meme-a-lamma-ding-dang

Audrey was nice enough to tag me for a meme, and I need to stick a post out there anyway, forcing myself not to go an entire week of not posting again. I'm supposed to post the rules at the top, and I had highlighted and copied them to do just that when I decided to just not do it. I'm not going to tag anyone at the end anyway. I treat it more like a Myspace survey that all your friends get when you post it as a bulletin. They can do it or not, and so can you.

What was I doing ten years ago:
As of this date, ten years ago I'd lived in Knoxville and been married for about three weeks. I was working at a brewpub, now closed, though the original is still open in Clarksville. Momma was about four or five months pregnant with Big Brother.

Five snacks I enjoy:
In honor of the new job and the fact that it sadly makes up much of my diet these days, I will give you my five favorite things that I snack on there.
-grana padano-a hard Italian cheese similar to parmesan(sort of) though I'm not sure if ours is really Italian or the same thing produced elsewhere, though knowing the owners it'll be as close as they can get. I take the vegetable peeler and shave off a nice flat piece
-lamp chop-has to be rare. I've noticed a certain love/hate relationship I have with lamb and realized it most likely has to do with rareness. This is probably also the rarest snack as lamb is expensive, and we try not to overcook it, and when it is overcooked no one really wants it.
-haricot verts-thin French green beans. We steam them just a bit so that they're perfect for salads. I love them cold with nothing but bean, though a quick toss in a saute pan with some butter and salt would be nice too.
-bread pudding-ours has dried cranberries and is made with fairly big hunks of the baguettes we use. One day I grabbed what I thought was a bite of bread pudding and got a mouthful of chunk of sugar. It was a bit much, but I ate it anyway.
-prime rib-we cook off three or four a day, and at least one is sliced for sandwiches. We reheat them when we need to make a steak sandwich using a sautee pan and a little au jus and demi glace. Often there are little chunks of the steak still there after finishing the sandwich, or I could just admit that sometimes I save myself a bite.

In the real world I am:
way more neurotic than people realize

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
My source for the tag doesn't say Five things, but Audrey put five. If someone would be kind enough to contact the meme authority regarding whether Five should be added to this line I would appreciate it.
-travel-probably the very first thing I would do is decide with Momma where we want to go as a family and then invite some friends with kids and go there and do stuff. If I had the money I would travel my ass off.
-help out some family and friends
-I want a loft downtown and a house just north of downtown, assuming after all the traveling we haven't decided to move elsewhere
-open a restaurant
-after setting up my children to be as financially independent as they want at a certain age I'd start finding good ways to get rid of the excess. No one needs that much money.

Five jobs that I've had-
-security guard-for three years, my personal record for length of time working for a single company, matched only by the pizza place
-dishwasher-do you have a Darryll's in your town? I hated that damn job. They use more random dishes than any place I've worked. So many plate sizes and bowl sizes and glasses for desserts and boats and crocks and ramekins, and the place was huge, and it turned out the general manager and the accountant were getting busy which has nothing to do with the story
-junior counselor-at a christian youth camp in western Wyoming. It was one summer and all I earned was the experience, but it was worth it, hearing people talk about driving over Gyp Crick, archways made of antlers, learning to drive stick shift driving up and down the driveway of the ranch family I spent weekends with
-kitchen manager-I thought I'd earned this job at the aforementioned brewpub, but as the GM had pointed out at some point, I was generally a bit of an ass and spoke my mind much too often. Those weren't her exact words by a long shot, but it is an accurate enough version. I was KM at the pizza place for quite a while.
-cook-the thing I do. I'm not a chef and don't generally like the title. I don't like the idea of referring to someone as "Chef" and don't plan to. I really just think it's silly, like people correcting you if you forget to refer to them as Dr. Douchely instead of Mr. Douchely

Three of my habits:
-chew my fingernails-I actually quit once, many years ago. I had nails for some time and even had to clip them on occasion. Then I started again for some unremembered reason.
-I still yell too much, though I'm really working on it and am doing it less and less
-smoke-I still enjoy smoking. I know how bad it is and that I should quit. I'm quite aware of all of that thank you very much.
-speaking of smoking, a fourth habit-when I finish writing a post I go out and smoke before coming back in to edit and post the post.

Five places I have lived:
story time childrens. This almost seems familiar, so if you've read it before you can read ahead in your book while the other children read along, or you can read along with everyone else, or you can just lay your head on your desk until we're done.
-Atlanta, GA-technically south Dekalb but the mail said Atlanta. Born and raised until one fateful evening when I got drunk at a boy's house and let a girl talk me into leaving for . . .
-Charlotte, NC-attended the pride parade within a week of moving there, had an apartment with mostly high school kids, washed dishes at Darryl's Restaurant and Bar
-Rock Hill, SC-after my "friends" sold and/or ate my stash of acid instead of selling it to get me out of jail I made new friends, one of whom was a cook at Darryl's and needed a roommate to live in a tiny shack
-Stockbridge, GA-back to Georgia for about three month and we were so ready to move back to Charlotte when a friend called needing a roommate
-Knoxville, TN-my favorite of the bunch. Ya'll come see us some time.

What do you want others to get from your blog:
I don't know quite what to say here. In some sense I blog for myself and write what I feel like. In some other sense I do understand that I'm presenting a certain something that is me to the world, and I even edit myself to a small degree out of some respect for the variety of readers I might have. I like the idea of making friends with people from hither and yon through the blog. Also, Robin Williams sucks.

And I changed my mind. I'll tag Franklin who in less than a week has gotten linked from me twice.