One of my personal favorites is to just make random hilarious crap up; practicing bird watching, backflips or other random things. She'll get a laugh out of it before you answer a bit more seriously
Ditto. I'll literally look her dead in the eye and say in a completely neutral tone of voice "I like to watch paint dry. It's really fun."
She'll just give me this look like "wtf are you talking about dude"
and I"ll just go on "Yeah, blue & green colored paints are pretty fun to watch. But my all time favorite is pink."
At this point, she'll either roll with it and say "Oh yeah, I bet you do" or "Oh wow, really?? So do I!"
If she does this, you got a fun little banter going.
Other times she'll just laugh. In which case I'll just continue on "wbu? What do you like to do for fun?"
And now you've got her talking about herself again.
I actually like to use this strategy with a variety of questions. Particularly those which I see as tests (such as "how old are you?").