Chinese New Year's Eve

The year of the rat is upon us! And I love rats so I'm super excited about it! Actually it will make for an interesting lantern festival to see how many rat themed lantern floats they can make. Here's an example from a couple of years ago when it was the year of the dog. The big center "lantern" was of an aboriginal boy and his pet dog. Will he have a pet rat this year? Tonight is Chinese New Year's Eve and I'm home catching up on my movies and watching the American Idol Atlanta auditions. It's not very exciting, but as an introvert I don't mind so much. I actually went to my co-workers house last night for supper and game night so I've fulfilled my quota for extrovert time this week.
Today SQJ's daughter Bethanie--a member of my jr. girl scout troop-- sent me another one of those fun questionnaires since she knows that I like them so much and since I know the whole world is just dying to know more about me I thought I'd put it on the blog as well. I cut out some of the questions that are the same and some for space reasons.
1. What time is it? 8:57 p.m. on February 6th 2008
2. What's your full name? English--Jennifer Mae Reynolds Chinese-- Lei Jen Ni
3. What are you most afraid of? when I was a kid, like 5 or 6 until high school I had a strange vampire phobia, even though I'm pretty sure my parents didn't ever let me watch scary movies back then so I'm not sure where it came from. Thanks to living in Taiwan I've pretty much overcome my fear of doing something stupid and being laughed at. So, that leaves falling and breaking my neck while I'm in the shower and not being discovered until two weeks later when the RATS have started eating my naked body. That, and falling from somewhere really high. :-)
4. What is the most recent movie you have seen? In the theater, I just saw Cloverfield this past weekend, which was good, especially if you love J.J. Abrams like I do. I just recommend sitting further back than the 3rd row if you don't want to throw up. Since this week is a vacation I rented Amazing Grace, Becoming Jane, and Hairspray. All three were very good.
5. Place of Birth. Columbia, Missouri
6. What's your natural hair color? If you count from birth to age 12--blond. What's my "Natural Instincts" hair color? red!
7. Ever been a neat freak? I can hear my mom and dad laughing all the way from Missouri on this one. Sadly, I seem to work better with some degree of clutter around me. It makes me more creative.
8. Been in a car accident? yep, but not serious and unfortunately totally my fault.
9. Favorite day of the week? Friday because it's my day off!
10. Favorite restaurant? Taco Bell in USA/ Chili's in Taiwan
11. Favorite flower? Peony
12. Favorite sport to watch? In USA--college basketball In Taiwan--Rugby
13. Favorite drink? USA--Mt. Dew or Dr. Pepper Taiwan--Honey Green Tea
14. How many times did you fail your drivers test? Amazingly I passed it the first time but only by a few points. I actually asked the lady giving me the test if I was close enough to the curb when I was parallel parking. She was like, "you can't ask me that". Obviously she didn't know that it is the passengers job to check stuff like that.
15. What do you do when you are bored? Call my co-workers and talk their ear off, ponder the meaning of my life, mentally rearrange my furniture, think about all the things I should or could be doing instead of being bored.
16. What do you want to do before you die? Take a trip to England to visit any place relating to Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters. Buy and remodel an old farm house. Live in the same country as my family and friends. Work for someone cool like Beth Moore, Women of the Harvest or Passion Conferences (but I actually like my job now too!).

Congratulations, now you all know more about me than you ever wanted to!
I hope you all have a great "Year of the Rat"!