55 Questions

A few weeks ago, munchkinhugs ( Shweta ) made this blog post. Since then, I've been thinking about how I might have answered some of the question in that blog post. It was only a matter of time before I took a crack at it, so here goes ( Keep in mind that I composed this post over several days. I suck at answering questions succinctly, so this took a while. This post is very very L---O---N---G. You may not be able to get through it all at once, but please read/reply when you can, because I think I revealed a lot here ).

TEN HOW'S:

How did you get one of your scars?
I covered this topic in a recent video.

How did you celebrate your last birthday?
I'm not really into celebrating my own birthday. It's not because I have any fear of aging or anything. It's just that birthdays kinda lost their magic for me when I got old enough that I could buy my own stuff. I'll admit that I enjoyed birthdays as a kid purely from a materialistic standpoint. When my birthday came, I knew it was present time! Now, if I really want a present ( which isn't very often ), I just go out and buy it, no matter what time of year it is.
To answer the question more specifically, on my last birthday ( which was January 15, 2008, my 38th ), my wife probably bought a small cake from the supermarket, just so we could sing happy birthday and blow out the candles for the sake of the kids.

How are you feeling at this moment?
Tired, always so tired. I should really be catching up on sleep now, but I love to blog!

How did your night go last night?
Oh God. Last night ( Which at the time I'm writing this would have been Saturday, November 15, 2008 ) we drove into Flushing for the 100-day celebration for the baby of one of my wife's friends. It was pretty much your standard Chinese banquet with a 10-course meal ( jellyfish, shrimp and walnuts, shark-fin style soup, lobster, scallops, mushroom plate, fish plate, chicken plate, etc. ). My wife and I have probably been to about 30 of those between all the weddings and celebrations for babies, and they are usually a lot of fun ( We both love to eat! ). However, last night, the boys behaved really badly. They kept running around ( we briefly lost track of Michael ), and Peter was throwing tantrums left and right. I actually walked about 10 blocks in the rain to get them McDonald's Happy Meals ( They can be picky eaters ), but that only kept them occupied for so long. We were both exhausted at the end of the night, especially after the long drive home in a driving rain ( We got home at close to midnight ).

How did you find the one you lost your virginity to?
The "one" would be my wife, and she is truly my one and only. She is the only girl I have ever even kissed romantically or held hands with romantically. We met at college, when I was a 3rd year student, and she was a 1st year student. The story of what happened between the time we met ( early February 1991 ) and the day we officially became a couple ( April 6th, 1991 ) is an interesting story, but it's too long for this blog post, and it's probably isn't something I should share in a public forum.

How did you get the shirt you're wearing?
My cousin Steven gave it to me as a Christmas present. It's a T-shirt for his college baseball team. He was a pitcher and played briefly in the minor leagues for a few years.

How often do you see ur best friend?
As corny as it may sound, I consider my wife to be my best friend, so I guess the answer is every day. As far as all my other close friends go, I love them all, but between work and the kids, I don't get to see them that often these days.

How much money did you spend last month?
Well, I have a mortgage, so if you count that, along with all the other expenses that come with a home, insurance, kid's college funds, etc., I actually spend a huge amount each month. However, if you don't count that kind of stuff, I spent almost nothing. I'll buy newspapers to read on the train, but I don't really buy a lot for myself these days. When it comes to stuff like clothes, my wife will buy stuff and ask me to try it on every once in a while, and if it fits okay, I'll usually keep it. I'm not really picky about my clothes.

How old do you want to be when you get married?
I was 26 when I got married.

How will you celebrate your next birthday?
Probably in the same low key way I celebrated my last birthday.

NINE WHAT'S:
Your mothers name?
Her name was June. Her initials ( including her confirmation name ) before she got married were actually J. E. T. S., which is kinda amazing considering that she wound up being a huge Jets fan ( she was born long before the Jets existed ), and passed that passion for the Jets down to her sons.
Also, this reminds me that my wife and I actually have exactly the same initials. The first letters of our first, middle, and last names match ( BTW, our lasts names are different and start with the same letter ( she kept her last name when we got married ) ).

What did you do last weekend?
We went to a 100-day celebration for the baby of one of my wife's friends (see above ). On Sunday, my wife went into the city to celebrate a friend's birthday, and spent the day at home playing with the kids.

What is the most important part of your life?
My children.

What would you rather be doing?
I'd rather be swimming in tropical waters.

What did you last cry over?
Probably, the last 20 minutes of the movie "Field of Dreams". I'm not really the type who cries tears of sorrow, but I will tear up when I find something very touching. The end of "Field of Dreams" gets me every time, especially the part where Ray says "Dad, do you wanna have a catch?".

What always makes you feel better when you’re upset?
Hugging my kids.

What’s the most important thing you look for in a significant other?
Kindness

What are you worried about?
My sons - specifically their future.

What did you have for breakfast?
No breakfast today ( Nov. 19th ). The only time I really eat a full-sized breakfast is when I'm away on vacation. I do have a glass of OJ each morning at work ( we get free fresh squeezed OJ! ), and sometime a granola bar or a piece of bread with peanut butter on it ( We also have a peanut butter machine at work! ).

EIGHT HAVE YOU’S:
Have you ever had your heartbroken?
Yes, several times, but never in the sense that a girl was intentionally trying to hurt me. All my broken hearts were the result of me falling in love with a girl who didn't feel the same way about me. I spoke about one example in this video.

Have you ever been out of the country?
Yep, but not as much as I would have liked to. I was 20 before I took my first trip out of the USA ( and that was just a quick road trip Canada with my college buddies ). The first time I ever left the American continent was my honeymoon at the age of 26 ( we went to Italy ). The next time was a 10-day trip to Taiwan with my wife ( with a day and a half in Hong Kong ) when I was 30. Aside from that, the only other times were excursions of a few hours in Mexico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic as part of a Caribbean cruise when I was 29.

Have you ever done something outrageously dumb?
Well, I have been to jail, but that wasn't really a case of me being stupid. That was more a case of a redneck cop being a complete prick. No, the true example of me being outrageously dumb happened about 2 weeks into my 2nd year of college.
I was 19, and my experience with alcohol had been limited to 3 times I did a little binge drinking during the second half of Freshman year. So, I certainly wasn't a big drinker ( which of course is a good thing ), but I did find that I had pretty decent natural tolerance as compared to some of my friends ( who also were pretty much newbie drinkers ). So despite the fact the I wasn't much of a drinker, I took a kind of perverse pride in my belief that I could drink my friends under the table.
So in any case, when we went to a house party with alcohol early in my sophomore year, it was my outrageously dumb goal to consume more drinks than any of my friends. So, I wasn't really drinking to have fun. In fact, I wasn't even really drinking to get drunk ( though of course, that was exactly what happened ). I was drinking in order to win some stupid macho competition to see who could drink the most. Unfortunately, I won.
The next thing I knew, I woke up laying on a bed in the campus health center with an IV stuck in my arm. Apparently an ambulance was involved at one point. I never did need to get my stomach pumped, because I had already emptied all the contents of my stomach on to the walls in the bathroom where the house party took place. I was told that my blood alcohol had been measured at .21 ( so it was good thing I puked before all the other alcohol got into my system ), and I had answered the questions below in the following way when the paramedics arrived on the scene:

What is your name?
Catholic ( That's my religion, so I guess that's close enough )

Can you recite the alphabet?
( I started to recite it in Spanish )

Do you know where you are?
Apparently I started speaking in Middle English ( I was studying Chaucer at the time ).

Well anyway, this was clearly an example of outrageous stupidity. The one good thing is that I learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of alcohol at a very early age.


Have you ever been back stabbed by a friend?
Nope, not even close. I choose my friends carefully, and I think I'm a very good judge of character.

Have you ever had sex on the beach?
My wife isn't they type who would ever agree to have sex in any kind of public place. However, even if the beach was completely abandoned and my wife was up for it, I can't think of too many worse places to have sex than on a beach. All that sand getting caught in all those - um - places?
Gross.

Have you ever dated someone younger than you?
Well, my wife is two years younger than me, but this actually seems like kind of a silly question. In every couple, one person is younger than the other, so it's not really unusual to date somebody younger than you. A better question might be, "Have you ever dated somebody a lot younger than you?". Perhaps this question was directed more at women, because women have traditionally dated older men, but even that is changing these days. My group of "neighborhood friends" ( Friends that I know from my childhood neighborhood as opposed to school or work ) consists of 3 friends, my brother, and me. All 5 of us are married now, and I'm the only guy in the group who married somebody younger than he was.

Have you ever read an entire book in one day?
Yup.

SEVEN WHO’S:
Who was the last person you saw?
My boys are asleep on the floor right next to me, and my wife is asleep on the couch behind me as I'm typing this ( 12:13 AM on Nov 23 ).

Who was the last person you texted?
If you had asked people in the mid 20th century, what they thought phone technology would be like in the 21st century, they would have invariable said something like "phone with a video screen that lets you look at the person you are talking to" ( like the phones in "The Jetsons" ). Thus, I find it rather odd that with all our 21st century technology, people are sending messages via text with their phones. What's next? Will Apple unveil a telegraph application for the iPhone?
Anyway, that's just a long-winded way of saying that I have never sent a text message. I'm sure it can be fun, but I'm kinda old-school, and I'll just use my voice to communicate if I want to contact somebody via phone. I'm sure I'd be texting left and right if I had been born about 20 years later, but for now, I'm still very old-school ( Plus, I don't have a Blackberry, iPhone, or any mobile device that let's you type using a QWERTY keyboard. My cell phone just has numbers on it. I could text with it, but it would be a real pain ).

Who was the last person you hungout with?
I've been hanging out all day with my kids today ( Sunday Nov. 23rd, watching football ). However, if we are not talking about my immediate family, or a large party ( we went to a party at a friend's place yesterday ( a college friend of mine who had moved to Hong Kong is in the States for a week ) , and I saw a lot of my college buddies ), it's probably been a while. I loved to hang out with my buddies during my college days, but after you get married and have kids, that stuff really ends. Well, I guess it doesn't have to end. A lot of married guys like to "hang out with the boys", and leave their wife and kids at home, but I'm not really that type. I just love to have family time at home. When I do hang out with one of my buddies, my wife ( and kids ) and his wife ( and kids, if applicable ) are usually part of the outing. The last time we did something like that was mid-October, when we went apple picking with one of my buddies and his wife.

Who was the last person to call you?
My Dad.

Who did you last hug?
I hugged my son Michael a few minutes ago.

Who is the last person who texted you?
My Dad. He sent me a text message out of the blue about 2 months ago. That just shows how old-school I am. Even my Dad has gotten into texting before me.

Who was the last person you said "i love you" to?
My son Michael ( when I was hugging him ).

SIX WHERE’S:
Where do you live?
Edison, New Jersey, USA - but I'll always consider myself to be a New Yorker.

Where did you last go?
My wife and kids went to a get together at a friend's house yesterday ( Nov 22nd ).

Where did you last hang out?
Depending on what you mean by "hang out" ( see the hang-out question above ), it was either at home, at my friend's house for the party on Saturday, or at an apple orchid.

Where do you go to school?
I got a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in '92, a Master of Engineering (Mechanical ) from Cornell in '93, but the best educational institution I ever attended was Stuyvesant High School ( Class of 1988 ).

Where is your favorite place to be?
There's no place like home.

Where did you sleep last night?
My nice comfy bed.

FIVE DO’S/DOES:
Do you like someone right now?
What is this, 3rd Grade?

Do you think anyone likes you?
See above. I would think my wife and I "like" each other if "like" means what it did back in 3rd Grade.

Do you ever wish you were someone else?
I think I'm pretty happy being me. It's not that I wouldn't want to trade circumstances with somebody, it's just that I'd still like to be me under those circumstances. Sure, it would be nice to inherit a billion dollars from some long-lost relative, but I'd only want it to happen if I could still be me, and still have the people I love in my life.

Do you know the muffin man?
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man;
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, who lives on Drury Lane.

Does the future scare you?
I'm always scared about my boys' future.

FOUR WHY’S:
Why are you best friends with your best friend(s)?
They listen.

Why did you get a myspace?
I thought it would be fun to check out other people's myspace pages. I doubt I'll actually do much with the myspace page, but then again I'm in the middle of writing a massive blog entry for a blog I thought I'd barely update.

Why did your parents give you the name you have?
I'm named after my Dad, because my Dad wanted his first son to be named after him. However, my mother didn't want me to be a Junior, so I have a different middle name than my Dad. BTW, if I'd had been born a girl, I would have had the name Michelle.

Why are you doing this survey?
See the first paragraph of this blog post.

THREE IF’S:
If you could have one super power what would it be?
Flight.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, would you?
We all make mistakes occassionally that hurt the ones we love. If I could go back in time, I'd try to correct those mistakes.

If u were stranded on a deserted island & could bring 1 thing what would you bring?
A boat.

TWO WOULD-YOU-EVER’S:
Would you ever get back together with any of your ex’s if they asked you?
Considering that my wife is the only girlfriend I've ever had, this question doesn't really apply to me. However, theroretically, if I was a single guy who had ex's, I'm sure I would not want to get back with any of them. I can't imagine breaking up with somebody unless I had a really good reason, and if somebody hurt me by breaking up with me, I would never want to take that person back.

Would you ever shave your head to save someone you love?
I'd give up limbs to save someone I love, and I'd give my life for my sons without blinking.

ONE LAST QUESTION
Are you happy with your life right now?
Things are sometime tough with work and the issues with my kids, and I have my moments of despair, but all-in-all I realize how blessed I am.