Today's meme is from Take 5 Tuesday:
5 of your favorite words -
Interesting question. It's one of the reasons why I chose this meme. I've never given any thought to any favorite words.
"Dude" will have to be one. I use it a lot in my comedic blogs and comments.
"Definitely" is something that I type up a lot. I seldom took a stand before blogging but I find myself doing it more and more. There are some things that just are.
"Girl" will need to be on the list. It's what I call Tia when it's just me and her.
I'll throw "Spartacus" onto the list for similar reasons. I've been calling Trey Spartacus since before he was born. I used to talk to him through the stomach wall.
Allow me to go off on a tangent here while I'm thinking about that time of his life. He used to get the hiccups a lot before he was born. It was the funniest thing to see Tia's stomach bounce over and over when he hiccuped. I can't help but smile when he gets the hiccups now because of the memories.
"Dammit!" It's my cuss word. I don't use profanity except for this word. Sometimes as a joke and sometimes for real. Tia and Trey have picked up on it and both of them say it. That's may end up being my legacy.
"Dammit! Here lies Success Warrior."
5 of your favorite quotes -
I can see a whole meme coming out of this but for today, I'm going to go with movie quotes.
"You wanna who the best is? That's him. Iceman." - Top Gun. My nickname when I was a cop was Iceman so this was a great quote.
"Scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla. Don't waste my time." City Slickers. I say it when something is far too easy.
"Don't waste my mother fucking time." - Heat. I don't use this one much because I'm not prone to dropping the f-bomb but it's a great line.
"No ma'am, we at the FBI have no sense of humor that we are aware of." - Men In Black. This is a great comeback when someone asks you if you're trying to be funny.
"Love you long time. Ten dollar. Cheap, cheap." - Full Metal Jacket (I think). Whip this one out anytime you're walking and someone pulls up beside you in their car to talk to you. Either they'll leave you alone from then on or you'll make ten bucks.
5 things you like about your job -
Talk about an exercise in gratitude.
I set my own schedule. I'm pretty much expected to be at work on Friday and Saturday night when stuff is most likely to hit the fan but the rest of the week is up to me.
I'm a civilian in charge of private property. That means nothing to anyone that hasn't been a cop. It's so nice to walk up to someone and tell them to leave because they aren't wanted. "What about my rights?" Yeah, you're Constitutional Rights protect you from the abuse of the government (at least they did before King George decided the Constitution was just a goddamned piece of paper). I don't work for the government. Buh-bye. "Exits are here, here, here, here, and here." - Aladdin.
No one is stabbing me in the back to get my job. Hell, I didn't particularly want my job. No one else does either. I had to threaten to sue the police department because of the harassment they subjected me to. We settled out of court and I moved on and it's such a relief.
I can leave at will if needed. It doesn't happen much but if Tia or Trey need me, I can come home or take time off. My boss very much understands the need to take care of family.
The General Manager of the casino is very nice. As security, he's not my boss, which is kind of a weird chain of command. We operate outside the general casino operations but I try to cooperate with him as much as possible. It's easy because he is very fair and very easy going. I check in with him a couple times a week to make sure we are on the same page but there usually isn't much to cover.
5 place you would like to live -
I'm not sure that I could live in 5 places at once. I've lived in dozens of places and have thought that in the near future it would probably be prudent to live in 2 places at once. I always thought it was weird being a snowbird but with energy costs going up, it's going to be cheaper to own two houses living in the south during the winter and the north during the summer than it will be to pay for heating or air conditioning. All that said, I'll see if I can come up with 5 places that I *would* live.
Oregon coast. Other than the fact that a tsunami is due to wipe it out any day, I really like the Oregon coast. It never gets too hot or too cold and I have nothing against the rain. All the green is a fair trade off for me. I can picture myself going for a jog through the woods with my lab each day.
London. Maybe just because that's where I went to high school and that part of people's lives seems to anchor in their heart. I loved being able to hop a train or bus and get anywhere, including Paris. Tons of theatres (plays, not movies) to attend and again, never too hot or too cold. Fog, schmog. Who cares?
Minneapolis (for a summer home). I visited there about 8 years ago and loved it. I was there in September and the weather was perfect. Wonderful places to eat, Ricky T and Sugar to visit with. Now, Bob and Mark. I considered moving there this year but Tia and I want to get into a better financial position first and then there's winter that must be contended with.
South east Idaho. Not because I would enjoy the location but because Tia flirts with the idea of living closer to her parents. Luckily, we have never acted on the impulse.
Montana. We've talked about Montana because it's the most likely state to succeed from the United States when things go bad. It's cold though. The coldest place in the continental United States is too often in Montana. Have I mentioned how I don't like the cold? I'd rather be hot than cold but I'm not going to move any further south than I am now unless it's just for the winter.
5 things you like about blogging -
Writing. I love writing. I don't enjoy rewriting at all. I have a book on how to get of debt on my computer which explains the technique Tia and I have used to get nearly out of debt (except for our mortgage). It explains the whole process very well but I need to rewrite 3 chapters to bring them in line with the over-riding metaphor for the book. It's been like that since last November. I have no drive to rewrite it. Blogs can be impulsive, sloppy, spur of the moment, completely wrong, and no one really seems to care. I've been writing for fun since the 8th grade when I wrote a super hero story to fulfill the requirement to use vocabulary words in a sentence. A sentence wasn't good enough for me. I tied all the sentences together and wrote a complete story for the semester.
Accountability. It didn't start this way but a great part of my blogging has become about me trying to achieve a higher fitness level. By putting it online, good and bad, I try harder. I don't always succeed. I took more time off from exercise than I *needed* to after my karate injury last year but that's life. I haven't hid it and I don't sugarcoat it. I got lazy. I also gained weight. When my pants started being tight, I refused to buy new ones. I decided I better get back on track. Now, I keep notes each day of what I've done and I put it out for the whole world to read. Somewhere between a couple hundred and a couple thousand people read it. That's incentive to stick with my plan. I have been spot on with my nutrition plan for 3 weeks and haven't missed workout (which is two a day except on Saturdays) in the same amount of time. Blogging keeps me more honest with myself.
Community. I have met a whole bunch of new wonderful people because of blogging. Essentially, I have been a hermit for the last 3 years. I go to work then I come home. That's it. I don't socialize with anyone. Tia and I tag-teamed on Trey until this year. Now he goes to daycare a few times a week so that we can spend some nights together as a family. Blogging has opened up new friendships for me. Mark, Cherise, Lynette, Mrs. Chile, and many others. I share comments or email with these people daily. They have become wonderful parts of my life.
Humor. I don't do it as much as I would like but I still get a chance to try and make people laugh with my writing. I haven't found a way to break through the suckiness of our political system or economy to make them funny every time that I write about them but I'm working on it. Laugh or cry, we have the choice. Part of the problem is that I believe there is a lot of violence headed our way in this country and it's hard for me to make that funny. I am going to try to see humor in other areas of life though and report them to you.
Experimentation. Every once in a while, I try to switch up my style of writing just to see what it would be like. I've been told that I'm a natural in dialog, "how to", and humor. Sometimes I like to stray from those areas and see what it's like in other areas. Sometimes it works out okay and other times it's crash and burn. Like I said at in the first answer to this question though, who cares? It's just a blog. I update 2 blogs almost every day. If you don't keep a blog, it might be hard for you to understand how hard it is to write 2 blogs a day that you think are worthwhile. Some of them are pure crap. Once a week on both blogs now, I usually put a video with limited words. Trying to write every day though is a wonderful exercise. Trying to write something every single day on 2 blogs is a challenge worth my effort. Sometimes I succeed and other times I fail miserably but if I never tried, there would be some very good and funny thoughts missing from this world.
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