A Time-killing meme

You know what I feel like? I feel the way I felt when I was about six, and it was Christmas Eve. Wanting so much to be tired so that I could go to sleep, which would eat up the hours until, ta-da, it would be Christmas morning!

I feel this way because R is coming tomorrow morning. And yet it's 9:13pm, and I'm slightly tipsy, from being at a department party, and the house is all cleaned and ready, and I just need something to pass the time.

So, a meme! Perfect, right? Even though I know it's a very oldie, I saw it today at it's probably me. And so I shall do it, in the name of Christmas Eve time-killing...

4 jobs I've had in my life
- hardware store clerk
- executive assistant
- nanny
- advertising department gofer

4 places I've lived
- Calgary
- Ottawa
- Chambery, France
- Lyon

4 favorite foods
- cheese
- mushrooms
- peaches (this week's Fruit of the Week)
- tarte au citron

4 places I'd rather be
- Berlin
- remote Ontario cottage on deep water with many, many trees
- Lyon
- Yorkshire countryside

4 movies I can watch over and over
- The Hours
- Truly Madly Deeply
- Lost in Translation
- Mary Poppins

4 TV shows I like to watch
- The L Word
- The National
- ?? I don't really watch TV - honestly. My TV doesn't even work at the moment, and I haven't thought about it in the month since I realized that. I download the L Word, and watch the National when the TV works...

4 websites I view daily
- Bloglines
- Environment Canada's forecast for my city
- Fastmail
- my family website at myfamily.com

4 computers I've owned
- some ancient Mac
- an expensive something-or-other PC
- A used Dell desktop
- Averatec laptop

4 reasons I love what I do
- I feel challenged, daily
- getting to know amazing students
- learning can be transformative (for people, for the world)
- flexible and self-directed

4 reasons I don't
- University/department politics!!!
- productivity pressures
- incestuousness
- unprepared students

4 books I want to read again
- Persuasion
- The Virgin in the Garden
- The Passion (Winterson)
- Beloved

4 books I never need read again
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (stolen from It's Probably Me - I wholeheartedly agree!)
- The Sufferings of Young Werther
- The Last Spike: The Great Railway 1881-1885
- Maria Chapdelaine
(These are all books I had to read in order to teach them as a TA...)

4 things that make me laugh
- dogs
- R
- my (long-lost?) best friend, S.
- Stephen Colbert

4 things that make me cry
- sad stories about animals
- The Hours (Every time I view this film, I cry. A couple of weeks ago, when I was feeling particularly distant and papery and estranged from myself, I watched it for the sole purpose of making me feel emotionally connected again.)
- leaving students
- The song "Changing Colours," by the Great Lake Swimmers, which happens to be playing on my CD player right now

4 things I'm going to do this year
- write lots of paper letters
- dance
- read fiction
- sort thousands of photos into albums, structures...