It girlz and boyz

I was tagged by the lovely Shameka for this meme, so you know I'll be coming after you, too!

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

June 1998. I was teaching in a great private school, working on my masters degree, singing a lot professionally, living with my parents in Milwaukee, falling in love with all the wrong men (musicans....), and experiencing generally mild depression. Ya know--some good, some bad.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Work out (yay--did it!)
Knit (yay-did it and will do again)
Get gas for my car
figure out how to lower my cholesterol without meds
make couscous

3) Snacks I enjoy: Cheetos (crunchy, puffy, paws, twists, baked...any kind), peanut butter, lemony hummus on crackers, Carb Smart fudge bars, popcorn, ice cream, chocolate. (Well, chocolate is a way of life, not a mere 'snack.')

4)Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Endow a music school. Pay-off my immediate families mortages. Buy a great house in New York City, an apt. in Paris, and a house in Maine. Endow UNICEF. Endow some scholarships for children I know who will want to go to college. I'm all about endowments--gifts that keep on giving.

5) Places I have lived: Milwaukee (WI) and its suburbs, Oak Park (IL), Oberlin (OH), Rochester (NY), and Brooklyn (NY), baby!

6) Six people I would like to tag are: Tony, Amy, Eliza, Anne-Marie, Sukyong, and Nicole.

Random things?

1. I met my husband, Poem-man, on nerve.com--my name was 'startleme' if you're checking historical artifacts. To be more 'proper' I should say we met on salon.com since that's the more 'polite' site and the site he actually used, but umm..yeah...I was serially dating on nerve.com. 1b. If you ever meet my parents, don't tell them that--they don't know how we met. Yeeha!


2. Poem-man's older son just finished his first year at my beloved alma mater. I didn't pressure him into it or anything--I am way low-man on the parenting totem pole--but I do think it's super cool that he goes there and likes it. I highly doubt there's anyone in my graduating class who has a 'child' in attendance there-I'm just not that old! Zoinks!


3. I have an unabashed love for canned meats: Spam, Corned Beef, and Vienna Sausage. No--really, I love to eat them. They are the manna of my childhood with parents-being-not-from-this-country-but-another-country-where-it's-really-hot-so-they-ate-canned-meat. Eek!


4. Though I am a classically-trained-since-childhood musician (piano, viola, and voice), I am best-known among those who knew me in my youth as a Barry Manilow fan. Yeah, yeah, everyone can love "Copacabana," but I know all the words to "When October Goes" and practically tell you the chord changes to "Weekend in New England." No, no, I'm not really a current fan. I haven't been to Las Vegas to see him and wouldn't pay the $$$ to do so, but I would I would be someone's guest in a heartbeat! And tell me, when will our eyes meet?


5. I grew up in Milwaukee. No one ever believes that. I don't know if it's that no one believes that anyone actually lives in Milwaukee other than Laverne and Shirley or that I don't seem to be very M'waukeean. I have lost the accent, if I ever had it. I don't drink beer like a native. I HATE the Packers--well, all sports, really. But I know I'm from Milwaukee because I still stop from time to time and think about where Lake Michigan is so that I know which direction is east, (which of course screws me up in Brooklyn) and I am incredibly polite in that midwest niceties way, so there ya go. ("There ya go being one of those Milwaukee phrases like "oh, fer cryin' out loud.")


6. I don't have hair on my arms. Not even a little bit. Now here's the kicker: I DON'T GROW HAIR on my LEGS at all. Yup. Never have shaved, depiliatoried, or what have you. Ya, ya, I know how lucky I am. One person did ask me if I was upset that I couldn't even try to make a personal political statement about body hair, beauty, and female gender. Of course that was at the aforementioned alma mater...Woo hoo!

7. I don't know what 'meme' means, or stands for, or whatever...


8. I won't turn off the lights before I go to bed. I make Poem-man do it. Even if I wake him up to do it he does it. (Isn't he a good man?) I don't know what I did before I got married. I hate turning out the lights before bed--I think I used to sleep a lot with the lights on.

Thanks to Annie for tagging me. I'm late to this whole blogging thing, but maybe Jane and Tawana wanna do this crazy thing!