Tagged – my first meme (Thanks Ron)

Ron over at “Life of a Young Widower” tagged me to fill out one of these get to know you memes. (How do you pronounce “meme” anyways??). This one seems to be going ’round the widow blogs mostly right now. I’ve always been a little, um, ambivalent about these. I think I filled out something like this once on a thread when I was a member of the YWBB. (Don’t bother looking for it though, as that post and all the rest were removed at my request.) Anyways, since annie was tagged and is filling it out, I figured I may as well go along too.

First, the rules:
1. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
2. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged and to ask them to play along and to read your blog.

What I was doing ten years ago – 1998
Good grief! Ten years ago? I can barely remember what I was doing last week or yesterday, let alone ten years ago…Hmmmm…
> Working too much, trying to fix the “Project from Hell”
> Thinking about a vacation at the Grand Canyon with our good friends from Kansas; this would require an upgrade from tent to tent trailer
> Still playing hockey, unimpressed with the label “beer league” though
> About two years into the renovation project that was our home (still not finished, if you must know)
> Living blissfully unaware of the misery and sadness that lay ahead

Five things on my to-do list today:
I live more in the moment. Maybe that’s why I don’t get much done??
> Get up
> Go to work
> Come Home
> Finish restaging my notebook
> Go to bed and watch a movie

Snacks I enjoy:
I’m not a big snacker (quiet, annie!) but when I do sample the odd thing, it’s probably from this list…
> home made banana split with soy ice cream, chocolate sauce and sprinkles
> organic ginger snap cookies
> scones from Starbucks (yeah, they have way too much fat)
> sunflower seeds (a necessity during long distance driving)
> nacho chips and salsa

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Ah yes. If money were no object, wouldn’t life be more wonderful?
> First thing I would do is quit my day job
> Second thing would be to spend some time finding that “perfect” location to settle down in
> Then start working on what I really want to do
> Build environmentally sustainable housing; little or no fossil fuel energy for heating/cooling and off the grid.
> Learn the old art of woodworking – by hand and without power tools (a shame I’ve spent as much as I have on electrically powered tools, isn’t it?)

Five of my bad habits:
Well, bad habits would be relative, wouldn’t it?
> Notwithstanding becoming a billionaire, I need to work on getting up and out of bed in the morning.
> I don’t exercise nearly enough (annie vigourously nodding her head as she reads this…)
> I can’t stay mentally focussed on a task to push it through to completion. Not very easily anyways.
> I eat too much of what I shouldn’t and not enough of what I should
> I waste a lot of time. Time I know is precious, yet I let it slip away sometimes…

Five places I have lived:
> North Bay, Ontario, Canada
> Sundridge, Ontario, Canada (Home of Mac Lang Chrysler – at one time the largest volume Chrysler dealer in Ontario)
> Hinton Trail/Elmworth, Alberta, Canada (near Beaverlodge – yes, that’s a real place name)
> Calgary, Alberta, Canada
> Caney, Kansas, USA (Funniest – and most true – bumper sticker I saw there: “Welcome to Kansas. Please set your watch back 50 years.”)

Five jobs I had:
> I’ve been a cribber and carpenter in residential home construction
> I’ve worked the order desk at an industrial supply warehouse
> I’ve been a collector for a finance company specializing in heavy equipment loans
> I’ve been an oil field winch tractor trailer driver
> I’ve been a chemical process operator in an oil refinery

Five people I tag:
As I mentioned above, this “meme” has pretty much gone all ‘round the widow blogs. I don’t think there’s anyone left to tag, so I’m going to borrow Pammy’s idea and just tag five interesting people:
> Inspiration for the first two comes from my favourite move “Fight Club”:
[Tyler and Narrator are discussing ideal opponents]
Tyler Durden: OK: any historic figure.
Narrator: I’d fight Gandhi.
Tyler Durden: Good answer.
Narrator: How about you?
Tyler Durden: Lincoln.
Narrator: Lincoln?
Tyler Durden: Big guy, big reach. Skinny guys fight ’til they’re burger.
> A random neuron firing gives me the next two names. From a conversation in “Bowling for Columbine”:
Michael Moore
Brian Warner (Marilyn Manson)
> The last one comes out of nowhere and is a fictional character: Roland Deschain of Gilead – Stephen King’s Gunslinger from his “The Dark Tower” series. If it has to be a real person, then it would be Stephen King.