1) What is the scariest thing you have ever done?
Canyoning in Switzerland. Even now I look back and wonder what we were thinking because it's by far the stupidest and most dangerous thing I've ever done. I guess I thought it would be all adventurous and exciting, but the truth of the matter is that it' not a very intelligent thing to go jumping around in freezing cold glacier water (that could could very well send you into hypothermia) with no ropes or safeties of any kind to keep you from slipping or dashing you brains in on the myriad amount of rocks all around you. It certainly was a huge wake up call when the first thing we did was rappel down a 500 meter sheer cliff wall and hit the freezing cold water. Terrified as I already was of heights, I shall never forget the fear that went through my mind when my foot slipped and my face nearly slammed into that granite wall. For a second I really thought I was dead, and then sheer panic gripped me until the guides lowered me to the ground. I'd never screamed so much in my life, and I never want to again.


2) What do you find most physically attractive on a guy?
Embarrassing as it is sounds, it's the hips. Or more specifically, the whole hips/abs/long torso/ little v on guys in the hips area thing. I don't know why but it drives me nuts, and it's most definitely the reason why I love hakama so much. It's like those pants were designed to accent that part of a man, and it is my firm beliefs that they can make any man 10 times more attractive to me.  I'm all for long hair and gentle eyes on a guys (because they are the other two features I look for) but it most definitely the hips that drive me wild.

Also this may be TMI, but I gotta say it anyway, Chris has got all three features (which I love). He may be a ridicously skinny white boy, and a little hairy in the chest area, but he's also got a full head of hair, the most honest eyes I've ever seen, and this wondfully long torso that would be perfect for hakama.  That boy's hips may very well be my downfall. >_< I've already forbidden him from ever getting a beer belly.
(And before you go making any ill-founded assumtions, we had a swimming party back in the summer where I saw him in a swimsuit. Just saying.)

3) What's your favorite Disney movie and why?
Truly? It goes back and forth between The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. When I was little I always wanted to be a mermaid so there was immediate attachment to Ariel, but as I got older, I learned to really enjoy the relationship between Belle and Beast. Plus I love to read like Belle. Most of all I can relate to both princesses in there longings for something more out of life and for somewhere to belong. ("I want adventure in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can stand... and for once it might be grand... to have someone understand... I want so much more than they've got planned..." / "I don't know when, I don't know how, but I know something is starting right now... watch and you'll see... some day I'll be... part of your world....") I also really like Mulan and Bedknobs and Broomsticks too.

4) Name your pet peeves.
My biggest pet peeves are the ones within myself. I hate how I'm so lacking in puntuality and self-disclipline. I'm a terrible procrastinator and a bit too childish for a 24 year old woman. I need to get over my social anxiety and stop blaming everything on my depression. I also wish I wasn't so slovenly and I would put a little more effort into learning how to cook. As for pet peeves in other people, I don't like being around noisy eaters, people who snore, or shallow, trend-following thinkers. Above all, I hate egotists and there lack of respect for the people around them.

5) What's your favorite thing to do to pamper yourself?
I love taking long, candlelit bubblebaths with a good book, a bar of chocolate and a cup of tea.

Ain't It Cool News posted this today. It's Spielberg's tribute to Stan Winston. And it made me cry all over again:

Stan Winston never failed to make me laugh and his timing was impeccable. He’d wait like a big game hunter for all the signs to point toward a guaranteed kill. From a great distance, he’d follow my tracks onto the set. He’d check the prevailing winds for stress and chaos, a common combo on all special effects movies. He’d make sure he was out of sight of his quarry while he prepared. Then, just as he’d observe me about to lose my mind, he’d call out my name and when I turned, there he’d be, sitting in my director’s chair, having his haircut, his nails manicured, and smoking a cigar while reading Variety. And that killed! We’d both start howling, laughing like brothers all the way to the bank and back for more. I adored that man. We made each other feel like Willis O’Brien. The dinosaurs he and his shop designed, built, and made real, were natural wonders that seem to be in short supply these days. Like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period succumbing to extinction, they have been replaced by digital wonders that are actualized months after cast and crew have gone home or onto other pictures.

It’s so much harder getting performances from actors when the principal nemeses are two grips holding 15-foot poles with Day Glo tape at different intervals. Joey Mazzello and Ariana Richards were crazy scared on JURASSIC PARK when Stan’s T-Rex lowered his softball-sized eye right into the window of their Ford Explorer to scope them out. These moments were multiplied and divided amongst the cast, who had to act with a life-sized Triceratops, Brachiosaurus, Dilophosaurus, and two Velociraptors, that could even fog up a window with one powerful snort.

This was Stan’s reality. This was Stan’s art. The next time an actor has to act scared when he or she only has a wooden T-Bar to track, they will ask, along with the rest of us, “Hey, where’s Stan Winston?”

For all the years I knew Stan and worked with him, he was out in front of all the competition, creating things no one had ever seen before. And I rode his cutting edge, but it was not the kind of ride that you pay for. It was the kind of ride a friend gives you when he opens the passenger door and says, “Where do you want to go?”

Steven Spielberg