Friday Five

From thefridayfive

1. How old were you when you got your drivers license?

16. Got it the first time I tested - barely.

2. Did you get your own car right away, use the family car, or bum rides from friends?

A family car, when I could borrow it (which was often to get to school, because there was no bus to there and driving me was a now-avoidable nuisance...).

3. What was your first car and what was it like?

The car I learned on and mostly drove was a lovely little 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit - okay, lovely is a stretch, those cars were neither pretty nor ugly - but it handled just beautifully, agile and hard to get into trouble with. It spoiled me for taller or larger cars; I've stuck to standard or smaller cars since and vastly prefer a compact car to a Jeep or even a large car.

The first car I owned, in part or whole, was the old 1990 Ford Taurus that Scott and I got, rust-spotted and far from new - but ours, and functional - for longer than I'd expected when we got it, in truth.

4. How old were you when you got your first traffic ticket and what happened?

I have never gotten a traffic ticket. I got a warning, once: one headlight on the Taurus, not always the most reliable, had gone out and I hadn't known it yet.

5. What is your favorite car story, be it an accident, road trip, etc?

I'm not sure I have a favorite car story, honestly. I can't think of one right now, in any case.

Music meme!

Borrowed from porpentine, ohimesamamama, cadhla, and Ronni. The last one actually referred it to me (by way of Cook Sister!); I saw the others do it first, though.

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
   
   Which computer? The desktop that I most frequently use to play music (due at first to the laptop being temperamental heat-wise about such things and now to the laptop just flat refusing to play them, about which I am not really very concerned), I have 1256 that are actually available in the player. (Knowing me, I probably have one or two lost music files floating about on it.) On the laptop I have under 500, almost all of which are ones that are on the desktop.
   
   
2. Last CD you bought?
   
   If I answer this as I think it is meant, then I have no clue. It has been a long, long time since I have bought a music CD - several years at least. I am disenchanted with the music industry, I have radio and also more music that I own than I often listen to anyway.
   
   If I answer this literally, World of Warcraft, though actually the install was four CDs, not one.
   
   
3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
   
   "Merry May Folk," by Emerald Rose. Well, it was still playing as I read this.... (I did this for today's reading. The others, although I saw them prior to now, I have no idea what I was listening to then.) As I was doing this, Joshua Kadison's "Georgia Rain" came on, then Dan Fogelberg's "Nexus."
   
   
4. Five songs you often listen to or which mean a lot to you?
   
   
   • Enya, "Pilgrim." I first attached to it as a song for one of the characters I play, and it is still very much her song. It is, at the same time, a song I love, that is filled with hope and a willingness to step out into the unknown and see what the day - or the life - carries.
     
   • Billy Joel, "The Stranger." Because it says so much about playing with identity, about the sides of ourselves others don't see, about the way we are all, each of us, more than we do - probably more than we can - show to each person we know. Even ourselves, some days.
     
   • Great Big Sea, "Boston and St. John's." Because it's wistful and it's pretty and I like the sounds of it, and because it cheers me.
     
   • Jimmy Buffett, "Delaney Talks To Statues." Because it is affection and cheerful and humorous and carefree. (I'm doing no more than one song per artist, since really I could name far more than five total. It was hard, here, to choose between this and Six String Music, and Apocalypso, and Son of a Son of a Sailor, and...you get the idea.)
     
   • Martin Page, "Shape The Invisible." It says we could be so much more than we are - and it says that one day we will, or we may, live up to that promise. It is beautiful and hopeful - and it reminds that hope without action, without the ability to back it up, is only empty dreams - without making that reminder painful.
   
   
   
5. Who are you going to pass this on to and why?
   
   No one. Or anyone reading this. I am not going to ask specific people to it, but I'm posting it here and please, if you want to do it, snag it.