More Than You Wanted to Know

I know that this tagging business went through the Land of Bikegeek a while back, but nobody got me. Recently though, my friend Heather from way back tagged me with the Meme of Fives, so here we go:

First, the background.

1. Post the rules of the game at the beginning.


2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.


3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names.


4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.


5. Create an arbitrary rule to keep with the whole fives theme.

What were you doing five years ago?
I barely remember what I had for breakfast today, but I do remember working the same job I have now, riding my bike a lot (but not as much as now—only 1828 miles for all of 2003), and bringing up baby (who was in preschool at the time.)

On the home front, we gutted and rebuilt our one and only bathroom—new floor with those cute little hex tiles, concrete countertop, new drywall and paint, hand-set tile tub surround, new fixtures and new cabinets. Great once it was finished, but I'd rather not ever have to bathe in our basement washtub ever again.

I was also having quite a bout with anxiety and depression, which has greatly improved in the intervening five years. Hope that's not oversharing.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Live through another bicycle commute to and from work.


2. Figure out how to merge GIS shapefiles of 17 counties and about 220 Zip codes onto a map of Wisconsin and make it look presentable in Adobe Illustrator.


3. Check on the garden after work.


4. After checking the garden, take the Big Dummy over to the Rack Lady's shop and talk to her about making a custom front rack for it.


5. Watch a Netflixed DVD of I Am Legend (though movies are not a typical Wednesday night thing.)

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1. Raspberries right off the cane;


2. Peas or beans right there in the garden;


3. Peanuts, preferably with dried apricots;


4. Sugar River Dairy vanilla yogurt with wheat bran, Grape Nuts and honey;


5. Graham crackers.

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. I have no point of reference for answering this question, which is okay, because


2. it ain't gonna happen,


3. So why speculate?


4. And even if it did happen, I'm afraid it would likely push me in directions I find unappealing,


5. Just like it would have done with Dietrich Bader's character in the movie Office Space, who reckoned that if he had a million bucks, he'd do two chicks at the same time.

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Procrastination (it took me weeks to sit down and do this list.)


2. Pontification.


3. Hoarding stuff, especially anything to do with bikes.


4. Taking on more projects than I can finish, which goes hand in hand with sometimes having screwed-up priorities and accumulating too much crap (see #3 above).


5. Nose-picking (and, apparently, oversharing.)

What are five places where you have lived?

1. In a house on the edge of a 40-acre wood;


2. In a high-rise college dormitory (UW Milwaukee);


3. Numerous Madison apartments;


4. Behind Mother Fool's, and


5. Currently in a 750-square foot bungalow on the near east side of Madison.

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1. Sign painter


2. Retail clerk (hardware store, Toys R Us, camera store and bike shop)


3. Seed corn sorter, dryer bin loader, detassling foreman.


4. Carpenter's apprentice


5. Graphics dude

Five people I tag (though I happily excuse anyone already tagged from having to repeat):

Tarik
Doug
Tex
Darwin
Emily

I'd also tag Chuck and Andy, but neither of them have blogs...