Ahh… there’s nothing like the smell of fresh meme in the morning! Many thanks to Joe for tagging me.

1 — I was Little Miss Cheerleader, and I still have the hot pink trophy to prove it. Actually I came in 3rd… but who’s counting. I only quit cheerleading when the everyday practices (not even for competition, mind you) conflicted with my obligations to the environmental club. That was around the same time I traded in my Bobby Brown tapes for R.E.M., swapped my stretch jeans for extra baggy t-shirts and jeans, grew out my perm, and stopped trying to make my bangs look like Everest.

2 — During my freshman year of college I had to go through drug & alcohol awareness classes. It was all because my dopey friend thought the R.A. wouldn’t notice the 40 of OE he was drinking from a sock while talking to his girlfriend on the phone in the hall outside his dorm room. Yeah, that didn’t work out so well for him… or the rest of us, who were imbibing discreetly in the room.

3 — I have a fairly large & extensive collection of Minnie Mouse paraphernalia. I was 7, my grandparents lived in Florida, and it just stuck. That’s all there is to say about that.

4 — I snuck into a Counting Crows concert in London. The show was sold out, it was at the student union at the University of London — a space certainly no bigger than the Troc (and this was well after the Counting Crows were playing much larger venues here in the States). While my friend and I were standing around looking pathetic, this toothless old Brit said he could get us in for 20 quid, which was actually less than the cost of the ticket. We paid him, he snuck us up a series of staircases and through several back rooms. Just when we resigned ourselves to ending up in a back alley, he pushed us through this door that opened out to the right of the stage, about 5 rows back. Best show ever.

5 — I *heart* the self checkout at the grocery store. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a grocery bagger. (Queue up “High Hopes” by Sinatra.) I loved the way the scanner thing beeped and the satisfaction of getting a cart full of stuff packed into a few neat bags. In fact, my biggest pet peeve is still those baggers at the store who just throw your stuff in the bag all willy nilly. That’s just wrong!

I’m gonna buck the system and not tag anyone. Merry Christmas to all of you who might have gotten tagged. This is the last time you get off so easy.