me me me me meme

Thanks, Kate, for tagging me. As I was reading her answers to this awesome meme, I was just wishing to get tagged and wanting to do it myself. So I was well and truly chuffed when I got to the bottom and found my name there. Woot!

4 things I did 10 years ago:

1. I finished my degree (BA Hons in Philosophy) and won the prize for the top Faculty of Arts graduate at the Fall Convocation. Yes, I am proud to be a brainiac.
2. I moved to Vancouver for 3 months and lived with my friend, Dave, in a great apartment in a great area which has now become very hip. Main Street's star was rising in 1998, but it was nothing like it is now. However, the Locus had just opened and Dave and I spent an absurd amount of time and money eating and drinking there. I spent a lot of time crushing on the hottest chef there, nicknamed Serpico for his awesomely sexy sideburns. Although Serpico and I played a lot of eye hockey, I never got to nail him the way I so desparately wanted. Alas.
3. I floundered around a lot in Vancouver. It was a fun time, but I was pretty lost in some ways. I worked in a bakery, which was an ass-sucky job, and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Mostly I hung out and slacked. In retrospect, it was actually quite good for me - I'd never spent that much time at loose ends before, and thinking of it now, it really helped me to see that I could survive not being a superstar at life. That working for minimum wage and not being on anyone's radar was not the end of the world. (However, I did move back home and in with my parents after 3 months of that.)
4. I saw Modest Mouse and Built to Spill on a double bill. That was sweet.

4 things I did 5 years ago:

1. I said goodbye to Japan and moved home. It was so hard to do - to leave behind so many amazing friends and colleagues and students and come back to my hometown after changing so much after being there for 3 years. The reverse culture shock was so difficult - way harder than the culture shock of moving there in the first place. I came back with no clue what I was going to do for work, no clear sense of what our life would be like, no idea whether I would still connect with the few friends who hadn't moved away, not knowing if I would even want to live here anymore. Really I had no idea who I was in relation to the place I had lived for the vast majority of my life. If I was lost when I lived in Vancouver, I was completely desolate when I moved back here in 2003.
2. On the way home from Japan, I did a road trip with two amazing friends up the coast from San Francisco to Vancouver. We camped and hiked in the redwood forests, in the sand dunes on the Oregon coast, at Mount Rainier. It was beautiful and a good way to transition from Japanese life to North American life. Unfortunately, I was quite sullen the whole trip because they were both going back to Japan and I wasn't and because the reality of all of that was starting to hit me. The other notable thing about that trip is that I had never really spent any time in the States before, and it was really interesting. I spent a week with my sister outside San Francisco, and then another week travelling up the coast. There are certain things that are very different between the US and Canada, but so many things that are the same. So I was kind of tuned into that, but also just flooded with the weirdness of being back in North America again. I distinctly remember going to Whole Foods with my sister and just feeling like I was in paradise - so many things I had missed while living abroad were just there in ridiculous abundance. Real bread, good cheese, particular fruits and vegetables.
3. I started working in the job that has forever soured me on jobs. (Maybe not forever, but I'm definitely still in recovery.) In 2003, though, it was fun and exciting. I worked for a cool, young, politician and got to travel and be involved in high-level policy discussions. Little did I know that my eventual rising through the ranks would inversely mirror my descent into workaholism and debilitating stress. Never mind - in 2003, I had a good job that was interesting and new and paid well enough for me to start building a pretty awesome clothes arsenal.
4. We bought our awesome house in 2003. A few weeks after we moved in, my husband threw me a huge surprise party for my 30th birthday. We were so freshly moved in at that time that Manny had tacked up blankets for curtains and we still had boxes of stuff piled up all over the place. My dad had flown in as a surprise a few days earlier, and he and I went out for supper. When we came back home with a bottle of wine to continue our visit, I opened the door and saw about 40 pairs of shoes. I was completely surprised and it was so beautiful to feel so loved.

4 things I did yesterday:

1. Took my grandad grocery shopping. My grandma is laid up right now with a sore leg and she has trouble getting around at the best of times, so grandad is tagged with the shopping duties. When I was growing up, my grandad was very uptight and I never felt close to him at all, and that brought a lot of anger sometimes. I realized recently that he was likely depressed for much of my life and that's probably why he seemed so shut down. In the last few years, since they've moved into an apartment, he has really blossomed and become much happier. I am so blessed to get to spend time with him now - I can see how alike we are, and really enjoy that connection that is starting to grow between us. We did some running around yesterday, and on the way home, we stopped at Dairy Queen so he could get some Dilly Bars for my grandma to cheer her up. He wanted to buy me a box, too. Even though I can't really eat them (ok, I ate one yesterday and felt kind of gross afterwards and now I have 11 sitting in my freezer and I don't know what to do with them other than pawn them off on kids who come to my house, which I should make happen soon, because I really do like Dilly Bars and they will call to me as long as they're in there), I accepted his offer because it was so sweet and generous and I could tell he had planned it all along, even before I picked him up. Just by the way he asked me if I liked them earlier in the trip, and then with his offer as we were standing there in front of the cooler. I never thought I'd say this, but I wouldn't trade the grandad I have now for the grandad I used to want. Not for the world.
2. Walked with my dog in the sunshine, and enjoyed his company. Also swelled with pride as he played with a little puppy and acted like the mature dog he is, instead of like the shithead he was being for a while when he was going through his macho, dominant phase and didn't know when to stop. When he was playing with the puppy yesterday, they'd chase and wrestle, but then he'd stop and lie down and give her a chance to initiate things and build up her confidence. I just couldn't have been prouder of him, seeing him be all grown up and generous like that.
3. Made a veggie pad thai-type thing for supper using brown rice vermicelli, which are super delicious and I just found by accident in the Asian food section of Superstore. Realized I need to keep fish sauce on hand for further experiments of the Southeast Asian cooking variety. But it worked out quite well despite the lack of fish sauce.
4. Intended to do the following, but never got to it: meditate, work on the garden, do housework, do laundry, have sex with Manny (I fell asleep! I feel so bad! Sorry Manny!).

4 shows I love to watch:

1. Law & Order - any flavour. I love them all.
2. What Not to Wear - my fashion experiements of yesteryear are mostly behind me, thanks to Clinton and Stacey. Why did I ever think that flood pants were just the coolest of the cool?
3. House - sexy. curmudgeon.
4. Trailer Park Boys - just started watching this one, but how can you not love a show that contains lines like "He's just a shit-leopard that won't change his spots"?

4 things I love to do:

1. Bird-watch
2. Garden
3. Dance
4. Be with my nephews

There you have it, friends. I'm going to tag Spicy Sister , First Comes Love, shinejil at Sluggish Butterfly, and PJ at Infertility on the Brain. As well as my usual tag of anyone who reads this - just leave me a comment and/or a link so I can read your responses. What fun!