me, but I’m not really into any particular fandom. Someone in the SW thread mentioned that it would be neat if it were humorous, and I’d be down with that, but as a general rule, probably not so much my thing.

Any beaders here? Need beading supplies? Beads are neat (ooo, shiny!), but I am not a beader.

Do you like making up your SW packages around a theme, or prefer to mix it all up? See below.

Band-aids: do you like the fun and funky ones? Love ‘em! I’ve never bought them for myself because I use band-aids so rarely, but they’d be fun.

What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? It depends on the definition of scary. Getting pulled way out from shore by a rip tide when I was in Mexico when I was 9 or so really scared the pants off me. My first auto accident (I was a passenger – I haven’t yet gotten into one where I’ve been the driver, knock on copious amounts of wood) freaked me out pretty good, and it really wasn’t so bad. Having my academic and perhaps even professional career threatened in my last semester of grad school because of a person’s prejudices about sex workers (LOOOOONG story) was pretty f*cking scary, and I’m still working through that, mentally/emotionally (that ball got rolling about a year ago; I got my MFA in December).

***8/31***

What is everyone's favorite Halloween song?! I, too, enjoy the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. But “Thriller” might well win out for my favorite individual song (though technically I suppose it doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween).

How many of mah fellow witchies play video games? Platform? Do you like used games? I’m a bit of a Rock Band junkie: we play it on the X-box 360. We also have the first two Guitar Hero games for the PS2. I also have a Nintendo DS. Aside from the musical games, I mostly prefer old-school games (like Super Nintendo and earlier, esp. the Mario and Zelda games, plus, of course, Tetris) – oh, though we also have a Wii, and I enjoy Super Smash Brothers and Wii Sports. Used games are cool, especially since I often can’t be arsed to track things down for myself (e.g. they re-released Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for GBA and I used to have a copy – well, technically it was my ex’s, and so I don’t have it anymore but would like to, and so on and so forth).

What kind of music (genres, please) do you like? Folk (and most variations on that genre), Alternative Rock, Celtic, Classic Rock, Bluegrass, Reggae, some New Age (e.g. Loreena McKennit), New Wave, some Pop (e.g. Pink – I don’t actually own any of her stuff, but I like her), Classical, some Country (esp. Classic Country, e.g. Johnny Cash), World, R&B/Soul… do I really need to keep going?

Have any of you ever received a book from a Witchy and loved it so much you ended up buying a copy for a later Witchee? Not as such, but I can imagine doing so. My witch from my first round sent me a bunch of books that I can imagine wanting to pass on to the right witchee.

What kinds of eye shadows do we all like? On the rare occasions that I wear make-up, I wear Aveda. That said, I’ve gotten a whole bunch of mineral shadow samples from Back to the Earth in decant circles that I keep meaning to try. Love the pretty colors!

Do you like lip balm? If so, do you like tinted, glossy, sparkly, pearly or just plain lip balm? Oh yes please very much so to the first question, and pretty much all of the above to the second question. I prefer just plain, because I’m always running out (or, more accurately, my lip balms wander off, get stuck in coat pockets, go through the wash, etc.), but the others can be fun, too.

What are some of the SW gifts/finds from past rounds (or you can just name a gift in general that you found for someone if this is your first round!) that you are the most proud of in terms of your sleuthing skills? I’m pretty proud of the hat I knit for my Yule-round witchee. If “I got it” posts are anything to go by, I think it went over well.

And, secondly, what is something you've been searching for but just can't find? A theme! One just hasn’t occurred to me so far. Maybe this round. Or maybe my theme will continue to be “stuff I think my witchee will like.”

Random related note: here is my Etsy favorites page.