Me-me-me-me-me (Meme, of course! About Me!)

When one is tagged by Abby, one rushes to get meme answers up, of course!

Her great blog was encouraging to me when I started, that there was an audience for all this stuff in my head, and I greatly enjoy finding her posts on her blog, email lists, ravelry, and all the other internetty places we run into each other. Some day, I may even get to meet her in person (Ohio - Washington. Okay, so not this summer...)

So, here we go ... on with the meme!

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

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

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago, my son had just turned 2, so we had a little party for him at his daycare. I was working at a tiny startup in Oakland called Cloudscape ... the software lives on in several incarnations, the proudest of which for me is Derby, the JavaDB that is in Apache. How cool is that. I'm tempted to sign up and download it just to see if some of my old tags and comments are still lingering in it.

It was around that time that we decided it might be a good idea to have another child. My daughter didn't show up for another year and a half. It was a great time, the energy of the startup was invigorating. The worst part of it was the trouble I was having with my wrists -- that turned out not to be carpal tunnel (thank goodness) but recurring tendonitis (not so good). Once I found the Kinesis keyboard, though, I was back to pounding the keys night and day. 60 hour weeks were "easy", 80 hour weeks were far more common!

I was knitting here-and-there, but with days so full, that was it. I'd just found Straw Into Gold in Berkeley, and wandered the "other" side of the store with its wheels and looms in perplexed amazement.

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

• Following up with a customer on the SpinOlution's warranty information (done -- added it to the blog, too).
  
• Answering this meme (in progress!)
  
• Packing orders (ok, so far, order, but the day is young!)
  
• Writing up the next issue of the All New Rhyme Times, and the old-style Rhyme Times.
  
• then I get to pick from the myriad list of possibilities ... tagging handspun for the Shepherd's Festival on Monday in Sequim (MacLeay Hall, 290 MacLeay Rd, 10 am - 3 pm); putting together a restocking order for Cushings; printing and stuffing Rhyme Times; finishing spinning a new Three Bags Full color; uploading some fiber club and handspun snapshots; vacuuming the carpets (hey, someone's gotta do it); start finishing my SpinOlution wheel ... I'm sure there's more, and it's most likely I'll end up doing something not even on this list!
  

3. Snacks I enjoy:

There's a bag of nut-and-fruit-crunch things in the pantry right now, they are nice, salty and sweet. Before that I had a bag of chocolate covered pretzels, but they disappeared *way* too fast, so I won't get another one of those real soon.

My DH keeps me supplied with Lindt dark chocolate bars, he's amazed at how slowly I eat them ... a piece a day, if I remember, and all is well with the world. He's also purchased fancier chocolates for me, my favorite are Joseph Schmidt truffles. Mmmmm. When I lived in Alameda, popping over to San Francisco to buy them fresh was a treat!

Peanut M&M's ... my car-summer-emergency-food. You know, you're on the road, and you just don't feel like fast food. Pop a few of those and keep going. Yay!

Beyond that I don't snack much ... probably because we have afternoon tea and bedtime rooibos, so I keep a nice supply of treats on hand for that ... scones (made by me) or the local bakery's danish for afternoon tea; cookies or biscotti (sometimes made by me, sometimes from the store) with bedtime rooibos.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Oh wow. You know, I just don't think of this. I'll never be one, so I don't tempt myself with the possibilities. Philanthropy, I hope. Letting myself explore more, I bet. I've had the great good fortune these last two years to choose what I do, albeit within the constraints I place on myself (I do believe customers prefer to get their orders in a timely fashion, rather than hear I'm off cavorting on a beach somewhere). A billion dollars would cause me to throw almost all those constraints to the wind, albeit in an orderly fashion.

There seem to be two choices ... use the money to fix some problem in the world, which would likely eat all the money up; or use bits and pieces of it to fund others' efforts, while living off of some of the interest. Heck, at 5% interest of 500 million, you'd still be seeing $250,000 a year, or $175,000 after the tax man got is cut ... which is *way* more than what I live on.

And, left to live with no concerns, I'd likely explore spinning more, weaving, take alot of classes, and write and teach more myself.

5. Places I have lived:

England, Massachusetts, Colorado, California, Washington. I've had the great good fortune to travel many places ... almost all 50 states (not Hawaii yet, though I have been to Alaska); Canada; England, Wales and Scotland, though never mainland Europe; Japan; and Brazil (the best place to beat winter blahs in February!!).

6. Peeps I want to know more about:

Now, you all know by now I don't tend to pass memes on. I always want to know more about Abby, but she's already answered these six questions so she's off the hook. Teyani, Amy, Melody ... if you're reading this, I'd love to find out more about you!

And if anyone else wants to chime in, please take this post as license to do so. Add a comment to this blog post to let me know!