Six Things in Six Years Meme

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee recently tagged me to do a meme of six random interesting things about me. The problem here is that A.) I'm not that interesting and B.) I've been blogging for three years, so I've been tagged with this meme or a similar one several times. I've already posted Seven Random Things About Me and embarrassed myself by listing Eight Dumb Things I've Said, Done, or Thought.

I decided after those two that any X Things About Me memes would require a twist. I'd need to find a unique angle. (Hey, blame the magazine article writer in me.) This is how I came up with Seven Things About the Dearly Departed Kodiak.

So, I was trying to find my angle when I realised that my age is divisible by six, giving me the magic number six. (What's that called again - a square root or something. Like the square root of my age is six, maybe I'm a math moron.) I realised that my angle could be to pin the revelations to certain years, each six years apart.

1. 1978 was the year Youngest Brother (YB) was born. I was convinced he was a girl because I wanted a sister more than anything in the world. (OK, maybe I wanted a pony more, but not much more.) I already had a little brother, why would I want another one? So stubborn was I in my insistence that I get a sister, I refused to believe that YB was a boy. My mother had to prove it me.

2. 1984 was the year I made a terrible decision that dictated the course of my social life for the next several years, pretty much guaranteeing I would grow up to be the poster child for 'Sweet 16 and Never Been Kissed.' I got the world's worst haircut. Words really can't describe it, but if I had to put a title on it, I'd say it was a French Poodle's Afro Mullet.

3. 1990 was the year I got drunk for the first time (at a keg party in a little house off-campus from Ohio University). Not coincidentally, it is also the year that I learned that light beer does not mean less alcohol.

4. 1996 was the year I was secretly married, but you already know about that. What few people know is that it was the year of my first grown-up job. I worked at a law firm as a general purpose IT person. It paid well, was on the 82nd floor of the Sear's Tower, and I had my very own office with a window. I started after Thanksgiving and within two weeks, I was beginning to field all sorts of calls from creditors. They were for my boss and sounded Very Serious. (I was an employee of the boss's consulting firm, not of the law firm.)

Shortly after Christmas, I learned the boss was under investigation for fraud. He called me into his office and told me I had to commit 100% to the job regardless of the investigation or avoid having the door hit my ass on the way out. I had a long weekend to decide and chose the door, which resulted in a awkward 'you can't quit, you're fired' sort of conversation.

A month went by with no paycheck, so I researched the law and used my law school education to draft a scary-sounding legal letter. After getting the letter, he called and left a message on my voicemail, saying 'About your paycheck, you'll get paid after I've had a chance to double-check all of your time records because everyone knows you're a fat-assed loser.' Any sting that he hoped to achieve by that comment was allieviated by the payched that arrived the next day via FedEx.

5. 2002 was the year we bought our first house, the little house in deep in the heart of Republican DuPage County. Since we were living in an apartment, we were able to arrange with the landlord to break our lease and move out a few weeks after the closing. On closing day, I was very excited, but I was concerned. It did not look like the people were going to be out of our house before the close. We were told that they couldn't move into their new place until they closed on our place. After the closing, we gave them a few hours to move out. Our plan was to order pizza and have a picnic on the floor of our new house.

The people were not moved out of our house when we were returned, so we went out to dinner. When we went back again, they still weren't moved out. They had a pool table and hadn't realised that you needed specialised tools to take it apart. Although our real estate agent told us that we could charge them rent, we told them just to get it out as soon as possible. Two days later it was still in the house, along with assorted other boxes and furniture.

Our real estate agent said we were having our good nature taken advantage of. She issued an ultimatum on our behalf - the locks are getting changed on Friday at noon, move it or lose it. When I arrived on Friday, I expected to find the pool table still in the living room. It was gone. The house was at last fully, truly ours and we had our pizza party finally, just five days late.

6. 2008 was the most difficult year to think of something to write about, but I'd say it was the year I first exercised my right as an Irish citizen to vote. I cast a ballot in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum this past May. This is also the year that I'm voting in a US Presidential Election as an ex-pat.