Tim and I thought we’d be clever and interview each other (also known as, Something I’ve Had In The Works For A While In Case I Have A Night When I Don’t Want To Blog). I called him up one day and said “Ask me questions.” There was silence at the other end of the phone. Eventually we got on the same page and emailed each other questions.

Today, I present Timmy’s answers to my questions:

1. What’s it like being married to me? And please, spare no details.
It’s a never-ending struggle. Wait…

It’s fun. It’s rewarding. It’s … optimistic. Can an “it” be optimistic? I don’t know. I was only an English minor, not an English major. We’ll go with it.

Sure, there are times where it can get frustrating, like when you are in a period of pessimism or depression or something in between, and you not only don’t want any help to get out of it, but you get upset when offered the help. But those days are becoming more and more rare. Which is pretty good.

Overall, though, it’s nice to be married to you. It’s wonderful to have the support and encouragement of somebody who truly believes in me. We have similar enough interests to be able to happily coexist, but we’re different enough to be able to learn from each other. Thankfully, we both have very similar senses of humor, or else we’d be sitting there not laughing at each other’s jokes, and that would just get awkward. And while there’s plenty of things we’re still learning – like how to budget money properly, or how to raise a child – we’re learning together, which is more fun and rewarding than trying to get through this alone. And we’ve learned how to compromise with each other, like when I want to watch basketball and you want to watch Jersey Shore, we compromise and watch Jersey Shore Kidding.

The short answer – it’s awesome to be married to you. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

2. Being colorblind, did you know that oranges (the fruit) are actually orange (the color)?
You just wanted me to write about being colorblind, didn’t you. Jerk. Look, oranges are orange in that they match orange crayons (well, some match the “orange-yellow” crayon). Orange is actually one of my better colors in terms of how well I can see it. Orange is orange. I’ll describe my colorblindness with the stoplights example. While most people see, in order, red, yellow, and green, I see orange, green (actually, more of a yellow-green), and white. But that doesn’t mean I see a red crayon as orange. To me, the red stoplights don’t match red crayons or red stop signs. This is also why I believed, for quite a long time, that headlights in cars were actually green. You know, since they’re the same color as green traffic lights.

My biggest problem is in comparing shades. When one color is made darker or lighter, I have a harder time telling it apart from the colors near it on the color wheel. I like using sports examples. For example, the Chicago Bears, to me, don’t wear navy. They wear black. The Vikings (usually) look like they’re wearing darkish blue, which is odd that I think that about my favorite team. And often, I can glance at a Packers game and think, just for a moment, that I’m watching the 49ers. But my best colorblind moment was when I saw somebody bring up a picture of the surface of Mars. Thinking it was a bad-quality picture, I said “Isn’t Mars red?” Because it didn’t look red, it looked green. But it was red. Oh, was it red.

3. Why do you like writing?
Because I’m not good at talking. And because good conversations are quickly forgotten, but well-written words can last forever.

4. What is your favorite family tradition that you can’t wait to pass on to Aric?
You mean besides Chinese food on Christmas?

I supposed we’ve already passed on a tradition with Aric’s name. Do sports count? Like how we always try to get to the first Twins game every year? Or being perpetually disappointed by the Vikings in December and January? Those are cool traditions.

I never know what to say for traditions. Honestly. All I hope is that Aric can look back on his youth with us and have happy memories. However those memories are formed, whether in our house or on vacation or somewhere else, that is what will live on. The traditions will take care of themselves.

5. You make beautiful babies. This isn’t so much a question, but would you like to comment?
You do, too

I think it’s the Eau Claire beer water.

6. The dinner party question: you are allowed to invite three people to dinner, living or dead. Who do you choose, and why?
I got excited about this question and immediately started typing. But then I thought of two more people I’d want to invite. And then my table got pretty big. I had to start making cuts. It became a hard question to narrow down. But I think I’m happy with what I chose. My first choice, as you can imagine, is pretty obvious:

Eddie Vedder. I think most people who know me would be able to give this answer for me. I’d invite him because I want to tell him how much his music meant to me. And because he’d be kick-ass after-dinner entertainment.

Once the first choice came, I thought that I’d better pick a sports person, as sports are my passion. I thought about Babe Ruth, as I know I’d have a good time if he were around, and we’d all probably get invited to a kick-ass after party at his house. Ty Cobb also got consideration, mostly so I could see if he was truly insane. But things could turn out poorly if he was, in fact, insane. And I could have gone with Kirby Puckett for my own personal memories. But then I decided that the memories and impressions about Kirby established in my youth could never be improved upon. In fact, they could only get worse. So no to that.

So I’m going with Jackie Robinson. Mostly, I want to find out exactly how much courage it took for him to jog out to first base at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, and every game after that. And to find out just how badly he wanted to fight every player who said something bad about him.

My third choice was where I started to have trouble. My first instinct was a historical figure in American history, a person like Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, just to talk about the issues that faced those men in the early days of our country. But then I thought about it, and realized that those men, and most of their contemporaries, have been exhaustively researched and I can find out all about them from their letters and other correspondence. I could have also gone with Ernest Hemingway, since he shares a birthday with me and I like his writing, but most of his stories are autobiographical anyway, so I can learn about him simply by reading him. So I threw a curve ball at myself.

John Lennon. I would ask him what it was like being the single most recognizable person on earth. I would ask him about writing songs with Paul McCartney. I would ask him how he would have lived differently had he known he’d be killed at age 40. And I’d ask him if he thinks the message from ”Imagine” still holds up 40 years later. Plus, the conversation between him and Eddie would be fascinating, an the after-dinner concert just got a hell of a lot better.

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Thanks, babe I’ll post my answers to Timmy’s questions on Thursday. Oh, and if you are interested, Tim writes over at The Sambard’s Lair, a “this day in sports history” blog. His writing really is amazing. In fact, his writing is what made me like baseball again. His passion for the sport comes out in the most eloquent way I’ve ever seen when I read his words. So yeah, go read his blog