February 2022 Q&A

Transcript

Hey Moonbeams, welcome to the February 2022 Q&A. We got quite a few questions in this time and I appreciate that. Keep them coming.

Please don't be offended if some of your questions, if I don't give that in depth of an answer, some of them kind of get into some rather personal topics, things that I will not really go into much depth on. And some of your questions can just be ones that I'm like, I have no clue. So if we get into that, no offense.

Amal asks, have you read the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes? I have not read that. I've read some of the stories and for Christmas a number of years ago, I got a compilation of all of the Sherlock Holmes stories that had appeared with illustrations in the Strand magazine.

And I've been meaning to do some reading on that. It's actually sitting on my nightstand right now. Just got to find the time to crack it open.

Olivia Cooper has a couple Valentine's Day questions and a couple non-Valentine's Day questions. So let's start with the former. Do you think Valentine's is overrated? I really have no opinion.

To each his own. I think that some people put a lot of importance on it. I think others don't.

And whatever is right for you and your partner is the right answer. I personally don't really care that much about Valentine's. I would rather, you know, try to show my significant other love throughout the year.

Do special things, have special dates, special time together throughout the course of the year, rather than seeing that day as something out of the ordinary or where something extravagant needs to happen. So, yeah, I don't attach a lot of importance to that specific day. Although it always was fun in school to have the Valentine's Day party when you were a kid.

Although you knew that, you know, you got a Valentine from everybody in the class, but you knew that that was only because they were required to give one to every kid in the class, not leave anyone out. So, but when you're 10, that doesn't really matter so much. Would you rather get a gift of chocolate or like a stuffed bear? Or would you rather have a gift of an activity like movies, a walk in the park, etc? I really don't care all that much about gifts that I receive or don't receive.

It doesn't offend me if I don't get a lot of gifts for like Christmas or my birthday or anything like that. I would rather have, you know, time with with the loved ones. I'd rather have a significant other show me love and affection through things they do with me, the way they treat me, pampering me a bit, that sort of thing, rather than through things that they buy me.

Non-Valentine's questions, also from Olivia Cooper. Do you have any favorite books that you'd recommend to others? Well, as we've established many times, I am quite the Lord of the Rings fan.

So The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, love them. I really like the cad file mysteries that Ellis Peters wrote. And gosh, off the top of my head, there's just a lot of historical nonfiction stuff that I've read that was really that I thought was really good and that I really enjoyed.

No real names coming to mind at the moment. My reading choices have changed a lot over the years. I used to read a lot more like, you know, opinion stuff, political, political type stuff.

And I've really moved away from that. I found that it wasn't making me happy. It was just getting me fired up and not adding anything to my life that I really valued or that it enhanced or improved my life.

So I have shifted away from those kinds of things. And are you tired of winter or do you enjoy it? I, you know, I just, I don't love being cold.

So I'm pretty much over winter just about as soon as it gets started. Roshni asks, how important would you say it is to be spiritually or religiously matched in a relationship? I think that it's very, very, very important, especially if you're in a relationship where you plan eventually to possibly have children.

Some of the things that cause the most conflict in relationships, money is the top of the list, but religious or political mismatches are pretty high up there. And especially when kids get involved, because it becomes a matter of, well, if both partners have very, very deeply held religious convictions about, you know, what it takes to get into heaven, et cetera, the right religious pathway, and then see their partner taking their children to something that they don't believe in or that they believe is leading them away from the truth, that can be absolutely heartbreaking and can cause a lot of strife in a relationship. So I do think that it's very important to be spiritually or religiously matched in a relationship.

Yeah. What do you consider to be your greatest achievement in life to date? Well, I have a lot of achievements that I'm very proud of.

Some of them are academic in nature. You know, I've had to study to get into the profession that I'm in and had to achieve, you know, some things that for me were quite significant to get there. And I'm very, very proud of those things.

Other achievements, personal mountains that I've climbed and overcome. Things, you know, and this is one where I don't really want to get into a whole lot of detail that makes it too personal. Things that have been very, very challenging for me where I've seen an obstacle, I've seen a weakness, I've met it head on and overcome.

What most attracts you to another person in terms of inner or outer beauty? Well, I'm not going to comment on my preferences as far as looks go, but I do have my preferences as far as looks go. Inner beauty.

Someone that's insightful, someone that is humble, someone that is kind and generous, someone that's willing to see the good in others and world and in me. And generosity. It's very important to me to be good to people and to treat people with respect and with love.

And I like to see that in another person. I like to see someone who's humble enough to admit their mistakes and strong enough to make the decision to learn, to improve, to change, and then actually follow through on it. Tina's questions.

Thoughts on NFTs. I really don't have any thoughts about them. I know very, very little about them, and I am just completely uninformed on that subject.

Sorry. Would you ever read more of Dracula like you did for the picture of Dorian Gray? Well, we're still still doing the picture of Dorian Gray.

I have a number of chapters left. I have had someone else also suggest Dracula for a future audiobook, so maybe I'll go that route. And do you have a favorite mythical creature? If so, which one? Oh, geez.

I mean, I am a vampire fan. Probably like them more than zombies or werewolves. I'm going to go with vampires.

And in addition, on that note, if you haven't seen Midnight Mass on Netflix, you definitely should watch it. Jen, sunrise or sunset? I really don't have a preference one for the other.

It depends on my day, what I have to do, what I have done, how I'm feeling. They're both very beautiful in their own way. Mary Live VOD asks, do you love to watch movies? Which ones do you recommend? I do like movies.

Well, as we've established, I'm a big Tolkien nerd. Shut up. And as I've said before, I really liked Oceans 11 and Oceans 13.

I'm really confused a little, you know, curious about why they skipped over Oceans 12, because that doesn't exist. But yeah, Oceans 11 and Oceans 13 were really good movies. So yeah, those were a couple of my favorites.

Now, let me think. I really liked the Sherlock ones with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. I think they did a fabulous job with those.

And, you know, and there's a lot of movies or shows that were aired on the PBS Mysteries series, and they occasionally do reruns of them. A lot of the ones that were really, really good seem to have been from the 90s. You know, Cadphile, Poirot, the Sherlock ones with Jeremy Brett were all really, really good.

So big fan of those, like to go back to those every once in a while. In fact, I have a lot of those that I've acquired over the years on DVD, because they didn't have them in Blu-ray or anything. So I take what I can get.

And, you know, just those are some of my comfort shows that I like to go to that are enjoyable for me. I know I'm going to enjoy it and just kind of, I don't know, take me back to simpler points of my life where I was able to, you know, because I have a lot of those of memory of those kind of things. My parents used to watch a lot of those when I was a kid and I would join them, you know, occasionally.

So they're tied to a lot of memories of my younger days and simpler times because being an adult isn't all that is cracked up to be. In some ways it is because, you know, I get to determine my own bedtime. So all right.

Coco Calypso asks, have you ever seen A Walk to Remember? If you have not, it's a tearjerker, but in relation to your faith and if you're a romantic, it's a movie worth watching. Definitely one of my favorites.

I saw it a number of years ago. You know, I, it didn't stand out to me as much as I think it did to you, but it's also just not my kind of movie. I liked the faith message.

I don't remember a whole lot of how the acting was, the scripting, anything like that. But yeah, I did see it and I didn't, I didn't dislike it. It just, you know, didn't stick with me as one of my, you know, this is one of my favorites.

It's spring break. You've just been informed. You get the time off work that you requested.

What are your plans or where are you headed off to? The answer of course is Disney World and that, that requires no thought whatsoever. What is your favorite point or part in the day, for example, loosening your tie, kicking off your shoes and relaxing after a long day?

Bedtime. Duh. I, and it's kind of funny going back to talking about being a kid.

You know, when I was a kid, that was like the point at the time, the time of day that I really wanted to avoid. You know, I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to go to bed.

And now it's like, oh my gosh, I get to go to bed. Blessed day. It's like my, it's like the best time of the day.

So, oh, how things change. And then for the record, now you have to try roasted peas, peach with goat cheese. It's no longer a question of if, but when.

Noted. X Insomniac asks, would you consider re-uploading your old videos that were removed from YouTube? There were some that had gotten me through some really difficult times and I'm going through it again.

All of my old videos are there. Some of them, you know, I had originally had a different style of thumbnail. And so when I switched over to the current style, all I did is I took those audios and made new videos of them using the new thumbnail style, but the audio is completely unchanged.

So all of my audios are there on YouTube. The ones that were there originally are still there. Luna Castro, do you think age difference is a problem when it comes to dating? It certainly adds some complexities when people are from different eras or different generations even.

Just like other things, you know, different primary languages, different primary cultures, racial differences. These all add complexity to relationships, but I really don't think that it's a problem that's insurmountable. It all depends on the individuals involved in the relationship, what they're building it on, how they're willing to understand and relate to one another, and how far they're willing to go in their partner's direction to meet them.

So when you say it's a problem, well, it's a problem in the sense that it makes things more complex, but a problem in that it's a no-go? No, I don't think so. What makes you feel super loved? Well, big love languages for me are physical touch, words of affirmation.

I'm a big gifted giver. I'm not, I mean, I like receiving gifts, but they're not as important for me as giving them. You know, when a person takes the time to really get to know me and understand me and and demonstrate affection to, you know, it's, it's, this is a cop-out answer.

When they demonstrate affection to me in the way that I understand it, looking after me, caring for me, physical touch, like I said, stating their love, those things really speak to me. What is the dumbest way you've been injured? Okay, so when I was like 14 or 15 years old, uh, I had a week-long trip, um, to a lake area a few hours away from where I grew up.

And we were camping all week and we spent some time, you know, doing hiking and, and, uh, mountaineering type stuff. And we spent some time boating. And, um, at one point we had pulled a boat up to the dock and I was hopping off of it to get on the dock and then, you know, hold the rope and pull the boat over a little bit closer.

And I pushed too hard off the boat and actually pushed the boat away, took a lot of my traction and fell down and smacked my shin really, really hard on the edge of the dock. And, um, to the point that my, uh, friend's dad had to load me in the car and drive me 45 minutes.