Tag, I'm It!

Camie tagged me to fill out this little meme. What she doesn't know is that I love to fill out these things! To me they're totally fun. What's more fun that writing about yourself? Whenever I read them on other people's blog, I'm always thinking, "I hope they tag me! I hope they tag me!" So when I read that Camie had tagged me "to torture me" I was like, "YEEEESSSS! .... SUCKA!!!!!!"

So here I go ...

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was smack-dab in the middle of my LDS mission in Santiago, Chile. Sometimes, just to myself, I call my mission The Emotional Rollercoaster of Doom so I was sure that if I looked back in my journal to see what I was doing 10 years ago I would surely find some gems. Here are some snippets from the July 4th, 1998 entry. I was with my favorite companion, Mary Kay Marshall, and had actually started to really enjoy my mission (you should see the entries from March or so ... talk about glum).

"Elder Cummings called tonight with his panties all in a wad because we got home late last night. Marshall was like, Listen dude, we NEVER get home late, only the times you have called - which is totally true." (I've mentioned how I feel about being micromanaged haven't I? Plus I like that I used the phrase "panties in a wad" while on my mission.)

"Turns out one of the people we were prepping for baptism is not only excommunicated, but he's been in prison, AND is a con-artist. Nice, eh?"

"We were so poor this week!!! We get $8.56 for each of us a week to eat 3 meals a day. Hello starvation. But Tuesday Marshall and I were so sad and all we wanted to do was drown our sorrows. So we went to KFC and combined all of the money we had left and bought a side of mashed potatoes and an apple pie to share. It was pretty sorry."

Here's a picture from my scrapbook from about this time. We were getting ready to go outside - it's winter in July there you know - and I had on 7 layers of clothing. SO COLD! I didn't take off my long johns for 5 months. This is the room we lived in, you'll notice how skinny it is, I think it was supposed to be a closet. Just cozy enough for two!


Ahh Mission Life. Good times, good times. Wow, I'm glad it's 2008!

5 Items on your to-do list:

1. Get a pedicure
2. Have a slurpee
3. Go to the pool
4. Go to the mall
5. Wash my car

(I think I have the hardest life of anyone I know.)

Snacks I enjoy:

I don't snack too much, but when I do almost any food becomes a snack food: fries, ice cream, cookies, candy, protein water, dried fruit, fresh fruit, ribs ... seriously, anything! Right now I am really into Special K snack bars - they're crazy Delicious! It'd probably be easier to tell you what snacks I don't enjoy. Hard Pretzels. Yick. No likey.

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

All you people that say that you'd keep your job if you were a billionaire have clearly never had an opportunity to realize how great life can be when you don't have to work. I will DEFINITELY not be working.

If I were a billionaire I'd buy some great luggage and gather an entourage to accompany me as I travel the world ... maybe twice. When I'm done with that, I'll publish my memoirs or a travel guide ... maybe both. (That's the great thing about being a billionaire with no particular agenda: "maybe twice" and "maybe both" are totally acceptable.) Of course, I'll have to spend a little time making sure I'm a success by going on the publicity book tour. But once the tour's over I'll be ready to snuggle down into one of my amazing homes for a while. If I get bored, I'll call up Warren Buffet and we'll go for cheeseburgers and cherry cokes and talk about things that billionaires talk about. Maybe we'll start a book club for Billionaires only.

Other things I will do:

• Buy books instead of check them out from the library
• FedEx my luggage when I go on vacation
• Have a chef
• Have a personal trainer that will come to my house. Maybe they will live in one of the wings of my house in case I want to work out at a moment's notice. We'll see.
  

Being a billionaire is just chock full of maybes!!!

Places I would live:

Without a second thought:

• New York City
• London
• Paris
• Sydney
• San Francisco
• Washington DC (of course)
  

With a little more consideration:

• Hong Kong
• Dubai
• Barcelona
• Prague
• Los Angeles
• Any quaint European places, like a farmhouse in Provence or something along those lines.
  

Only if circumstances (aka a husband) force it on me:

• The Midwest
• Idaho
• Salt Lake City
  
• Anywhere without ready access to 4 star restaurants, a museum of art, and an H&M or IKEA. (The true necessities such as a Wendy's and a Target are of course, non-negotiables.)
  

Jobs I've had:

My dad started us off young by having us kids clean his office on Saturdays. The older kids would sit around in the conference room for an hour eating Taco Bell and drinking sodas (purchased with money from the petty cash drawer) while us little kids would hang around idolizing them and thinking they were the funniest human beings to have ever lived on this earth. Then, sensing that we would do anything to gain their approval, they would con us into doing all of their chores as well as our own. As a 4 year old I was pretty handy with a vacuum, I'll tell you. It was here that I learned that if you can manage to turn a 15 minute job into a whole hour's worth of work you get paid a heck of a lot more money. This has been a lesson that has continued to reap rewards as I moved onto other jobs.

Some of which include:

• Assistant Innkeeper at a Bed & Breakfast
• An assortment of fast food/waitressing jobs
• Bartender (since I've never been a drinker, I always thought this was rather ironic. I said, "Here you go, hope that tastes like it should" a lot.)
• Accounts Receivable clerk
• Computer lab attendant
• Bookstore barista (again, ironic that I've never been a coffee drinker either. I suspect I served up a lot of really horrible coffee.)
  
• Shop girl at Ann Taylor Loft
• Librarian

I'm now a Product Manager, which is a fun job, but hard to explain to people. Generally I just tell them that I'm a librarian, since that connotes the appropriate mixture of smart and sexy that I always strive to achieve.


So that's it. And now for the moment you've all been waiting for ... the TAGGING!! Muwahahaha! I tag my brother Kevin, so he can provide a rebuttle (if possible) to the claims I made that he forced his younger siblings into child labor. And I tag Bryan, because he's just getting his blog started and needs a really good retrospective post to get things going. Even though it'll be depressing when he tells us that 10 years ago he was in Jr. High. And I tag Holly, who just moved to Oklahoma, and is about to have another baby, so we'll probably not hear from her until daughter #2 is three years old. Give us something good to remember you by, Hol!