cellio | interviewed by beaniekins

Remember the interview meme? It's back.

The rules: You can ask me for a set of five questions; you'll post the questions and your answers in your journal along with an invitation like this one.

1. What, if any, fears do you have that you know are irrational, but are afraid of anyway?

There is a broad category called "making a fool out of myself", which manifests in public speaking, asking questions at talks, playing role-playing games in some circumstances, and stuff like that. While there is sometimes a rational basis for this, it's not rational nearly as often as I think it is. Interestingly, this only triggers for verbal communication, not written.

I'm also kind of afraid of unprotected heights -- planes are fine but tall ladders are scary, and that sort of thing. But that might be rational, at least partially.

2. If you could choose one person whose mind you could read whenever you wanted, who would you pick?

Expedience would call for that to be Dani, my husband, but I think there'd be some fascinating reading material in my rabbi's brain.

3. What one thing in your life do you feel most guilty about?

There was a romantic situation that ended badly through no actual fault or malice on anyone's part, but rather due to unfortunate circumstances. Still, I feel I could have handled it better, in a way that would result in the other person being comfortable being around me now.

4. How much money would it take to make you give up your favorite food forever?

Hmm. I wonder what my favorite food is. I gave up some strong contenders when I started to keep kosher and that didn't involve any money coming my way at all. On the other hand, it would take a lot of money to get me to give up cold liquid caffeine (Diet Coke et al), so maybe that's it. Absent a health or halachic issue, my gut feeling is that it would cost roughly my annual salary less what I spend on purchasing it, because absence of caffeine would affect my ability to do my job.

5. What do you think is your best physical attribute?

I suspect you mean "best" in the sense of "most attractive" (rather than, say, "best-functioning"). That's kind of hard for me to judge, as I really don't think much about physical beauty. I think my eyes are pretty when not hidden behind glasses, but I need the glasses so almost no one ever sees that. (No, I can't wear contacts.)

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What are you not afraid of, that other people do often fear?

I'm pretty indifferent to space -- I'm neither claustrophobic nor agoraphobic. Hmm, I wonder what the most common phobias actually are; I realize I have no idea.

A fast check on Google came up with these:

Achluophobia - fear of being in darkness
Acrophobia - fear of heights
Agoraphobia - fear of open spaces or fear of leaving home
Claustrophobia - fear of being in closed spaces
Demophobia - fear of being in crowded places
Mysophobia - fear of germs or dirt
Xenophobia - fear of strangers

Precise order may vary according to which authority you're quoting, but these seem to be the most common. Actually, I'm kinda surprized public speaking and fire didn't make the list.

Thanks. Ok, none of that bothers me, except as I said the heights thing is more about falling than about being up high. Standing at the top of the grand canyon or the Empire State Building or some such is fine, so long as there's a railing. Without a railing, I'm not even going to stand on my own roof.

What's the reason you can't wear contacts, if you don't mind my asking? (I haven't been able to wear soft lenses for years myself due to severe astigmatism, but the gas-perms still work wonders.)

Severe astigmatism and a strong prescription [1] including bifocals means I can't get a full correction with contacts. Glaucoma means I'm limited to soft daily-wear lenses [2]. I did spend about a year using a combination of those and glasses (at least the glasses were lighter-weight), but invariably I needed to take the contacts out around dinner time and clean them because they got gunked up that quickly (call it 9-10 hours), so it was way too much of a PITA to deal with. If it had let me entirely eliminate the glasses I might have kept at it.

[1] I had congenital cataracts, so I have no lenses in my eyes (no implants way back then).

[2] I don't know if those were "soft" or "gas-permiable"; they were flexible and had to be taken out each day, unlike the ones you put in your eyes and ignore for a week. For all I know they were ones that could normally stay in a week but not for me; it's been a while and I'm fuzzy on the details.

Yeesh. Under the circumstances, I can easily see (as it were) why you'd stick with glasses. Sounds like contacts just aren't worth the trouble.

Yeah, I'm hoping that someday they'll figure out how to do lens implants, but in the meantime, glasses will do just fine.

(Lens implants this long after the original lenses were removed is a very different problem from lens implants as part of cataract surgery today.)

Yes, lens implants would definitely be a plus for you ...

My husband is very keen on the idea of me getting laser surgery done on my eyes some day. I'm not sure how keen on it I am. Frankly, it makes me nervous. Yeah, it could make things better, but could it not make things worse? I don't just have straightforward nearsightedness. Other problems: serious astigmatism, corneas with irregular axes of curvature, eyes not in alignment (one points slightly up, one slightly down). All fixable at present, but will the dude wielding the laser know how to do it? It's almost a good thing that we don't have the money right now ... and certainly it's a good thing that I live in an age of easily available corrective lenses. If I'd been born 500 years ago, I'd be a burden.

I'm not quite I'm reading this correctly.
You have *no* lenses? At all?
-- Dagonell

That's right. The fluids in the eye transmit light (fuzzily :-) ), which is why I can see at all. Or so I've been told, anyway.

interviewed by beaniekins

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