westerosorting | win or die

Name: Anna
Age: 29
Location: San Francisco, US
Occupation: Engineer, of the "PowerPoint" variety

All About You

1. Describe your ideal house/home. Please go into as much detail as possible, and be sure to include your ideal geographical location in the description!.
I'll start with the ideal geographical location, which is actually the most important part for me. I'm lucky to be living in it already -- San Francisco *is* the city where I want to live, not just because all of my extended family is here (there are close to 200 of us in the SF Bay Area, when we all get together), but because it's such a lovely place. Nearly perfect weather year-round, a balance of cosmopolitan city and small town feel, pedestrian-friendly streets, pretty much any kind of cuisine you could possibly want within walking distance, and the general vibrant vibe of the city. I wasn't born here, but I grew up here, and when looking for work my primary criterion was being able to commute there from the City.

Now, as for the house itself, I'm not too picky. I've got two kids, so it would need separate rooms for each (so that I could send them to play separately to give myself a few moments of peace). If I am to be very greedy, both a home office so I could work from home when necessary and a recreational "study" where I could keep my knick-knacks and books and where I could hide away to read a book or do something creative. The study would have a window seat, since I'm dreaming here. (Oh, and a home office for my husband, too, and a library, and, like, four bathrooms.) But what I'd really like is a magically self-cleaning house. I'm far too lazy to actually clean it, and there are no more powerful agents of chaos than a seven-year-old packrat and a five-year-old pirate.

2. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.

1) I'm afraid of little things swarming -- ants, especially, but anything else that moves in a similar scurrying mass freaks me out. This is notable because I'm generally a great lover of bugs -- I rescue flies and moths and spiders and worms with my bare hands, always try to help downed bumblebees off the sidewalk, and am positively gleeful at the sight of a fuzzy caterpillar. But lots of ants together -- *shudder*.

2) I have a mild phobia about talking to strangers on the phone. It's gotten better, since a fair part of my job involves just that, so I've been getting a lot of practice, but I still try to get my husband to call out the plumbers and such because of this. When it's really unavoidable, I often write out a script and practice it before calling up the actual person. But even then I'm relieved if I encounter an answering machine or some reason to postpone the call.

3) My more major, less neurotic fear is letting down those who depend on me, whether it be at work or in personal life. For instance, I was considering spending two nights in flight so that I could spend five hours at a meeting where my presence was requested, just a few days before I was leaving for a 2-month-long trip. When family reasons made it impossible for me to be at that meeting at all, I was upset rather than relieved, which in retrospect is just insane. But I just hate letting people down, pathologically.

3. What is your favorite aspect of your physical appearance and why?
I think my eyes are nice -- they are a very dark brown, slightly almond-shaped, and just generally... fit me, you know? I also like my dark chestnut hair -- but gray strands are creeping in, which I'm not entirely at peace with yet. And my vampire teeth (my canines are very pointed and rather prominent) -- but I recently chipped the point off one, so it's not quite the same.

4. If you could change one thing about your physical appearance, what would you change and why?
If I could have my pre-pregnancy hourglass figure back, I'd be quite happy. At least partly because a lot of my favorite clothes are meant for that shape and I can no longer wear them.

5. Imagine you’re given the classic opportunity: a genie granting you three wishes. What would you wish for? Wishing for more wishes is not permitted!
I would spend YEARS second-guessing myself and trying to come up with the perfect three wishes, complete with filling out pro/con tables a mile long. I am very bad at making decisions quickly, especially when the decisions are important ones. And genies are tricky, you can't be too careful. That said, I would wish for:

1) Health and long life for everyone in my family -- me, husband, kids, my parents and grandparents, my brother, aunt (who is more like a close cousin to me) and her family, my mother-in-law.

2) An endless supply of cash which would enable everyone listed above to enjoy life at whatever level of affluence they desired and work however much and only if they wanted to.

3) I'm pretty sure genies can't grant world peace, end world hunger, or any of those other lofty but, alas, unrealistic things. So continuing in the purely selfish vein, I would ask the genie to ensure that my children received a good education. I'm a big fan and proponent of the public school system, but public school in San Francisco is very much a crapshoot, and though we've been quite lucky so far, I little genie-supplied luck wouldn't hurt.

6. In your life so far, what accomplishment are you the most proud of? You can list more than one if you have trouble deciding. ;)
It's odd, I don't really think of my life in terms of accomplishments. "Accomplishment" implies that it's something I set out to do, with a specific goal in mind, and then I got there. For me, really, in pretty much anything I've undertaken, the process of doing it has been more important than the end result. So, for example, I'm pretty proud of my summa cum laude and Department Citation (top grades in my year in Chemical Engineering, at one of the top two undergrad departments in the US) and University Medal Finalist status, but until I received them, I wasn't even aware of their existence, so the individual convoluted MATLAB computations and super-sized research papers that went into that feel like more real accomplishments, and the same can be said about a number of "accomplishments" at work, which I couldn't tell you about for super-top-secret reasons and they would sound like total gibberish anyway.

So I guess really the only accomplishment I can point to -- something I set out to do from the beginning and applied steady effort towards, to have it be crowned with success -- is the fact that my children, born in the US, are fluent in Russian (my native language, though my English is quite a bit better by now), and the oldest can even read and write in it a bit, and are at least as steeped in Russian/Soviet culture (songs, cartoons, fairy tales) as in the one they were born into. (The same is true for them and Hebrew, too, but all credit for that goes to my husband.) This battle is far from over, though, and we'll have to keep applying effort through many years to come to make sure these languages don't get lost.

7. Which of the following is most important to you: Love, Money, Knowledge, Family, Friendship, Adventure, or Pleasure? Which is the least important to you?
Family is most important. Adventure and money have to fight it out for last place, but since money is usually instrumental in procuring pleasure, adventure has got to be last.

8. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values?
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us," Gandalf's words from Lord of the Rings has been that quote for quite a few years.

9. How do you manage your money? On that note, how important is money/financial security to you?
Financial security is pretty important, but I've been lucky enough that it's not been an issue. To say that I manage money is sort of misleading -- my natural tendency is to abhor excess (I couldn't imagine buying a sports car, for instance, just because it's cool, or a TV that costs above $600, or a pair of pants that cost above $75, or any kind of luxury item, really) and not to make any big purchases unless it's really necessary (really necessary being defined as, "the stove won't turn on anymore," for example). So, quite naturally, most of the money I earn that's left after the mortgage goes into the bank and doesn't come out very often. That said, we do occasionally splurge on big things, like a recent 2-month trip to Europe that cost us ~$25,000 -- and was worth every penny. And I tend to be a terrible impulse shopper when it comes to small things. I'm always buying junk food and stuffed animals and novelty crap on a whim, and I spend way too much on eating lunch out with friends instead of brown-bagging it -- but we are comfortable enough that this doesn't present a problem. I could give up all these things if I had to -- but since we can afford them, why not?

10. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?

1) Reading -- I've got a train commute which gives me two and a half hours of reading time three days a week, and that's just great. I haven't read any "serious" literature since I finished my English minor, but fantasy and sci-fi and mysteries are good enough for me.

2) Puttering about on LJ/the internet. I don't know if that's an actual hobby, but it sure does eat up a lot of my time...

3) Indoctrinating the kids in various geeky things, from Fawlty Towers (as a precursor to Monty Python) and The Simpsons to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to giving them little "preview" lectures on mathematical functions, friction, Newton's Laws of Motion, evolution, and so forth.

4) Obsession du jour -- I go through phases of being obsessed with particular things. At the moment it happens to be SoulCollaging, but in the past it's been anything from sifting for prime numbers to putting together dictionaries of made-up words to compiling multimedia birthday cards for my friends to I don't even know...

11. Name (and elaborate on) your top three BEST and top three WORST qualities (personality-related, not physical).

(Pretty much C&P'd from my

asoiaf_stamp application, because I'm lazy like that.)

Best:

1) Level-headedness / rational thinking -- I'm usually the person exhorting others to keep calm, rationally examine all evidence, and come to a logical conclusion.

2) Open-mindedness -- I find it very easy to see things from other people's point of view, and almost always try to

3) Adaptability -- although I abhor change, I actually get used to new circumstances very easily, and just keep on rolling

Worst:

1) Indecisiveness -- if I weren't forced to make a decision, I never would, or would draw it out until I was absolutely convinced that I was making the right choice. This goes not just for serious things like deciding which job to take or which house to buy but even for trivialities like what to order in an unfamiliar restaurant.

2) Laziness (which I like to spin as desire for efficiency, but it's laziness, really). Left to my own devices, I would sleep 12 hours a day and spend the rest of my time reading and messing about on the internet or browsing bookstores and toy stores.

3) Selfishness -- I find it very difficult to put other people first, even though I think I've learned to fake it pretty well.

A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.Which is your favorite book of the series so far? What about your least favorite?
Storm of Swords is definitely my favorite, in no small part thanks to the Jaime POV and the introduction/exploration of several characters who became my favorites.

I have a hard time deciding which is my least favorite as there was a huge gap -- about 10 years -- between me reading A Clash of Kings and the next two books. I'm thinking the fact that ACoK didn't leave me an absolutely rabid fan of the series (the way ASoS did) suggests that one might have been my least favorite, but I really have no fair way of comparing between ACoK and A Feast for Crows, which would be the other candidate.

2.Who are your favorite three characters in the series?

Tywin Lannister -- I have a thing for uber-competent characters unhindered by common morality

Jaime Lannister -- the character growth and the sheer flair and the relative lack of angst

Olenna Tyrell/Queen of Thorns -- snarky matriarch who protects her family, and she reminds me quite a bit of my great-grandmother (though mine never engaged in any regicide as far as I know)

3.Who are your least favorite three characters in the series?

Joffrey "Baratheon" -- junior psychopath with no redeeming qualities whatsover

Gregor Clegane, Roose Bolton, Vargo Hoat and his band of creeps -- they don't count as separate characters because I hate them all in the same way -- I could really do without the excessive violence they perpetrate

Lady Stonehart -- *shudder* it pains me to see what she's done to the Brotherhood Without Banners, and, of course, what she's doing to Brienne, and it's a fairly terrible thing to happen to Catelyn herself

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far?
Does it make me a terrible person if I say Joff snuffing it? That was possibly the best thing to happen in all four books... I think I may have actually cheered out loud.

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end?
I have no grand vision I'd like to see come to pass for the whole sweeping saga, so it's more minor things I want to happen for characters I like. Most of them wouldn't really fit withe the themes and trends of the saga, so I'm not exactly holding my breath, but... I'd like to have Jaime survive (fairly unlikely, I guess). I want a majority of the Tyrells to make it through alive and still have their relatively cozy, relatively un-psycho, by Westeros standards, anyway, family together. While I'm wishing for things that are unlikely to come true, I would like Tommen not to die, either, and little Robert Arryn to not only survive somehow (thanks to Sansa), but to make some strides towards growing into a potentially normal human being. The next two are not particular favorites of mine, so the next two wishes are driven more by plot preference than character preference: I want Sansa to survive to become the great lady Tyrion glimpsed in her at Joff's wedding, and I want Jon to remain the Lord Commander of the Night Watch and not claim any dragons or kingdoms. Unfortunately, it's too late to resurrect Robb or un-maim Jaime, so that will have to be it...

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