how poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

1. What two colors do you think look the best together?
   black and blue - for the most obvious reason
2. For your memoir, describe what you looked like as a teenager.
   
   "she was a dark and stormy night..."
   
   No, really, I was in a lot of ways exactly what I am now only cheaper (make of that what you will), wearing clothes that didn't quite fit into any one style because I had neither the money nor the inclination to be fashionable. Sometimes punk, sometimes prep, sometimes sort of iconoclastically retro (I loved my dad's old oxford shirts and cardigans, and my sleek black loafers fitted out with dimes rather than pennies). I had a couple of trench coats (a dusty cream sort of painter job and a muted green and black plaid that was already a bit torn up when I got it, God knows where). On the mornings when we'd practice halftime shows on the football field, I'd wear these bright red boots that fit over my shoes, so ugly they were cute and perfectly functional to keep my shoes dry and my feet warm. I didn't wear much makeup, though probably more than I do now, and my hair was still its natural color and the bangs were worn long over one eye, an affectation that probably cost me a half-dozen contacts before I chopped it down. And I think I didn't do much for jewelry, maybe hooker-hoop earrings if I was feeling really wild. And a waist chain now and then, which makes me cringe. Does that paint the picture?
3. Do you know anyone born on your half-birthday?
   Only one person, but it could not be more significant. The one person I've loved more than anyone else—and I scorn the idea of "quantities" of love—was born exactly 6 months before I was, for all intents and purposes "on the other side of the world."
4. Show and Tell. What comes to mind first when you see this picture? Or, tell a story if it reminds you of one.
   This photo reminds me of a story that I did write, about someone I used to know very well.
   

   Once upon a time there was a boy named Nick, who grew up to be an adult boy named Nick. He looked like a man but he was really just a boy. He lived in a two-story brick building. A woman came along, saw him looking out his second-floor window, and wanted to get to know him. They talked, and kind of liked each other, and she decided to go into his building and spend more time with him. Only, as she walked around his building, she realized there was no door. The only opening on his building was that one window on the second floor. She hollered up to him, "What's the deal?" He shrugged. So she started climbing, because she's tenacious and he was cute. But he dropped a loose brick on her head.

   So, after icing her sore head, she got a helmet and a ladder, and started climbing again. And he threw another loose brick at her. She stayed away for a while, but was still intrigued by the weird dude in the brick fortress. She kept coming back and trying to visit, but he kept repelling her advances...all the while also kind of wanting to talk with her and hang out, too. Just with the walls between them.
   

   Finally, three years later, she settles herself into her catapult (several miles away), and shoots herself (with scientific precision) at his open window, only to discover, once she arrives, that he's (a) put up some glass in that window, (b) laid out a snare on the floor where she's landed (so she's covered with broken glass, snapped mousetraps, and peanut butter), and (c) he's escaped down his fire pole into the basement and out through the panic hatch.

   The end.

[from the original source; title quotation from Othello by William Shakespeare]