Fluffy Meme and Five Meme

Emily
tagged me for the Five meme, and I finally have some time (aka it's after midnight!) to do it:

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Yikes! I was working two part-time jobs, one at Books Canada (now sadly closed) and the other at a Hallmark Store. The stores were at either end of Sparks St Mall ( a pedestrian mall in the heart of Ottawa) and both managers were good enough to arrange their Christmas schedules around the other store's needs. I loved the bookstore, and here I learned how to do book displays and order new books from the catalogues, as well as rebuild the mystery section (which I increased sales by 37% after 6 months!). I was a single mother, living in a housing non-profit co-op in downtown Ottawa, sitting on the board for the co-op. I was also active in the Aboriginal community at the Friendship Centre with their annual pow-wows. My eldest son was 10 years old.
Around this time we got our cat, who came as a kitten. My friend Irvin dropped her off unexpectedly; his cat had had kittens, and I'd mentioned Duncan wanted a pet. Lo and behold, Irvin dropped by and put his knapsack on the floor; a tiny meowing and then a tiny 3 month old kitten crawled out. I fell instantly in love and named her Bandit for the white mask she wore around her eyes (she is a grey and white Tabby). Duncan and I argued over the name, since he thought it was a boy's name and he'd wanted to name her; I hadn't meant to, but once I said it, it was hers. She is still with us and some day I will get a picture of her to post so you can see how beautiful she is.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:
1.chocolate
2.ice cream
3.strawberries and real whipped cream
4.chips and sour cream dip!!!
5.more chocolate

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:
1. *sigh* nuts
2. sesame sticks
3. popcorn
4. fruit (replaces the chocolate I would otherwise eat)
5. *$@#! I eat chocolate anyway!!!

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. I'd travel
2. I'd buy a house in the UK as well as keep ours here
3. I'd support the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace,
4. I'd invest in literacy programs at home and in the third world - books, paper, schools, wherever the need was greatest for education for children
5. I'd pay for the leprosy medication ( I hate those commercials on tv!) and the Aids medicines for the millions suffering needlessly in Africa because our countries are too spineless to make the pharmaceutical companies use the generic brands, which are much much cheaper and affordable for the governments to buy for distribution to their peoples.

Totally unrealistic I know, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Five jobs that I have had:
1. bookseller
2. card store clerk
3. housecleaner
4. daycare worker (home daycare)
5. burger and ice cream stand counter person

Three of my habits:

(Why 3 and not 5? I think I’ll do 5, even though we all know a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.) - Thanks, Emily!

1. Drinking tea every morning
2. eating chocolate every day
3. turning on the weather channel - I used to want to be a meteorologist!
4. writing down my dreams and analyzing them
5. checking my astrology on Jonathan Cainer's site, one of the best astrologers around

Five places I have lived:
1. York, England
2. MOntreal, Quebec
3. on a sailboat for 2 years
4. Vernon, BC,
5. London, Ontario

Five people I want to get to know better:
Becky, Jeane, Bride of the Book God,
Bybee, and Chris. Actually, there are far more than five of you that I want to more about! consider that if I've ever left a comment on your blog, I'm curious! Consider yourself tagged and please let me know if you do this! It's fun and fluffy....which reminds me, last meme from Emily's post:
Five Fluffy Things About Me Meme:

1. I love dark chocolate. I really do. I suppose it qualifies as an obsession. And a food group. I don't like it with hazelnuts, and in a pinch (ie no chocolate left in the house) I've been known to break open the chocolate chips bag!
2. I love all kinds of black tea, and hate the kinds that come with fruit - black tea with peach, say, or black tea with strawberry. I have different kinds of tea for different times of the day, like Irish or English breakfast for the mornings, Afternoon Tea by Crabtree and Evelyn for any time after, Yorkshire Gold when I want to really be alert, and Awake Tea sold by Starbucks, that is fabulous for a real kick.
3.I love tarot cards and am starting to collect them. I got a new idea from Joanna Powell Colbert, an artist in Oregon who is making a tarot deck (and the pictures are available online). When she wants to learn about a card, she takes it from several of her decks and lays them out together, to see what symbolism they share and what is different about each. I've begun to do this and it really is interesting to see how each artist has interpreted the meanings of the cards in each of their decks! And what themes run through the decks, some are very different. I look at the cards as symbolism of the unconscious, and as images that we all know - like the Jungian view that we all in our deepest minds are connected to the same mythic images. I think tarot cards come from this source; although I am aware that religions take a dim view of the tarot, I think they are a fascinating way to get a glimpse at the energies in our lives and how we are using them.
4. I love nature, and I need to see trees and water, or I start to feel disconnected. I have always paid attention to what was around me, and the happiest places have been where i could take long walks. Luckily we live near a 20 mile pathway that runs along the Ottawa River, through the city, so I have plenty of water and walkway!and we live near a park with a beach and a bird sanctuary, so this really is a tiny bit of heaven in the midst of the city.
5. My favourite English Premier league soccer (football for the rest of the world!) team is Arsenal. I have a mug with their logo on it that i brought back from England and I have to drink out of it on game days. Occasionally my husband likes to see if I am paying attention and will try to give me tea in another cup. I've been known to pour the tea back into my Arsenal mug!! the mug lists all the team awards up to 2001, so I like to point it out to him when he goes on about how winning Chelsea (his favourite team) has been lately. They have along way to go to catch up to us!!

So, some fluffy and some facts about me. Your turn! Consider yourself tagged if you want to share some fluffy facts about yourself!! And Happy July 4 to our neighbors in the south!