The answer to the question | Jules Maas

Enjoying our first Fourth of July at home in years, Trav and I spent the holiday having barbecue and street fireworks with our many friends and neighbors. It was a fantastic time in which I was asked lots of questions – which I may or may not have entirely gotten around to answering.

Enjoying our first Fourth of July at home in years, Trav and I spent the holiday having barbecue and street fireworks with our many friends and neighbors. It was a fantastic time in which I was asked lots of questions – which I may or may not have entirely gotten around to answering.

So here goes.

1. I get an inordinate amount of joy out of glitter.

2. And Chuck (NBC). I think Zachary Levi’s smile could be bottled and sold as a Fast-Acting Cure for Mondays, bad news and broke-down computers.

3. All but one of my childhood friends were boys. They had better toys, better games, better clubs and better things to be when they grew up. None of which required curls or bows.

4. It is physically impossible for me to turn off any episode of “I love the 80s”.

5. My radio is tuned to C89.5 eighty percent of the time. Sometimes I wonder if Trav thinks he lives in the AT&T’ Techno Twins commercial. ‘Cuz that’s me with the ribbon, baby.

6. Learning to laugh at myself and what to let go of are lessons I don’t quite have down yet. But I’m getting there.

7. I curse like a sailor at my computer. Whether or not I’m at work. Because I forget where I am. And my cube-mates think it’s hi-larious.

8. I thought my favorite cookie in the world was a snickerdoodle, but wow. I just ate an entire bag of Williams Sonoma ginger spice cookies in less than 20 minutes.

9. My grandfather’s stories are so great; I laugh like an idiot at all the wrong places because I’m anticipating the punch line.

10. I cried when Supergirl died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, when Sam Beckett was stranded in time for all eterntity and Cutter lost his family for ten-thousand years. No laughing at me if you don’t know any of those references.

11. Many a manager has made the mistake of calling me a perfectionist as a way to change my behavior. It was counterproductive for both of us.

12. It took me six months to read “John Adams”. Every time I put it down, I started writing a love letter to David McCullough in my head, which I never sent. Because I’m fairly certain Simon and Schuster would take one look at it and go, “Oh look. The weekly ‘I’m-Related-To-John-Adams’ stalker wrote in early. SHRED.”

13. I eat Reese’s and M&M’s in even groups of twos, by matching color. Single colors are eaten with another single color, until only one candy is left. Otherwise? The world DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

14. Used to be I had a really hard time saying anything to anyone. Now, anyone can get me started about almost anything and it’s hard to shut me up.

15. At the age of eleven, I was convinced my calling in life was to become a photographer for Greenpeace so I could travel the world throwing metaphorical rocks that would break the occasional Oil Tycoon Scandal or 10. Now my main goal in life is getting to and from work whenever the heck I need to, darn it, WILL A HYBRID GET ME THERE FASTER?