Friday, May 16, 2008

Tagged

Okay, so here's the thing. Blogless Troll, he of the dolphin paranoia, has tagged me. The way it works is, I have to answer a series of questions about myself. And then choose five others to tag, and they have to do the same.

Sounds innocent enough, right? Not so. The questions are designed to elicit personal facts that can later be used for extortion. I'm not so naive as you think, Blogless, my friend. No suh.

But, since I don't plan on running for public office in this life time, I'll play along. I'll answer the questions as though you and I, BT, are on the golf course and we're talking between shots, riding along in the golf cart, standing around the green and waiting on the tee.

What were you doing ten years ago?

That would be 1998. That was an interesting year for me. I lost my job in May of that year, my best friend died that August, and I went into rehab in November.

The job loss was due to alcoholism. It was 1998 when I hit my first real low, what the drunks in recovery refer to as a “bottom”. It was a severe personal crisis. I was an alcoholic and had pretty much lost control of my life at that point.

My friend that died, well, he wasn’t just any old friend. There were five of us that pretty much grew up together, met in elementary school and little league baseball, went through high school together. Went our separate ways after high school but always stayed in touch, some of us staying maybe a little closer than others, but still all very tight. We were pretty much like brothers, all the way into adulthood. I didn’t have any brothers in my family, but I was closer to these guys than their own brothers were, the two that had them. I'd known Wayne for almost thirty years, and when he died it shook me up pretty bad. I didn’t handle it well at all. I fell into an uncontrollable downward spiral, and I landed in rehab.

I didn’t stay sober that time around. I had to beat myself up for five more years and experience many more dark hours, but that year was the beginning of the end of that phase of my life.

Thanks for asking, I’m in a swell mood now.

Just messin’ with you, man. Life is truly good today. A vast improvement over where I was ten years ago. Like another life.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

Drink coffee
Go to work
Try to stay focused at work
Go to the gym and get at least 20 minutes in the steam room
Go to an AA meeting

What are some snacks you enjoy?

I’m with you,dude, on the Dove minis. I get the smooth milk chocolate with caramel. Yummy. Ditto the Reese’s miniatures.

Ice cream. Pretty much any kind, but pralines n cream, in particular.

Toaster Strudels.

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

I’m in with the boat crowd. Definitely, I would have a big ass boat. I would also have houses in a few choice locations. I’d have to travel around a bit to decide where to put down, but you can believe there would be a big ass house near a very large body of water, and one on a very large mountain.

Travel. I would travel. I’d see whatever struck my fancy, and I would fly there in my jet if it was too far to drive or ride a donkey.

I would also fund the most kick ass adult literacy programs in the nearest cities to my big ass houses. I would hire good people to run them, and I would pay them very well, and I would help the people who came in and stuck with the program and wanted to learn to read and write. They would have to read one of my novels in order to complete the program, of course. And then I would help them find jobs as editors.

That's a joke, just in case anyone tells EE on me.

What are three of your bad habits?

I’m too quick to assume someone is a stone cold stupid son of a bitch when they cut me off in traffic because I left enough space between me and the car in front of me not to be tailgating. They obviously don’t know who I am.

On occasion, not all the time but occasionally, I’ll sulk a little when things don’t go my way.

Might as well say it. Procrastination.

What are five places you have lived?

Stone Mountain, GA
Athens, GA
Macon, GA
Johnson City, TN
Greensboro, NC
Atlantic Beach, FL

That’s six, but what the hell. I’m a southeast gypsy.

What are five jobs you have had?

Peach Picker
Bus Boy
Bartender
Used Car Salesman
Techno Pimp

What were the last five books you read?

Killing Floor Lee Child
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe
Soul Circus George Pelecanos
Hard Revolution George Pelecanos
Shoedog George Pelecanos

Can you tell I’m studying Pelecanos? I started reading his books out of order, but I’m going to read them all and I’ll fall in line with the next trip to the library.

What’s playing on your ipod right now?

No ipod, but on the CD player is Freddy Jones Band

What five people do you want to tag?

I can’t think of five likely suspects that haven’t already been tagged. Robin would be one. She doesn’t have a blog but tough shit, she can start one with this. Gutterball. Bunnygirl. How about Brenda Bradshaw, has anyone tagged her yet? If I ask that question in Texas I'm sure I'd get a response. Ha, just messin' with you, Brenda. I think all my other blogger friends have already been tagged.

I don't know the code for putting links into my blog. I'm technically retarded. I'm sure y'all can find them, I have confidence in you. I'll drop by their blogs and let them know they've been tagged.

Now, hit it straight, BT.

14 Comments:

At 9:54 PM , Blogger Sarah Laurenson said...

Hey Wood,

Thought I'd pop in and do the link explanation. Here goes.

(a href="link_address")link name(/a)

But replace the ()'s with these brackets <>.

 
At 10:36 PM , Blogger fairyhedgehog said...

Ten years ago was clearly a very bad time for you. I'm glad things are so much better now.

I'd subscribe to your blog if I could find the RSS feed. Maybe Blogless Troll could tell us if it's there and I'm not seeing it or if you need to add it. I thought Blogger did that automatically.

Incidentally, has anyone tagged Sarah?

 
At 4:38 AM , Blogger Wonderwood said...

Okay, thanks, Sarah! I appreciate you putting out the helping hand.

Fairyhedgehog, that's a good question. Has anyone tagged Sarah? I just assumed BT had tagged her at some point.

If not, tag, Sarah. You're my remaining choice. I knew I was saving one for a reason.

 
At 6:26 AM , Blogger Robin S. said...

Hey Wood,

What a good read, honey. Love that phrase of yours - "southeast gypsy". Yet ANOTHER good one you will hopefully use in your novel.
Or the next novel.

I know what you mean with the going back and reading an author from the beginning. I did that with Ian Rankin - I wanted the background and the organic growth- both of his characters, and his writing.


Dammit. If I knew how to make a blog work, I might actually do it.
I have the skeleton of one - but I don't know how to place stuff on it.

You guys are killing me with this blog thing.

If I start a blog with this meme deal, will you please then be more regular with your blogging, Wood, so I don't come on here and see nothin' new, huh, huh?

So - yeah. I'll...

And in the meantime, young Sarah...

 
At 6:33 AM , Blogger fairyhedgehog said...

Do it Robin, make a blog! I'm sure there are people who can help you if you get stuck. And it would be so fascinating to read.

Go on, you know you want to.

Please?

 
At 8:28 AM , Blogger Sarah Laurenson said...

Thanks, guys. That's what I get for checking back here. Tagged. Damn. But Robin said 'young Sarah'. Hmmm. Must be someone else. ;-)

 
At 9:26 AM , Blogger Sarah Laurenson said...

It's done. Sarah's Meme Thing

 
At 6:24 PM , Blogger Blogless Troll said...

If I could hit it straight, what would I do with all those extra golf balls?

And Techno Pimp is the coolest job title I've ever heard.

 
At 9:47 PM , Blogger GutterBall said...

You are such a jerk! Ha!

But be warned: I am crazy about taking such dares, mostly because I do my noble best to live up to the letter of the dare without living up to the spirit of it. Mwahahah! Fear my whimsy!!

 
At 5:24 PM , Blogger Wonderwood said...

BT, thanks for the props. Techno Pimp has a little more panache than technical recruiter or account manager, and is actually somewhat accurate. I've had numerous consultants refer to me as their "pimp". I'm not proud of it, but hey, it is what it is.

 
At 6:37 PM , Blogger Robin S. said...

Hey, Wood.

What-cha doin'?

 
At 5:58 PM , Blogger Wonderwood said...

Hey, Robin. Believe it or not, I've been making some headway with the story. I've reached the pivotal scene, it comes after five action-packed chapters that build up to the pivotal. I'm finally having fun again!

 
At 5:20 PM , Blogger Sarah Laurenson said...

Hey Wood - my date's 12/16/83. Celebrating the big 25 this year. More than half my life. It's amazing and very surreal.

 
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