While I'm thinking about my response to Amy tagging me on the top 10 movies meme, here's a quickie that I stole from Catherine:

• Post 3 things you've done that you don't think anybody else on your friends list who reads your web log has done.
• See if anybody responds with "I've done that." If they have- add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...)
• Encourage your friends to paste this into their own journal to see what unique things they've done. also - could you post it here, too...thanks.

1. Been one of the singers the first time a session of a state supreme court was opened with a singing of the national anthem (this one's my old standard).
2. Been in traction or outfitted in a body cast (both for me... recovery from a complete fracture of my right femur when I was 4 years old).
3. Walked on a beach on Grand Cayman Island.

Most of my friends in the blogosphere have been participating today in a meme that invites you to learn what your band name and debut album would be. I blame Amy for infecting me. :)

I have to admit that I spun the wheel again on mine, because the first one was just too random to even be amusing. My second try came up with:

Rich Villa Hotel's Dreamed It Would Be

[photo 'what you looking at !!' by Saleh AlKhulaifi]

Stolen shamelessly from Eeyore:

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be.

1. Who was your best friend? John Hancock. No, I'm serious. :)

2. What sports did you play? Well, according to the plaque that I have stored away somewhere, I lettered in varsity basketball my senior year but played no other sports. :) I was the statistician for the girls' varsity team that year.

3. What kind of car did you drive? A maroon 1976 Volkswagen Beetle with aluminum mag wheels. Oh. And fuzzy dice. It was unmistakable.

4. It's Friday night, where were you? During the fall, I was in uniform being trumpet section leader for the band. It's one of the things I actually do miss about high school. Once football season was over, I was probably at home. I can count the number of dates I had in high school on one hand.

5. Were you a party animal? *snork* Seriously. Do I even need to answer this one?

6. Were you considered a flirt? It depends on who you ask. In general, no way. I had my moments, though.

7. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Band. I played trumpet from 5th grade up, and I was section leader all but my first year marching.

8. Were you a nerd? What's this past tense thing you're using? But yes. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Cumulative high school average of something like 98.18/100 (we didn't do the 4.0 GPA scale thing). In my class that was good enough to get salutatorian. :)

9. Did you get suspended/expelled? Are you kidding? It got back to me years later that the principal actually delayed an intended policy banning backpacks by one year to allow me to graduate after he found out I really liked carrying a backpack. ("I just can't do it to him. He shakes my hand in the hall!")

10. Can you sing the fight song? Probably, but I'm not sure I'd get all the words right. I can play both the trumpet and baritone parts from memory, though. The baritone player was one of my best friends, and we would often swap horns for at least one iteration of the song. I also knew the silly chant used to the teach the snare part to the fresh meat ("Come to the table, ABC the goldfish, Come to the table, ABC the goldfish").

11. Who was your favorite teacher? Oh, I'm not touching that one. I can't pick, anyway. If I did, though, I wouldn't be able to go home again.

13. School mascot? Wildcats

14. Did you go to Prom? Nope. All that sinful dancin', you know. Actually, though, by the time I was a senior, it wasn't as much about that as it was that from every direction I was getting the message that I had to go. That pretty much by itself meant that I wasn't going to. Instead, I went to a multi-church-sponsored event specifically designed for prom refugees.

15. If you could go back and do it over, would you? Emphatically no. Does anyone ever really want to relive their teenage years?

16. What do you remember most about graduation? As we were lining up outside (minutes before it started), I was asked to sing the alma mater for the ceremony. I had to learn the words on the spot (I had been playing it every year since 6th grade and had the 1st trumpet part memorized, but I'd never sung it).

17. Where were you on senior skip day? Are you kidding? I was in school. A classmate of mine has shown up (in the comments below) and corrected my addled memory. :) The school's Scholars Bowl (basically a quiz bowl) team went to a competition in Tuscaloosa that year. I remember that trip very well (I drove one of the cars), but I didn't remember that it was on senior skip day.

18. Did you have a job your senior year? Yep. Worked as a deli cook/cashier at the convenience store next to the school from something like middle of my sophomore year until I left for college.

19. Where did you go most often for lunch? No one was allowed to leave campus for lunch.

20. Have you gained weight since then? Uh. Yes. *snork* :) I'm convinced that this is the reason why I won the "most changed" award at our reunion dinner.

21. What did you do after graduation? Right after graduation, me and my closest friends in the class went over to one of their houses and had a pool party. I'll never forget that night. It was the perfect endcap on my high school career. These were my "Scoobies" in school. Now if only I could remember who won that game of chicken in the pool... me and Chastity, or Michael and Samantha. :)

22. When did you graduate? May of 1993.

23. Who was your Senior prom date? No prom for me, and no date to the substitute function.

24. Are you going / did you go to your 10 year reunion? Yep. Went, took my wife, had a BLAST snarking with one of my best friends, wrote a post about it.

25. Who was your home room teacher? Kind of an anticlimactic last question, isn't it? :) I don't remember. They were messing around with how our schedules worked, so I'm not sure we had a traditional "home room" that year.

Even though she has already done this with me once before, Joyce came up with five more questions for me. :)

If you want to play:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your site with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions. And so on, and so on, and so on. Read more »

As requested by Geof, here are my responses to a set of questions/challenges that mostly resemble the ones he got from his friend. I say mostly, because I decided to mess with a couple of them and downright refused to answer one or two. *shrug* It's my site. :)

I'll tentatively tag Amy, with the understanding that her brain is totally involved in organizing PHE right now. Read more »

FINALLY I'm getting around to responding to Ashley tagging me for the "four words" meme. I fear it won't be as interesting as she hopes, but here goes:

1. frog - It's funny how growing up out in the boonies of northwest Alabama, you learn what these little guys sound like in large numbers, but hear just a couple and it takes you a minute. Amy and I were sitting outside SAK Comedy Lab, where Patrick works waiting for the show to start, when we heard a weird sound behind us. It actually took me a minute to figure out it was about 3 or 4 frogs. :)
2. blue - The color of the pants I was wearing last night when I managed to spill an entire soda on them, thus causing me to put them almost directly in the wash, with my Motorola RAZR still in the pocket and powered up. Doh! It's drying out now. The battery is probably gone, but the phone itself might actually be okay. We'll see. In the meantime it's back to my old Nokia for a while.
3. space - *shrug* I dunno. Something we actually look to have enough of this year for the people crashing here for Birthday Bash? :)
4. ruler - Uncle. :) Complete blank.

Since most of my friends have been tagged already, and I'm too lazy right now to come up with 4 interesting words anyway, I'm going to be a bad boy and not pass this along. I know. I suck. We'll all find a way to cope. :)

This one is actually a bit scary. I'm not the kind of person who tends to accumulate true enemies, but there are certainly people out there who could relate some unpleasant memories.

Stolen from Joyce:

If you read this, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be either good or bad. I promise not to come after you with a spatula, either way. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you.

I'm not going to put any explicit restrictions on what people post, but please be somewhat considerate of the other readers. :)

Shamelessly stolen from Joyce...

Directions: Type "(your name) is" , (with the quotes) into a Google search, cut-and-paste the first 10 responses that work. Just pull the answers right out of the excerpt google shows you, don't click the link and search around. The only rule is that each one has to start with "(your name) is".

Jeff is so wrong about this that I find myself shaking my head on this one.
Jeff is down! (I cheated on this one and had to look. It involves baby oil wrestling.)
Jeff is in a serious relationship with his boss Julia
Jeff is late, and interupts the class.
Jeff is also largely responsible for Newsgator Media Center Edition
Jeff is a remarkable talent making cool records
Fr. Jeff is experiencing rejection and betrayal from Fr. Steve; he is left out.
Jeff is the Primary Colorer at Coloring Outside the Lines.
Jeff is weak against fire!
Jeff is a contributing editor to MSDN Magazine, where he writes feature articles about Microsoft

This came from a friend of mine:

1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You'll update your web log with my five questions and your five answers.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
(3 - 5 are, of course, optional)

Here are Joyce's questions for me and my answers:

1. If you could learn any one skill instantly (like Neo in the Matrix), what would
it be?
Great question (and a tough one to answer). Most of the potential answers coming to mind are more like personality traits or habits than skills. Wait...got it. The skill I'd like to instantly learn more than any other is how to play piano. I learned to play the trumpet growing up, but I've always wished I could play something that would allow me to create both melody and harmony myself...preferably with the ability to sing at the same time. There are other choices that fill that bill, but I don't know of any that have the piano's ability to "fit" into so many different styles of music. No other instrument has the same ability to compel me to sing along.

2. What's your favorite color?
It really depends on a lot of things (mood being not the least of them), but probably most often either deep red or dark green. However, that brings up a funny story from college. Picture this shy, southern, painfully conservative geek kid who manages to end up with a thoroughly-feminist teacher from (I think) New York for second semester Freshman comp. The first day of class, she asked us to fill out cards with information about ourselves. One of the questions was: "If you could paint Denny Chimes any color you wanted, what color would it be, and why?" (Go look at the picture.) I knew I was in for a ride when she answered for herself: "I'd paint it magenta, because then maybe everyone would see it for the phallic symbol it is."

3. What's your earliest memory?
It's hard to separate my own memories from the stories I've learned about myself over the years. Pictures that I know are in a picture book back at my parents' house keep coming to mind. About the earliest one I can claim for certain as my own has to do with what eventually became known as my "red mountains". We built a new house when I was something like 3 years old. It's what's known as a "basement house", which meant that a lot of good old northwest Alabama red clay had to be dug up to build it. That dirt ended up in two big mounds in the yard, and they became favorite play spots for me. I remember being really upset when the machines came to move the dirt away.

4. What crazy thing would you love to do, but just don't dare?
Audition to become a professional studio backup singer.
4a. (added later) Why don't you dare?
A combination of suspecting that I don't have the pipes for it and that I wouldn't be able to make a living at it.

5. What would you do if you won the lottery?
Well, I'd take Amy on her dream vacation (I've heard several ideas...don't know which is her favorite...it probably involves Europe, as in all of it). I'd build the perfect house (which would probably have quite a bit in common with the Dilbert Ultimate House...it's not as silly as it looks). Definitely hire someone else to do the lawn work permanently. Then, I think for the rest, I'd just try to work out whatever investments were necessary so I could forget about working if I didn't enjoy it.