Some facts about me! meme (or: procrastination)

Some facts about me! meme

Courtesy of Elsewhere. Thanks for the procrastination material!

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

I had recently moved to Melbourne and I didn't yet have a child. I was living in a flat in Elwood with a view of the sea with the man who was to become the father of my child. He was very bossy. We had a big stand-up fight outside the local supermarket once because he said no girlfriend of his was going to buy two-minute noodles and I said I wanted it, it was MY comfort food, and no one was going to tell me what to do. Wow, how surprising that we broke up. I worked as a marketing manager at an academic publishing company and I was secretly terrified they had given me the job by mistake, not realising how incompetent I was. This turned out to be partly true: I was very good at one part of my job and didn't have a great grip on the other. My boss at the time was too busy shagging a girl from customer service behind his fiancee's back to notice. My best friend from Adelaide decided on a whim to move to Melbourne and crashed on my couch until my partner kicked him out. Then he invited my 17 year old brother to come live with him in a share house near Southlands with the head chef from his work, who turned out to be a gambling addict and stole all their money. The two chefs ignored my brother (their kitchenhand) for a while because they were both in love with the 21 year old head waitress, a blonde from the Gold Coast, who was in love with my brother.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Magnum Envy (chocolate coated with mint ice cream)

2. Chocolate coated raspberry bullets

3. Haigh's chocolate almonds

4. Lindt orange filled chocolate

5. Gelati from Al Fresco's in Adelaide. Preferably mint choc-chip, hazelnut or chocolate. Banana and mango are also good.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world: (or really my favorite snacks 6-10)

6. Um ... all of the above when I'm being bad. When I'm being good, almonds and Carman's muesli bars, cut-up Granny Smith's apples and barbecue rice crackers.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Stop working and travel the world, writing immersion type journalism stories and other stuff. (What Elsewhere said. But probably would have to wait ten years, due to nearly-nine-year-old. Or maybe I could bring him.)

2. Buy two houses. A Victorian terrace in North Fitzroy (with a pool if I can find room in the backyard) and a beach house at Airey's Inlet.

3. Buy houses for my family. Big family, so a lot of money eaten up there.

4. Start my own publishing company. And hire good staff to do all the things I can't.

5. Make a fat donation to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. marketing manager (publishing)

2. deputy editor (magazine)

3. bookseller

4. public relations consultant (this one felt a bit too formal and poncy as a job title, I'm not sure why)

5. deli counter at Coles (worst. job. ever.)

Three of my habits:

1. over analysis (self and others)

2. general domestic slovenliness

3. judging other people's parenting and then feeling guilty about it

Five places I have lived:

1. Norwood, Adelaide

2. Golden Grove, Adelaide (actually Wynn Vale, but nobody really knows the difference - and it WASN'T MY CHOICE)

3. Carlton, Melbourne

4. North Fitzroy, Melbourne

5. Yarraville, Melbourne

Five people I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG!)

1. http://castironbalcony.media2.org/

2. http://halfheartedhack.blogspot.com/ (maybe it will lure her back onto the blogging wagon?)

3. http://eglantinescake.blogspot.com/

4. http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/

5. http://blakkatruminations.blogspot.com/

Eight things meme

Here is my response to the eight things meme currently doing the rounds (via Redcap)

Eight things I am passionate about:

my son
the rest of my family - my husband, my parents, my siblings
books and writing
water - the sea, anywhere else you can swim
independence - I HATE being told what to do and when to do it
travel - a new passion, but one I think about a lot
justice - from my son's classroom to the wider world
original thought and expression

Eight things I want to do before I die:

travel more
write a book and have it published
live by the sea
stay in the same job for more than a year
spend lots more time with my family
read loads more books
be published in The Age, preferably in the books section
live in New York awhile

Eight things I say often:

F**k (maybe I shouldn't, but I do)
Puppy (a pet name for F that I am supposed to not use, but I do, I don't even know why)
This is the last straw
This might be stupid, but ...
Hell yeah
Say 'please'
I'm not everyone else's mother, I'm your mother
If you do that/say that one more time ...

Eight books I've read recently:

Darkmans, Nicola Barker
Through the Children's Gate, Adam Gopnik
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moshin Hamid
Addition, Toni Jordan
What Was Lost, Catherine O'Flynn
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Asperger's Syndrome and Your Child
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Eight songs I could listen to over and over:

Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve
High and Dry, Radiohead (or anything on The Bends, really)
Been Caught Stealing, Jane's Addiction
Common People, Pulp
Today, Smashing Pumpkins
Living in the City, Stevie Wonder
How Soon is Now, The Smiths
She Sells Sanctuary, The Cult

(not terribly eclectic, me - and yes, stuck in the past)

Eight things that attract me to my friends:

No-bullshit honesty
A sense of humour
Quirks
Similar interests, particularly an affinity for books
A talent for original thought
The ability to stand up for what they believe in
Being themselves
Having all their own, natural body parts (unless they need an artificial limb or something I suppose)

I'm not a big tagger, so anyone who feels like doing it (and hasn't been tagged), let me know in the comments!