answering the cow

[maribou]

(1) I envy your job. Is there something that you'd rather be doing, assuming you had the degrees/experience/whatever's needed? If so, what?
Maaaaaybe. Assuming that I didn't have any guilt over leaving my boss in the lurch, there'd be a few things.
1. Astronaut.
2. Not working at all because I could just do whatever I wanted and magically afford it. (this would involve a great deal of travel, reading, and select volunteer work. I might also get back into climbing trees in a big way.)
[these top 2 would DEFINITELY not involve any guilt over quitting my old job. Hello? *ASTRONAUT*?]
3. Cataloguer at the library of congress (no, really).
4. Field biologist of the intrepid sort ("sure, I'd love to spend 6 months catching every tropical disease in the books and a few that haven't made it there yet. why? ORANGUTANS!"), preferably an assistant rather than the person who had to actually write things for publication &c.
5. Zookeeper.
However: 1 and 4 would require a different sort of husband than I currently have, and I'm not willing to trade him in; 2 would require a great deal of income from some currently unknown source; 1, 3 and 5 would require me to actually work at getting more degrees/experience and I am FAR too lazy for that. Given a real world situation, I'd rather be doing what I do than just about anything else.

(2) If you could live anywhere on Earth, where would that be and why?
Practically speaking? Here, because it is the best possible compromise between my desires and those of the person I live with, given my limited experience of places-to-live.
Playing games? The bottom of the ocean. Because that would be SO COOL that I wouldn't care about the myriad things that would suck about it. As long as I could come back up eventually.

(3) The question I ask everyone: What one (or more than one, if you wish) philosopher or author has influenced you the most?
Well, I sort of already answered that question here. So I'll try to decide who has most influenced Adult Maribou instead. Hmmm. It's cheating to claim my husband-with-the-philosophy-degree, even if true, right?
Um. Hm. Uh.
Off the top of my head, Simone de Beauvoir. And I can't even say exactly how, but I spent a great deal of time immersed in her writing just over a year ago, and it definitely had effects.

(4) Two-part question: [a] What one thing do you miss the most about Canada/Montréal?
Eesh, those are almost two separate questions. Montreal is practically its own entity. Lumped together like that, the only possible answer is "people speaking French on a regular basis, and the mental flexibility/adaptability to strange situations that that entails in the general populace."

[b] If you moved back, what one thing would you miss the most about the U.S.?
My mother-in-law.

(5) I've got some free time this summer. (*gasp*! I know--crazy!) What should I read? :)
Um. _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay_, by Michael Chabon. Have you read George R.R. Martin's fantasy series? It starts with _A Game of Thrones_ and I think you'd like it.
On a more academic level:
Read up heavily on Vatican II. Find that extremely large and heavy red book entitled "Documents of Vatican II" which I'm sure the UW library has, and examine it. Try some von Balthasar, some Rahner, some Tillich, some Niebuhr, some Kung. Check out Caroline Walker Bynum, a feminist theologian who is really into medieval stuff. Check out the Nicene and Anti-Nicene fathers; I'm particularly fond of Basil. The very interesting biography of Cardinal Ratzinger that I was telling you about is _Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith_, by John L. Allen. (That was my theological reading speech that I was too hyper to give coherently in UU&R.)
Read something really science-physicky, it's good for the brain. The last one that I really admired was Kip Thorne's _Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy_, though it was published in the 90s and may be Somewhat Out of Date.
Is enough? I'm sure I could ramble on for pages in answer to this question, if so desired.