Tagged?

Shit, I've never been tagged before. Now what do I do? And I haven't been ignoring this. I have spent most of the time trying to remember what I was doing ten years ago. As someone who frequently cannot remember yesterday, this proved to be a bit of a challenge. I've never done a meme before either. Where does that name come from anyway? What does it mean?

And without further ado, I commence:

1. What was I doing ten years ago?

I had to go back and do historical research on this one. I discovered that I was married with two children, a dog, a boat, and a mortgage. I lived in a quiet little neighborhood on a lake in the land of ten thousand lakes. To celebrate our heritage, we all set off in a van (rented) to drive around the "Big Lake," a journey that took us many days where we saw the giant tin goose of Wawa, the amethyst mines of Ontario, picked the locks at the Souix, and discovered that it is much harder to climb up a 300 foot sand dune than it is to fall down it in the first place.

It was a happy time and we were whole as a family.

2. What are five things on my list to do today?

1. Complete this.
2. Continue working on the food list for my daughter's graduation party next week.
3. Decide on what to load in the car for Monday's trip up north (moving one box at a time).
4. Mow the lawn if the grass dries out enough and it doesn't rain again.
5. Call the IRS and find out how to use my refund to pay some of my estimated quarterly taxes for 08.

3. Snacks I enjoy?

Fie on you for mentioning snacks. Aside from the huge bag of crinkle cut dill & sour cream kettle chips tormenting me at the moment, I don't do snacks (unless beer is a snack).

4. Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire?

Hmmm, what am I doing now? Probably not much different except that I would form a foundation with most of it. The foundation would support reading programs in elementary schools, reproductive education and choice world wide, contribute to the nature conservancy, and take glider lessons.

5. Three of my bad habits?

I procrastinate. I don't exercise as much as I should. I spend too much time looking at the 365 Project over on Flickr.

6. Five places I have lived?

Duluth, Houghton, Aspen, the Twin Cities, Banff.

7. Five jobs I've had?

You mean like in a day? I have been fired from more jobs that most people will have in two lifetimes. This question needs to be qualified like as in "jobs that sound neat, but weren't" (private investigator), or "jobs found while hitch-hiking" (carpenter), or "jobs where you sometimes passed out but no one caught you" (late-nite radio DJ), or "jobs where you had to advise clients on which street drugs were most reliable (drop-in center director), or "jobs you thought were going to kill you" (railroad gandy-dancer), or "jobs you knew would kill you" (merchant marine on the great lakes), or "jobs where you were the highest worker" (lift operator on the continental divide in Canada), or "jobs where you got paid for doing the same things that got you fired from other jobs" (industrial engineer). Listing five jobs might account for a month's time or maybe a summer if I was lucky. Except for the last one that is. I did that for 15 years.

Other's on the resume include TV cameraman, TV talent, model, actor, ski bum, singer/songwriter, social worker, artist, IT department head, busboy, soda-jerk, longshoreman, computer consultant, and porn store desk clerk.

8. How did you name your blog?

I started the Lightening Strikes Twice blog after my wife was diagnosed with a particularly cruel and nasty form of cancer in 02. I thought that having one parent in a family with cancer should satisfy whatever deities are driving this overloaded bus, but I was wrong. Lightening did strike twice.

There. Now you know a little more about me, but memes are like little parlor games that merely serve as introductions or distractions to more serious forms of communication.

I was pleased and touched that Crystal would think of me. I follow her stories closely, but comment only once and a while. I am not sure who to pass this momentous task on to. I have a pretty small list of blogs that I read on a regular basis. I will mention them here. If they choose to participate it will be their decision, but that does not take away their importance to me.

I will take them in the reverse alphabetical order that they appear on my bookmark list. First is Os who I came across about two years ago when one of the bloggers I read kept referring to Half Nekkid Thursdays. Os maintains a site that is a clearing house for all kinds of folks who decide for whatever their reasons, to doff some, or all of their clothes and hang themselves up for the world to see. That personal desire to somehow do something outrageous, or sexy, or artistic really tickles me and Os is the fulcrum of the whole deal.

Next is Tess, the Urban Gypsy. She leads a multi-leveled life that is so ordinary and mundane in some ways and so dark, mysterious, and other worldly in others. Her dark life is full of doms and subs, bondage and beating, and the playing with of toys of every description. She pulls me in and treats me to a world that I know nothing of.

The Radish King takes me to other places too, but in a very different way. This multi-talented woman seems to shift between the worlds that we know and can place on a map and other places that exist in dimensions far beyond what I call home. She does this with her writing, her poetry, her music, her art, and her hallucinations. I never know what I will find when I go to visit her.

Lime, of House of Lime, is grounded in the here and now of family, food, traditions, and the trials and tribulations of just getting through the day. She has a wonderful quality of common sense and is able to share a piece of her world with us through her writings. One day it might be an essay kicked off by something that popped out of one of her children's mouths. Another day might bring us a recipe for a dish from a far distant land. Another day might deal with the very real trials of maintaining a marriage, a family, a life in these times we are in. Plus, I know she does memes.

And lastly there is Kristie of Fresh on Friday's. Now limited to one post a week, Kristie dispenses wisdom and goddess hood from her home in the southwest. A musician, a lover, a writer of uncommon wisdom, she has a keen eye that sees the world in a very clear light. Another multi-talented blogger who has been known to pick up power tools with little training and attempt prodigiously difficult tasks simply because she wants to know how it is done. A talent found in too few of us these days.

So, there you are.