Nobody expects the inquisition!

I've been inquisited by blogless troll, who I think is perhaps Dave Barry's evil twin. Or at least Dave Barry's younger twin. They both live in Florida and are damnedly funny, but the Troll uses more foul words, I think. It's like he's a PG-13 blog and Barry's a PG blog. Anyway, the Inquisition Meme is something that surprisingly appears to thrive. You'd think people would shy away from something called the Inquisition. I wonder how long before the Holocaust Meme shows up.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. 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 the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Inquisition Meme

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago would be 1998. I was sitting around while my wife read books about how to ensure the gender of your next baby. Mostly old wives' tales and ancient Chinese lore. One year later our baby son was born. Apparently he didn't get the memo that he was supposed to be a girl. Other things I was doing ten years ago: started working for a tiny startup called "Rapid Logic" as marketing director. Embedded systems software for routers! Yay! Also, in 1998 we moved into our current house. Our almost-two-year-old son called it "New House" for the next three years.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Write up my notes from the United Way of America conference in Baltimore.
2. Have a meeting with my new boss to find out what our new organization looks like.
3. Reschedule my writers group originally scheduled for tonight.
4. Fill out my Adult Leader Registration form for Boy Scouts. I've already been through all the training, so I figure I should probably actually get credit for it.
5. Catch up on reading some of my friends' blogs.
   

What are some snacks you enjoy?

1. Popcorn. Real popcorn, not that microwave cancer corn. Real butter. TONS of real popcorn salt.
2. Fritos.
3. Gummi Bears. Sour Patch Kids. Any sour candy.
   

What would you do if you were a billionaire?
Retire. Travel. Write a lot. Fund youth centers in inner city areas and build youth mentoring and leadership programs. Family stability is the true way to lift people out of poverty. And I'm not talking about the ban-gay-marriage "family stability." I'm talking about parents involved in children's activities, kids learning leadership skills from other youths, kids being taught how to budget and save and read and write. There are many people doing good work in this area now. If I were a billionaire, I'd give them more resources to achieve their goals. Oh, and maybe buy a Premiere League soccer club. That would be fun.

What are three of your bad habits?
Only three? OK. Um. It's just us, right? If I tell you, you won't tell anyone else, right?

1. I bite my nails. Only the fingernails, though. I don't bite my toenails. That'd be gross.
   
2. I don't call people. I should be phoning my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister, my friends a lot more than I do.
3. I drum my fingers. I was a snare drummer in a fife & drum corps as a kid, and sometimes when I'm concentrating (or when my mind wanders), I'll realize my fingers are tapping out the cadence to Road to Boston or Grandfather Clock. I assume this annoys the hell out of people nearby.
   

What are five places where you have lived?

• Glastonbury, CT
• Berkeley, CA
• Las Vegas, NV (but only for a few months at a time)
• Seattle, WA
• Walnut Creek, CA
  

What are five jobs you have had?

1. Newspaper delivery kid. One morning a woman on my route at 5:30 a.m. brought me to the barn in her back yard and showed me a four-hour-old baby horse. Another morning a bird crapped right on my hair. Another morning my scarf froze to my lips.
2. Video clerk on the graveyard shift at Major Video in Las Vegas. One night we had two call girls come in with their clients. As the oldest employee on the shift (and possibly the only literate one), it was my job to restock the adult room. We could run videos on the in-store video screens 24x7, but we could only run Disney videos. Though Collette used to enjoy putting in the unrewound porno tapes to see at what point the customer stopped watching and eja... I mean ejected the tape.
3. Desk clerk at the rec sports facility locker room at UC Berkeley. I handed out locks. I washed towels. It wasn't that great a job. They assigned me to the men's locker room, though I had requested the women's locker room many times.
4. Bagger at a supermarket. I was in high school, and I quit my cushy job at CVS Pharmacy to be a bagger at a freakin' grocery store. This was before I found out that the entire management training program in retail grocery chains consists of repeating the following mantra over and over for one year: "Employees are bad and must be treated as if they are Nazi pedophile nosepicking shiteating smelly pukey scum." That job lasted nearly a month before I quit because the boss was a total bitch.
5. Corporate Citizenship professional at one of the world's biggest corporations. If I don't become a billionaire, this is the job I intend to keep the rest of my working career. Great company, great coworkers, doing good for the world, reasonable compensation. What could be better?
   

What were the last five books you read?
Oh Crap. How can I remember this? OK, here goes. I may be forgetting one or two in the sequence, but you get the drift.

• The Time Traveler's Wife. Or rather, I'm in the middle of reading it. Highly recommended. (Niffenegger)
  
• The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events #5). No, I did not read #s 1 through 4. (Snicket)
  
• The Tao of Pooh (Hoff)
  
• Hamlet (Shakespeare)
  
• I'm a Stranger Here Myself (Bryson)
  

What’s playing on your iPod right now?
Eric Clapton, "Hey Hey"

What five people do you want to tag?
Maria, Ch@ndy, J@na, Chumplet, and Collette (No, not the Collette from the video store. That was a different Collette.)