Dear Pen pal...

Dear Internets,

One of my most long-term readers and favorite bloggers, the texpat is blogging every day for Lent. I think this is awesome for two reasons:

1. I love reading her blog. She's a (lovely) Texan living in Germany who does crafts and has a ukulele and is awesome.

2. It is not nearly as overwhelming for me to keep up with one daily blogger as it is to keep up with a zillion during NaBloPoMo. Also, I think a lot of you that have stopped blogging as often right now, perhaps due to the things you have given up for Lent. (Chocolate? Caffeine? Where have you gone, Internets???)

Anyhoodles, I asked her a bunch of questions today as though I were her new pen pal. I figured it might be fun to answer the questions myself here, since I sort of think of the Internets as my pen pal.

Do you like pets? Do you have any pets?
Yes, I like pets. I'm allergic to almost everything with fur, although I am usually fine with inside dogs as long as they aren't too licky (I break out in hives when I come in contact with dog or cat saliva, but that doesn't stop me from cuddling even the slobberiest of dogs). I have a dog, Bailey, and a betta fish, Valentino. There's a snail in Valentino's tank named Olive, but I don't really consider her a pet, because she's not very interactive. (She did once lay pink eggs when I added pink gravel to the tank. That was weird.)

What is your favorite season?
Fall, I think, although spring and winter really aren't bad in Texas. We get a lot of really nice weather seven or eight months out of the year. (Nice weather, to me, is anything that's not extremely hot or cold.)

What is one thing you *don’t* miss about Texas?
It's waaaaaay cliche to say this, but if I moved away, I would not miss the heat, especially in August and September, when it gets kind of extreme. I also wouldn't miss the fact that Texas seems to attract a lot of (sometimes very) crazy people.

Do you like silly gifts, sincere gifts, or monetary gifts best?
I like to give either silly or sincere gifts, depending on my relationship with the person. As far as receiving gifts? I don't really enjoy receiving gifts at all; it makes me feel awkward. Anything but gift cards is OK, though. I don't mind the idea of gift cards, but I'm not good about keeping up with them.

If you had to get a tattoo on your upper arm, what would you get and why?
I'm not a tattoo person (too distractible), so I don't know why I asked this question. I guess I would get something that l thought was pretty so that I didn't have to explain some sort of deeper meaning to every stranger that asked. Maybe some sort of vine/flowers (not all the way around) or maybe a curvy tree.



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In other news, thanks for being my blog usability guinea pigs. I think you all had great comments and suggestions. I'm going to fix everything I can as soon as I get to a computer that isn't a laptop. (For some reason, I need a real mouse if I'm going to mess with computer code. Double monitors also help. Gosh, I'm a nerd.)

Hope you're having a wonderful day, Internets! Feel free to answer/ask any pen pal questions you think of, and definitely go check out the texpat.

Love,
Jane

P.S. As part of my blog redesign, I'm working on making new lists of bloggers/artists I love. I took down my old blogroll because half of the people on it either stopped blogging over a year ago or changed URLs. Don't feel unloved, Internets!