While I abhor most chain mails, I actually enjoy the questionnaire style emails where people fill in answers to short questions about themselves.  I got tagged from Amy in NH’s excellent blog and decided to play along.  Even if you’ve known me from high school, there’s definitely a few items here that will be new to you.

Things I was doing 10 years ago ~ October 17, 1998.

• We had just come back from our honeymoon in St. Lucia.  Sandals Halcyon Beach.  This pale blue Scot might have even had a minor tan.
• I was working at CCC Information Services in my first Quality Assurance job, verifying data warehouse information when we switched databases from Sybase to RedBrick.  We were also starting to begin to plan for the apocalyptic event known as Y2K.
• We had just moved to 1440 W Diversey before the wedding since the owners of our previous place at 640 W. Waveland were selling their condo.
• The Chicago Cubs had just been swept by the Atlanta Braves.  I remember this because a few people who had accepted to come to our wedding in Grand Rapids, Michigan never made it since it was a Cubs home game.  We had initially thought “Hey, our wedding is in October, the Cubs won’t ever be playing in October.”  Boy, were we wrong.
• I was playing in a Chicago Sports and Social Club floor hockey league with friends at Disney Magnet School.  I was probably also playing in an indoor volleyball league around that time.  Ah, the spare time one has when they don’t have kids!

5 snacks I enjoy eating

(NOTE - At least for the past few years, I've cut down immensely on snacking but when I do get the urge, there's no stopping it)

• Cape Cod reduced fat potato chips, one of the only non-flavored chips I enjoy eating, although French Onion dip doesn’t hurt
• ANYTHING with cheese, usually cheese by itself, and any kind of cheese.  I was born in Wisconsin, people, what did you expect?!
• Anything from the Hostess/Drake’s empire – Ho Hos, cupcakes, Suzy Qs, if it’s got a filling, I’m there
• Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough or Phish Food
• Celery with crunchy peanut butter

5 places I’ve lived

• Milwaukee – born there, native Cheesehead but NOT a Packers fan!
• Detroit – lived there from age 3 through college.  I had the pleasure of living within the city limits during the city’s darkest two decades in its 300+ year history.
• Peoria, IL – college years, obviously.  Could never have lived there sober.
• Chicago – The Best place I’ve ever lived.  I miss it to this day.  I’d also have to be a multi-millionaire to live where I’d want to live there.
• Decatur, GA – While it’s still in Georgia, it’s 5000% better than where we used to live (Gwinnett County).  It’s definitely not our final resting place but it’s a good stop-gap until Operation Move Back Up North commences.

5 jobs I’ve had

Instead of talking about my boring I.T. jobs, let’s take a look at Young James’ budding career

• Baseball camp counsellor and instructor – I went to Rich Martin’s All Star Baseball Camp the summer of my freshmen year in high school.  I returned the next summer as a camper but wound up staying the entire summer and became a counsellor.  I would continue to do this through my junior summer in college.  The camp started at Trenton State College (renamed something else now), moved to Rider College in Lawrenceville, NJ and eventually ended up at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY during this timespan.
• Busboy at Lochmoor Country Club – This was my senior year in high school job.  A group of high school friends worked here and it was my first union job.  Back then, minimum wage was $3.30 and we made a whopping $4.25!  Of course, part of those extra wages went right back into our monthly $25 union dues fee (I think it was Hotel and Restaurant Operators Union?  Tim V, help me out here).  We also had the pleasure of wearing green sport jackets, thus ensuring we’d never take them for our own use.  One perk was being able to play the golf course on Mondays when the club was closed.  It’s the only course I’ve played on where the fairway was nicer than most greens I played on at the time.
• College library, Bradley University – I was the guy who checked out books, set up Interlibrary Loans for students, and collected fines.  Of course, if you knew me at the time I would charge you a discounted fine, pocket the amount, and enter it in as Paid in the computer system.  Hey, I was a starving college student at the time.  People would always wind up talking to me anyway after they’d get frustrated with the inability to communicate with the mostly-Indian staff.  Hmmm, was this s precursor to every American’s customer service experience beginning in the early 2000s?
• Campus garbage patrol – It sounds disgusting but I got PAID, people.  All we had to do was empty the trash on early Saturday and Sunday mornings.  We didn’t have to clean up spills, didn’t have to clean puke and if a trash can was beyond disgusting, we could leave it alone.  For each dorm, we got paid for 6 hours of work.  When I became student supervisor, I got paid an extra 9 hours a day to make rounds in each dorm.  Basically I did 3 hours of work each weekend and got paid for 30.  Plus I got paid $30 a weekend to put people’s Chicago Tribune subscriptions in their mailboxes.  EASY money, man, easy money.

The last part of the blogs involved included tagging 5 other blogs to continue on.  While I won’t do that, feel free to pick up on this for those of you who read this and actually do blog.  I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did writing it.  I might actually expand upon some of these stories in the future.