{"id":214,"date":"2013-09-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2013\/09\/12\/havent-we-met\/"},"modified":"2013-09-12T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T13:00:00","slug":"havent-we-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2013\/09\/12\/havent-we-met\/","title":{"rendered":"Haven&#8217;t We Met?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>I&#8217;ve ordered some rain for tomorrow<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/512words.blogspot.com\/2012\/10\/welcome-to-pdx.html\">PDX<\/a> will be sunny but wet<br \/>And out of nowhere you&#8217;re suddenly there<br \/>And I say, &#8220;Yeah, pardon me, <b>have you filled out <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/1PPEclfxRbhLVhF-z8bbf-DnEP-KP-WyrqEdYp6GxHPQ\/viewform\">my 40th birthday survey<\/a> yet?&#8221;<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<p><small>(with apologies to the late <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/KCSEfz8VGis\">Kenny Rankin<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t worry, I&#8217;m only going to be nagging you to complete this survey for a couple more weeks.  And if you&#8217;re not convinced you want to participate, for whatever reason, please scroll past the form and read on.<\/p>\n<p><i>(scroll down to see all questions)<\/i><br \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/1PPEclfxRbhLVhF-z8bbf-DnEP-KP-WyrqEdYp6GxHPQ\/viewform?embedded=true\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\">Loading&#8230;<\/iframe><br \/><small>Embed not working? Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/40survey\">http:\/\/snout.org\/40survey<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Back in 2010, I ran a birthday art project called <a href=\"http:\/\/hotsheet.snout.org\/2010\/09\/ckls-wish-you-were-here-birthday.html\">&#8220;37 Postcards&#8221;<\/a>, in which I asked people to send me postcards from their home area and tell me why they lived there.  DeeAnn and I had cross-referenced a lot of city data before deciding to move to Portland; we weren&#8217;t constrained by jobs or family, so we could <i>choose<\/i> to live anywhere we wanted.*  I was curious why others lived where they did, and what they liked about their home areas.<\/p>\n<p>I scanned in each postcard as it arrived, and you can see all of those images under the <a href=\"http:\/\/hotsheet.snout.org\/search\/label\/37postcards\">37postcards<\/a> label on this blog.  I&#8217;ve received 59 so far&#8211;and counting!  So, to coin a phrase, <a href=\"http:\/\/knowyourmeme.com\/memes\/still-alive-portal-end-theme\">HUGE SUCCESS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been wanting to do another &#8220;birthday ask&#8221; for a while, maybe even make it an annual tradition, but I didn&#8217;t hit upon something that seemed interesting and worthwhile until now.<\/p>\n<p>I have never really been sure how I appear to other people, and though I know I&#8217;ve changed over the years, personality-wise, I don&#8217;t know if my outward appearance has altered significantly.  And it&#8217;s not really something people will tell you directly; very rarely do people look me in the eye and say, <b>&#8220;I think you are _____.&#8221;<\/b>  It&#8217;s something I have to suss out indirectly, by noticing their reactions to my behavior.  And I&#8217;m not very good at reading people.<\/p>\n<p>So, I figured, why not just ask people about where they met me, and what their <b>first impression<\/b> of me was?  Which would also capture how long we&#8217;ve known each other, which is interesting information, and totally quantifiable.  (Even though this is a completely unscientific survey, I still like to have <i>some<\/i> hard facts.)  It would be a weird question to ask out of the blue, but hey, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/It's_My_Party_(Lesley_Gore_song)\">it&#8217;s my party, I&#8217;ll poll if I want to<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just to be clear: <b>I am <i>not<\/i> fishing for compliments here.<\/b>  I&#8217;m very glad to see that at least a couple of people have given not-necessarily-complimentary answers, because they were <i>honest<\/i>, and that&#8217;s what I want.  I want to know if I seemed less than friendly when we first met.  I want to know if I did something especially good or especially bad.  It&#8217;s all signal, and I want the feedback.<\/p>\n<p>So.  If you haven&#8217;t completed the survey yet, it should only take a few minutes.  At least take a look?<\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/40survey\">http:\/\/snout.org\/40survey<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you can, please respond by the end of this month (Monday, September 30th, 2013).  Thanks in advance!<\/p>\n<p><b>*<\/b> <small>We did limit ourselves to the continental United States, because we didn&#8217;t want to risk any international quarantine issues which might prevent our cats from coming with us.<\/small><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"Curtis\" title=\"Curtis\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve ordered some rain for tomorrowPDX will be sunny but wetAnd out of nowhere you&#8217;re suddenly thereAnd I say, &#8220;Yeah, pardon me, have you filled out my 40th birthday survey yet?&#8221; (with apologies to the late Kenny Rankin) Don&#8217;t worry,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[31,80,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happybirthdaytome","category-lifebeginsat40","category-thisisnotaclue"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}