Ah, memes.

I am nothing like consistent when it comes to responding to these kinds of surveys, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I make my living by studying people's methods of self-disclosure. But I'll give this one a go--and I've still got another in the pipeline, from weeks ago.

This one is called

Some facts about me! meme

(Do these things get called "memes" because they're all about me & me?)

I've been tagged by Meli.

1. I'm meant to post the rules of the game here at the beginning, so here they are.
2. First, I answer the questions about myself.
3. Then, at the end of the post, I tag five people and post their names, then go to their blogs and leave them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read my blog. When you get to the end, you'll see how I've strategically not followed these directions.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was just finishing my first year of grad school. So, let's see: that means I had just finished all of my first year essays except for the incomplete from first semester that I didn't finish until mid-summer. By early June, I was in Chicago visiting my then-somebody. I believe that I'd finished my final essay (on William Wordsworth) the day before I flew from Indiana, where I was visiting my parents, up to Chicago. As I was trying to get that essay finished, my sleeping and eating schedules went haywire, as they sometimes do when I'm writing. One evening, around 5:45, I had to try to explain to my mother why I was taking a nap instead of working until dinnertime. Then, at 1:45 a.m., I was still at the computer, analyzing something or another about the long poem Peter Bell. In Chicago, we went to the city's huge Printers Row Book Fair. I bought a copy of W. Jackson Bate's biography of Samuel Johnson. I've now moved that book through four houses and still haven't read it. But I have it, for when the moment comes, which it will. That was the Chicago trip when we also went to a party at another first-year grad student's house, and some drunk guy revealed to me at the end of the evening what every attendee's funding level was within the U Chicago program. I wondered to myself who else had gotten drunk and handed over that information to a first-year grad student.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:
1. Toasted Italian fontina on good French bread.
2. Pie.
3. Toasted crusty white bread with butter and honey.
4. Black licorice.
5. Heck, I'll say it: Doritos.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:
6. Sainsbury's fabulously fruity yogurt.
7. Apples.
8. Toasted crusty white bread with butter and honey (or marmalade).
9. Rich tea biscuits or jaffa cakes.
10. Black licorice.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Pay off the debts and houses of everyone I know and love, trade in my sixteen-year-old car for a hybrid, and work out my parents' immediate retirement and travel dreams.
2. Upgrade to Canon's top of the line camera and lenses, get a field camera and a darkroom, and start traveling and taking pictures.
3. Endow an arts, creativity, reading, and writing center for kids and teens in rural mid-Ohio.
4. Stop ever having to ask whether or not I can afford to buy a book I want.
5. Start spending part of every summer in England (though even as a billionaire, I don't know whether I could afford to have property here), and start seeing my friends and my favorite small children in person a lot more often (especially since I'd get myself some hilly Ohio property with room for multiple little buildings--a house, a studio building for me, and at least one little guest house--and invite more people to come visit).

Five jobs that I have had:
1. Cashier, lifeguard, and assistant swimming teacher.
2. College writing center tutor.
3. Substitute legal secretary.
4. Automotive component factory worker (forklift driver; faulty parts rehabber; inspector; deflasher; small team supervisor; steel-toe-shoe-wearer).
5. College professor.

Three of my habits:
1. Drinking Gold Blend instant coffee first thing in the morning.
2. Reading in bed.
3. Taking on more tasks than I can finish and then feeling bad that I can't get more done.
4. (Bonus!) Taking deep, measured breaths when under stress.

Five places I have lived (here are the last five, working backwards in time, not re-naming places [namely, Gambier] that have popped in more than once, and listing places where I've lived for more than six months in a row--which is why my Indiana hometown isn't on the list, since the last time I lived there for more than six months was 1993--):
1. Cambridge, England
2. Gambier, OH
3. Rochester, NY
4. Ithaca, NY
5. Exeter, England

Five people I want to get to know better (a nice way of saying TAG!)---or in my case, five people I wouldn't mind hobnobbing with sooner rather than later:
This part of memes is the one that I always skip or modify. Today I'll modify (I'm not going to leave comments in everybody's blogs). If Boricua en la Luna, Notorious Ph.D., Nick, Carter, and Four Inches of Ego feel like playing, then I hope they will. But if not, I'm not going to be knocking on anybody's door asking why. At least not until it's legal for me to reenter the country. And even then, I won't be showing up to ask you about this meme thing.

Well, kids, that's the trivia from here for now. I feel as though I should be apologizing for having cut out lately on my attempts to offer deep thoughts. I haven't even told you about what it felt like to follow my new yoga instructor's directions last night, attaining some poses I've seen my beloved Brooklynite do, and to discover in the process that, um, I apparently have very open hips. I feel as though my brain is on overdrive here at the nearing-the-end point of my year away. By now I think you know what happens when my brain goes on overdrive.