WARNING! WARNING! Long-winded post about absolutely nothing important ahead! Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Last week, CityStreams tagged me for a meme. I was in the final stages of getting ready for Annalie’s birthday party, so I didn’t respond to that one right away. And months ago, Comfortably Crazy tagged me for a different meme and I never did get around to doing that one. So I thought I’d try to knock them both out tonight.

Edited to add: How weird. I did not realize before I wrote this post that Jennie just happened to tag me for a very similar meme today! So I guess this first one is pulling double-duty.

First, CC’s 7 weird or random things about me…and She Likes Purple’s 6 (+1) random things you may not know about me:

1. When I was about 6 years old, I would sometimes pour dill pickle juice into a glass over ice and drink it. I did this solely because my cool 10-year-old friend Jenny did it. It didn’t taste that bad, but I might as well have just eaten a spoonful of salt and been done with it.
2. When I was 23 I flew across the Atlantic for the first time with my dear friend Erin for a two-week whirlwind tour of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. We stayed with friends of Erin’s, ate cheaply at bakeries, and recorded commentary everywhere we went on a little tape recorder. Listening to those tapes still makes us nearly wet our pants laughing.
3. I don’t like stuff in my Jell-O. I am a Jell-O purist.
4. I like climbing on things. If I’m walking down a sidewalk and come to a retaining wall, I walk on top of it. If the thing you need is in the highest kitchen cupboard, I’ll hop up on the counter and get it. When I visited the Rhode Island State Library once, and the librarian assured us that the stacks were open to the public, I headed straight for one of the spiral staircases so I could climb up it.
5. I’ve never been much of an athlete. I like soccer as long as I can play defense, but that’s about it. I think it’s because I am not very competitive. And I’m totally okay with that.
6. I love to play Centipede, but only if I can play with a trackball.
7. I used to hate apple pie. I always thought it smelled delicious, but I gagged on the texture. I wanted to like it, and would make my dad an apple pie (his favorite) for his birthday and try a piece, hoping every year that maybe my tastes had changed. Finally one year I liked it! I still can’t stand applesauce, though.

And now, CityStreams’s…uh…I don’t actually know what this meme is called. It looks like it maybe started out as a five-things list, but it got muddled. Anyway, here it is:

What were you doing ten years ago?
I was 23 years old, and working as a middle-school tutor in San Diego. Troy was halfway through a six-month deployment on the USS Mount Vernon, the first long separation of our marriage, so I was spending a lot of time emailing him and keeping our website updated with information about where he was, what he was doing, and ports the ship was visiting (it was a pre-9/11 world). It was also right about that time that I started running for the first time ever and loved it. Wow, that was ten years ago? Time flies.

What are five things on your to-do list?
Write thank-you notes with Annalie for her birthday gifts.
Read my library book before the due date.
Remember to take bracelet to Lynn’s house so we can fix it.
Send my best friend’s son Conner a very late birthday card and gift.
Send very, very, VERY late Christmas presents to about five people.

(That last one is in serious danger of moving from the to-do list to the I’m-so-far-behind-I’m-gonna-cross-this-off-and-forget-about-it list.)

What are five snacks you enjoy?
Cold apples cut into slices, cheddar cheese with Ritz crackers, popcorn with butter and garlic powder, a bowl of Cheerios with milk, and pretty much anything with sugar. Recently I made these crispy salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies and they’re heavenly—and I don’t even like white chocolate.

Name some things you would do if you were a millionaire.
Invest wisely, pay off high-interest debts, all those boring things. Donate a bunch of money to worthy causes. With whatever’s left I’d travel to visit friends and family I don’t get to see as much as I’d like (i.e., anyone who doesn’t live in Omaha). I’d buy a new living-room couch, and a king-size bed. And I’d hire someone to clean my house and fold my laundry.

Name some places you have lived.
In a trailer court in Irvington, Nebraska; the Florence/Minne Lusa neighborhood in north Omaha; Smith and Abel North Residence Halls in Lincoln, Nebraska; Camp Luther in Schuyler, Nebraska; in San Diego (East County), California; the Sandy Hill neighborhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; near Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach, Virginia; one block from the south edge of the ASU campus in Tempe, Arizona; St. Mary’s County in Maryland.

Name some bad habits you have.
Staying up well past midnight even when I have things to do and places to go the next morning. Leaving laundry in the washer and dryer for days. Not returning phone calls right away and then forgetting to call till days later. Interruping people in mid-sentence.

Name some jobs you have had.
Baby-sitter, pet-sitter, library page, assistant at a neighborhood after-school program, Imagination Crew member at Omaha Children’s Museum, assistant teacher with before- and after-school programs, summer camp counselor, Resident Assistant, middle-school AVID tutor, homemaker, stay-at-home-mom.

I’m supposed to tag some people, but I’m going to be lazy and say, if you want to play consider yourself tagged.

First the bad news. Emily Mandell, the little girl whose story I linked to a couple of days ago, has been diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive, malignant type of tumor. She and her family need continued prayers and good thoughts.

The good news is that so many people visited Emily’s blog and were moved to donate that in the span of 48 hours $15,000 had been raised to help the Mandells. This is wonderful, but medical bills are expensive, and this family has a long journey ahead.

Read more about it here.

As originally planned, our vacation last month to visit Mom & Tom (Troy’s mom and stepdad) in South Texas was going to be bookended by quick trips to OMSHville and Dallas. Our good friends Bill & Sarah moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area about a year ago, and we were really looking forward to seeing them and their son B., who was in Annalie’s playgroup. We also had plans to get together with Jennie of She Likes Purple, whom I’d met and become friends with after I started blogging last October.

After Troy’s dad died, our plans changed. We had been looking forward to our visit with Mom & Tom for a long time, so having to leave after only one day, on top of everything else, was quite a disappointment. So we made sure to arrange our plans so that we could still go back to Dallas for the weekend before heading home. We figured if nothing else, it would give us a couple of days to decompress from the craziness of our week in Omaha.

Despite the fact that I was sick with the worst head cold I’ve ever had, it was a wonderful weekend. It started out with perhaps the cutest reunion I’ve ever seen, when we walked into Bill & Sarah’s house and B. and Annalie ran full-tilt into a hug while they each shouted the other’s name. Sarah and I pretty much melted on the spot and you’d better believe I kicked myself for not having the camera ready.

We would have enjoyed just sitting around, drinking coffee, tallking and laughing with them—and we did do that—but we also managed to fit in the Dallas World Aquarium, Taco Cabana, and a half-dozen trips to a really cool neighborhood park. Sarah and I sneaked off one afternoon by ourselves for coffee and dessert and ended up browsing around some antique shops, which we both love to do. It was so good to see our friends again, and we’re already looking forward to the next time.

We also managed to fit lunch with Jennie & Kristie into our weekend. (Since Jennie’s husband Mike had to work that day, Kristie came to lunch with her.) Before I tell you what this internet-meet-real-life experience was like, let me tell you that my cold was at its worst that day. I was horribly congested, could barely breathe, and was completely distracted by the fact that I had to constantly blow my nose just to relieve the pressure. It was plain awful, and I was in a bad mood because of it. My much-anticipated meeting with this blogger whom I admired so much was going to be ruined by a stupid cold. Grrr!

Of course you have guessed what I am going to say: that Jennie and Kristie could not have been lovelier. We talked and ate lunch and then moved on to a bookstore across the street to chat some more in the cafe over coffee and tea. We talked about our families, jobs, what kind of books we liked, having kids, college, crafts (I showed them how to make an envelope from a magazine page), blogging, and who knows what else. I love meeting internet friends. So far, it’s always been a good thing.

Seeing old friends and meeting new ones in Dallas was the perfect way to end our Texas trip. (Jamie, you’d better be free next time we’re there!)

See the rest of the photoset Dallas - Feb 2008 on Flickr.