I've been tagged
Right about the same time bird flu hit Slovenia, I got "tagged" by the dreaded meme, thanks to Lilit. Of the two, I suppose the meme is preferable to H5N1. So here's my little spiel:
4 jobs that I’ve had
- whacking the heads off Atka mackerel (to collect the otoliths for later analysis in the NMFS lab in Seattle) aboard a Soviet fisheries research vessel in the Gulf of Alaska
- doing yard work and house/pet-sitting in Grosse Pointe, Michigan for Frankie Dietz (Frankie Edith [Dietz] Kerouac-Parker), who had been briefly married to Jack Kerouac in 1944-45
- working as a waitress in a fancy-shmancy French restaurant in Headington, Oxford, England. On my third day at work I came in with a huge shiner acquired during a weekend rugby match. I was not asked back. Pity. The pay sucked, but the free lunches were good.
- teaching pronunciation to international students in the ESL program at University of Iowa, and borrowing a group of students from Mrs. Johnson’s fifth-grade social studies classes at the local elementary school every Friday, so the ESL students could talk with native speakers and the fifth-graders could learn about other cultures and languages.
4 films I could watch again and again
- A League of their Own
- West Side Story
- House of Sand and Fog
- The Full Monty (especially the last scene…)
4 places I have lived
- in a student dorm in (then) Leningrad, (then) USSR
- in a mountain hostel on Planina na Uskovnici, Slovenia as a "brigadirka"
- in a berth on a (barely) floating factory trawler ship (the "Akademik Berg") in the Gulf of Alaska
-in a box stall converted into a studio apartment in a horse barn in Woodinville, Washington. Free rent in exchange for work. My window overlooked the manure heap I lovingly tended every day.
4 TV-series I like(d) to watch
- Desperate Housewives (okay, I admit it)
- The Daily Show (does that count as a series?)
- drawing a blank here. I don’t watch much TV.
- drawing another blank. I’ve met one of the stars of “Naša mala klinika” (and his dog), but I don’t watch the show. Can I get partial credit?
4 places I have been on vacation to (more or less recently:)
- Portoroz, Slovenia
- Columbus, Ohio (for the American Quarter Horse Congress)
- Bohinj, Slovenia
- Ajdovscina, Slovenia (agility training is like a vacation for me)
4 websites I visit every day
- Left I on the News
- Whatever It Is I’m Against It
- personals.salon.com
- nytimes.com
4 books
- Correcting the Landscape, Marjorie Kowalski Cole
- The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout
- Living with Bears: A Large European Carnivore in a Shrinking World, Boris Kryštufek, Božidor Flajšman and Huw I. Griffiths
- Utopistics, or Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century, Immanuel Wallerstein
4 favorite dishes
- beer
- chocolate
- anything I don’t have to cook myself
- a free lunch
4 places where I'd like to be right now
- from there to
- here and
- here to
- there
And now I am supposed to tag four more people, but virtually all the bloggers I know personally have already done this. So, casting about desperately for candidates, I’m tagging
- Lyra
- my Ara EFL students (who according to classroom rules are allowed to tell all kinds of wildly imaginative whoppers so long as they do so in English)
- Red Tailed Hawk
- Natural Explorer
4 jobs that I’ve had
- whacking the heads off Atka mackerel (to collect the otoliths for later analysis in the NMFS lab in Seattle) aboard a Soviet fisheries research vessel in the Gulf of Alaska
- doing yard work and house/pet-sitting in Grosse Pointe, Michigan for Frankie Dietz (Frankie Edith [Dietz] Kerouac-Parker), who had been briefly married to Jack Kerouac in 1944-45
- working as a waitress in a fancy-shmancy French restaurant in Headington, Oxford, England. On my third day at work I came in with a huge shiner acquired during a weekend rugby match. I was not asked back. Pity. The pay sucked, but the free lunches were good.
- teaching pronunciation to international students in the ESL program at University of Iowa, and borrowing a group of students from Mrs. Johnson’s fifth-grade social studies classes at the local elementary school every Friday, so the ESL students could talk with native speakers and the fifth-graders could learn about other cultures and languages.
4 films I could watch again and again
- A League of their Own
- West Side Story
- House of Sand and Fog
- The Full Monty (especially the last scene…)
4 places I have lived
- in a student dorm in (then) Leningrad, (then) USSR
- in a mountain hostel on Planina na Uskovnici, Slovenia as a "brigadirka"
- in a berth on a (barely) floating factory trawler ship (the "Akademik Berg") in the Gulf of Alaska
-in a box stall converted into a studio apartment in a horse barn in Woodinville, Washington. Free rent in exchange for work. My window overlooked the manure heap I lovingly tended every day.
4 TV-series I like(d) to watch
- Desperate Housewives (okay, I admit it)
- The Daily Show (does that count as a series?)
- drawing a blank here. I don’t watch much TV.
- drawing another blank. I’ve met one of the stars of “Naša mala klinika” (and his dog), but I don’t watch the show. Can I get partial credit?
4 places I have been on vacation to (more or less recently:)
- Portoroz, Slovenia
- Columbus, Ohio (for the American Quarter Horse Congress)
- Bohinj, Slovenia
- Ajdovscina, Slovenia (agility training is like a vacation for me)
4 websites I visit every day
- Left I on the News
- Whatever It Is I’m Against It
- personals.salon.com
- nytimes.com
4 books
- Correcting the Landscape, Marjorie Kowalski Cole
- The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout
- Living with Bears: A Large European Carnivore in a Shrinking World, Boris Kryštufek, Božidor Flajšman and Huw I. Griffiths
- Utopistics, or Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century, Immanuel Wallerstein
4 favorite dishes
- beer
- chocolate
- anything I don’t have to cook myself
- a free lunch
4 places where I'd like to be right now
- from there to
- here and
- here to
- there
And now I am supposed to tag four more people, but virtually all the bloggers I know personally have already done this. So, casting about desperately for candidates, I’m tagging
- Lyra
- my Ara EFL students (who according to classroom rules are allowed to tell all kinds of wildly imaginative whoppers so long as they do so in English)
- Red Tailed Hawk
- Natural Explorer
posted by Jean at 11:25 AM
7 Comments:
OK, you beat every meme I read till now :)
(especially with the first two places you've lived - and meeting Kerouac's wife!)
I also like naked men and chocolate, and horses.
Hey, who doesn't? But do you like them all together, or singly? I have this image of a naked man eating a chocloate bar while astride a horse...
you supply the horse, I'll bring the chocolate.
Patrick, you're on (though I'll have to borrow the horse, since I haven't got one of my own)...but who's going to supply the naked man?
Did you defect from the U.S. to live in the Soviet Union?
Elizabeth--
(sorry for delay in reply, I only saw this now)
Did I defect to the Soviet Union? No. I studied Russian language and Soviet politics in college, and traveled there several times from 1979-83, then was blacklisted for supporting human rights and peace activists and could no longer enter the country. At that point I shifted my interest and focus to Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), and emigrated here permanently in 1987.
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