5 Things About Me

Andrew Flusche (the Virginia law student who writes the very helpful blog, Legal Andrew) tagged me for the "5 Things You Didn't Know about Me Meme." Since I'm not firmly ensconced in blogger culture, I had to look up what it is.

Here's what I gleaned:

• "Meme" refers to socially transmitted information, beliefs, or behavior. Wikipedia has a long entry on the topic.
• Internet memes are the jokes and videos and other stuff that circulate and circulate. Bloggers sometimes intentionally get memes going by posting questions that they hope other bloggers will pick up and answer themselves. There's even someone who keeps track of them in the Daily Meme, and he tells you a lot more about memes here.
  
• This "5 Things" meme has been going around for over a year. The deal is you list 5 things about yourself that your blog's readers are unlikely to know, and then tag 5 other people to do the same.

It's something like a chain letter (and I don't pass along those!), but this is supposed to build community, rather than ward off a curse and/or bring the sender a million bucks. I enjoyed reading Andrew's 5 things and I like community, so I'll give it a try.

1. My partner and I just adopted a dog from Pointers from Oz.
2. I play alto sax in the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. I wish I were a better musician -- but I don't wish it hard enough to make time to practice regularly, so I muddle through.
3. I volunteer for the Youth Tutoring Program and love it.
4. I enjoy rowing (Center for Wooden Boats) and kayaking (Moss Bay) on Lake Union.
5. I read widely. I just finished Julie Powell, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (thanks, Jocelyn) and have bookmarks somewhere in Bill Bryson, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education, Louis Menard, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (thanks, Kate -- I'll finish this and return it to you one day!), Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Tribe of the Tiger, Norman E. Rosenthal, The Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder, Ross E. Davies, ed., The Green Bag Almanac & Reader 2006, and Jonathan Raban, Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America. I'm a couple of issues behind on The American Scholar, my favorite subscription.

I'm tagging five other bloggers, in case they're willing to play along: Diane Murley (of Law Dawg Blawg), and John Cannan, Rick Georges, David Giacalone, and Orijit Ghoshal (all of shlep: The Self-Help Law ExPress) (I'm on the shlep team, too, but we're scattered around the country and don't know each other).