Meme of Four

This has been going around and I was reluctant to do it myself, but Gail over at the ever-beautiful website The Arizona Eclectic Webzine has prompted me.

Four Jobs:

I was actually a pinboy in an old 6-lane manual bowling alley underneath bar or Moose Club something-or-other once for a few weekends in my college years. It was the most athletically demanding work I've ever done. My grandfather had done the same thing back in the 1920's. I vomited from exhaustion after my first night on that job.

For many summers I was an usher captain at a significant summer music festival, where I saw and heard the New York City Ballet and Philadelphia Orchestra many many times as well as rock concerts and jazz festivals. My best pre-career job.

Restaurant Guitarist- fun but less lucrative than dishwashing.

Various registered nurse jobs, med-surg, geriatric psych, general ICU, and my favorite: telemetry.

Four Movies I could watch again and again:

Citizen Kane for the depth-of-field camera work, Farinelli for its historical-piece beauty, Jesus of Montreal for its modern retelling of an old story, and of course Repo Man for its contributions to existential philosophy and classical dialogue.

Four Places I've lived:

Woodstock (my parents didn't let me go to the festival because I was only 11 or 12 years old,) but it was and still is a lovely mountain village. Saratoga Springs, probably one of the nicest "towns" ever, with beautiful people, architecture, and a great summer scene. It is no random fact that James Howard Kunstler chooses to live there. The Adirondack Mountains were equally beautiful but somewhat miserable weatherwise and economically/culturally. And the Valley of the Sun, where I've lived both once as a child and now as a bigger older child.

Four TV Shows I'd love to watch if the television were not dominated by the young one:

Nothing specific, Food TV, the home shows, comedy, occasional snippets of (gag me) news or movie-channel stuff.

Four Vacation Places I have liked:

Quebec City is probably the most beautiful city in North America, in the summer that is, with its ancient walls and streets, and Boston is nice although I've never really "vacationed" there except when running in April. California beaches are very hip. I could vacation forever in Santa Fe but I'd go broke in the galleries.

Four Websites I visit daily:

bartcop.com, Newslink, and Eschaton have been my regular stops for many years now, and Atrios' blogroll is something I pick from all the time. I visit all the sites on my own blogroll nearly daily, and browse several online newspapers via Newslink similarly. The first "local" website I began reading daily years ago (and still do) is the venerable Heller Mountain.

Four of my Favorite Foods:

Fusion, like the Mediterranian-Southwestern-Asian things are happening all over now. Ethiopian, sushi, India, and anything of the fair-trade, slow-cooked philosophy of cuisine.

I grew up in a steak-and-seafood restaurant in New York. In the spring, the boats would harvest shad out on the wide creek that fronted the establishment; diners could watch out the big bay windows as the fisherman brought the fresh catch up to the dock. Minutes later we would serve up the roe.

My mother cooked home-made Italian, Mexican, and Chinese way back in the days before there were food trends. The explosion of micro-brews, regional cooking styles, and "fusion" gourmet cooking is the happiest of modern American cultural developments. In the kitchen there's little distinction between Jews and Palestinians, blacks and whites, immigrants and natives. It's all family and friends in the kitchen.

Four Places I'd Rather Be:

This time of year, one of them is right here, in my lovely little home enjoying the Sonoran "winter" with my spouse and The Young One. But I wouldn't turn down opera tickets, or some ski-lift tickets, or a chance to participate in a groovy cooking class.

Thank you, GailOnline for getting me to think about this. It was fun. I'd really enjoy reading about others, too. If they haven't done so already, I wonder if Enviro Hanky, Just Deserts, or even the ever-drooling demented goofball behind the obvious parody LiberalismisaMentalDisorder (no link, just because) would care to share.

Pssst! Pass it on.

Did anybody else read about Narnia walking out on the World Trade Talks?! Thanks to Vern for getting this out locally.

The news services that fell for it seem to have scrubbed their mistakes. I wish the people who own and work the major news outlets were only smart enough to admit how stupid they can be. The world would be a much better place.