The Number Five is Alive!

Once in a while, I’m commissioned to participate in a meme. Memes can be a bit tacky, like many a forwarded email, the same ones somehow managing to show up over and over and over and over and over and over and over. On the other hand, they make it incredibly easy to put up another post. And so, here is yet another meme…

The Rules of the game are posted at the beginning
B. Each player answers the questions about themselves
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 4 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

10 years ago
Believe it or not, it was also a February 7th. I don’t remember it specifically. It was 1998, which means I was a high school graduate, but I don’t know if I would have had a job or not. Well, hey, you know what the cool thing about keeping a journal is? You can go back and check! Nope, it looks like I was jobless at that time, having quit my telemarketing job for Kirby vacuums the previous June. Judging from my February 10, 1998 journal entry, I may have been in Pasadena, California sometime on or very near February 7, 1998. I went to Disneyland and went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for the first time, although I had been to Disneyland at least a couple of times before that. My 9-year-old (!) little sister wouldn’t stop screaming on Star Tours, which kept me laughing all during the ride. How specific was this question supposed to get?

5 things on my to-do list today:
1. Go to physical therapy (already accomplished)
2. Grade at least 17 student papers (I’ve done 15 so far! Then again, it’s after 8 p.m.)
3. Read at least one or two chapters of Nabokov
4. Get the mail because the next flick from Netflix should be there!
5. Relieve myself as needed

5 Snacks I enjoy:
1. Don-Don’s
2. Toast
3. Snack foods that are kind of like real food, but generally considered low quality real food, not something you’d really eat for a meal, or at least not without eating more of it or with it, but something a little beyond what you normally think of when you just think of snacks (e.g. nachos; the week-old crap you find under a heat lamp at the gas station; value menu little burgers or something like that that you’d eat two or three of if you weren’t just snacking; fried miscellanea)
4. Breakfast cereal (good call, sis!)
5. Probably more don-don’s

What would I do if I were suddenly made a billionaire:
For crap’s sake, it’s kind of sad that the things I most desire right now wouldn’t be remedied at all by such a fortune. I might buy a better car, not that ours is bad. I’d buy a new computer for darned sure. I’d buy many books and CD’s. I might upgrade us to the 2-at-a-time option from Netflix. I’d pay off my fifty cent fine at the library. My foot would still hurt.

5 places I have lived:
1. Salt Lake City, Utah (yellow house)
2. Salt Lake City, Utah (different house)
3. Salt Lake City, Utah (apartment)
4. Salt Lake City, Utah (other apartment)
5. Atlanta, Georgia (waffle house)

5 jobs I have had:
1. Extra for a locally-produced direct-to-video movie (one long day)
2. Janitor at an elementary school (about a month)
3. Clerk at a video rental store (I think only about five or six weeks)
4. Pizza deliverer (about 3½ hours)
5. Graduate student teacher – doesn’t really fit the résumé does it? Or maybe it does all too well…

5 things people don't know about me:
It seems to me there is probably a reason people don’t know these things about me, but I’ll do my best. Of course, my wife already knows everything, but hopefully that doesn’t count.
1. Sometimes I have a hard time not laughing in serious situations because my brain will flash these ridiculous images at me, like I’ll picture someone else in the given serious situation (e.g. during class) suddenly being blown down the street by a strong wind, rolling down the sidewalk, screaming.
2. Sometimes I feel annoyed, embarrassed, or both because my brain will flash ridiculous images at me, such as when I’m in an office (back in my job days) or at school, and I suddenly picture everyone in the room bursting into song and dancing, all smiley and whatnot.
3. I am very interested in things that seem to have always been a part of human cultures, as far back as history shows. Because of that, I think both sex and religion are very interesting topics. I’m very interested in the psychology people (both now and in the past) have had about these things, given that they are such constants. They both seem to play a huge role in how humans see themselves and make sense of the world. They are often portrayed (at least now) as topics that are relatively abrasive to each other, yet views on one so often dictate views on the other. It’s fascinating.
4. The details of the most surreal experience I’ve ever had.
5. Nobody knows what I would have put for #5 if I had spent more time thinking about it and not given the answer you are currently reading.

I’m not really into the tag thing, especially since most people I know have already done this. So, if you haven’t done it, I’ll leave up to your good moral conscience to decide whether or not to participate.