I always like to see Cee’s interesting questions and answers for her Share Your World Challenges. She also has some really great photography challenges going on every week. Here’s my response to the challenge for week 27.

What is your favorite month of the year? I really had to think about this one for a while. It depends on my location. Here’s my perspective from living in SE Texas. I really don’t like the summer months. From May until at least September, it’s just too damn hot, muggy and buggy (pesky mosquitos!) to enjoy being outside at all. The winter months from November- February are’nt usually too cold, but then we have a lot of really dull, dreary, rainy, and still muggy weather. The days when the Northers have blown through and the skies are clear and bright blue and the air is fresh and crisp are beautiful, but there aren’t enough of them.

I do like the fall, the weather is starting to cool off again where it’s nice to spend time outside and there’s Halloween to look forward to. I also love March-April. The weather is still cool, the air is fresh and clean, the plants are all starting to grow again and I look forward to checking my ‘garden’ every morning. I look forward to seeing the flowers start blooming. Lots of my neighbors let the bluebonnets take over their yards.Texas wildflowers are just stunningly beautiful in the Spring! I guess my favorite month would have to be March. For all the reasons I mentioned for spring, AND we have St Patricks Day to celebrate in Surfside! 🙂

Irish pirates

Do you drink coffee at all? I’m not a big fan of coffee. I don’t really see what the big deal is all about. I can’t understand the admiration for all the expensive, fancy drinks at places like Starbucks. I almost never drink coffee at home, I usually wake up and have a cup of hot tea and then drink iced tea all day long. When I’m on the ship, I’ll drink coffee. Just because it’s there.

What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)? I worked for my father around his rental properties and on the boat. He paid me $3 per hour. He’d have me clean up between tenants, paint, plumbing (unclogging sinks and toilets), pulling weeds and taking care of the plants, etc. During school breaks, he would take me out fishing with him and I would cut bait, bait the hooks and help gut and ice down the fish. I got out of that as soon as I could!

My first ‘real’ job was down the street on the party boats. I got hired on as a ‘galley girl’. I could only go out on the weekends. We made 2 trips a day. I would tend the galley selling drinks and microwave sandwiches. When nobody was interested in food, I would help the deckhands baiting hooks, cutting bait, untangling lines, getting fish off hooks and putting them up on the ice for the passengers til we got to the dock. Then we would filet the fish for tips and clean up the boat at the end of the day and get it ready to go out again in the morning. I had another job washing dishes at a little Greek restaurant down the street after school too. I kept busy. 😉

We lived across from Dons Dock on the finger bay.

List:  If you play video/computer games list 5 games you like? I don’t play many games on the computer. I’m not very good at games where you have to be quick. 😉 I do like a couple of them. One of my all time favorites is a game I used to play with the crew on one of my old ships ‘the Performer’. If I remember right, it was called VGA Planets. It was cool. The goal was to ‘take over the universe’. You chose which alien race you wanted to play as. Each one had its own special abilities. You started out from your home world with certain assets. So many spaceships, so much population, so many cities, etc. You chose a strategy to carry out your goal of conquering the universe. Trade or war, shifting alliances with the other players, etc. It would take us a day or so between moves when the controller would roll over the computer so we could make our next move. A game would usually last an entire hitch (maybe more). We worked 5 weeks on, 5 weeks off there. 😉

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? I’ve been on the ship at work since the end of May, so not a lot happening with my life here. I am grateful to still have a job since so many in this industry have been laid off already with the plunge in the price of oil. I’m grateful that this type of work allows me more time off than most so I can spend time doing the things I really enjoy. I’m looking forward to getting off here soon (tho not as soon as next week) and attending a blogging workshop in Costa Rica. I’ll spend a couple of weeks exploring down that way after the class.