inkgrrl's inkblog

Today’s Friday 5 is Hoops:

1. When did you last feel you were required to jump through meaningless hoops to get something you wanted?

I had to fill out a ream of personally invasive paperwork to comply with my last contracting gig’s formal change of corporate overseer a week before the end of my gig, just to be able to complete that last week and get paid. Actually, the last three months of my time there were pretty much all a meaningless hoop that I was jumping through to get a paycheck – I wasn’t given anything to do as I was a short-term contractor so my name couldn’t show up on any projects or they wouldn’t meet the place’s twisted version of Six-Sigma compliance; my presence was simply to hold a req open so that HR wouldn’t take the headcount away from the group.

2. What kinds of hula hoop memories do you have?

Hula hoop contests with girlfriends that weren’t really contests – those memories are also associated with homemade Kool Aid and wax lips from the ice cream truck. Chasing a hula hoop with a stick in an attempt to figure out how the hell the kids in old engravings actually did it, while wondering what the point was. Laughing with grown women in their 40s who snuck out of the office to take hula hoop classes at the gym in the next building over in our office complex. Playing tug of war and chase with Angus as we made the best possible use of an old hula hoop left in our backyard by our house’s previous owners – he was only a few months old and would alternate between holding it his mouth as he ran and running through the hoop as it looped around and fell in front of him. I never learned how to chase a hoop with a stick, but I learned how to toss a hoop and have Angus chase it down.

3. How do you feel about basketball?

Fun to watch live (hate TV sportscasters), fun to play if I don’t have anybody tackling me when I’m going for a layup.

4. What do you think of hoop earrings?

Love ‘em, all good, the bigger the better.

5. What’s your favorite Whoopi Goldberg movie?

Oh that’s a toughie. The Color Purple, Ghost, Sister Act… I love her in about anything she does, so looking over her filmography at IMDB, it seems I have some catching up to do.