I feel better, and I don't know why

This week was supposed to be a week for big things. Without the distraction of work, I was going to sit down tonight and rattle off a long and impressive list of accomplishments.

I was going to start a Self-Improvement Plan. You know, eat less, exercise more, be generally more organized and more disciplined.

I did actually do a small part of that: I haven't had a sugared soda in five days. This is a big, big step for me; I love the soda, love the CO2 bubbling in my mouth, love the sugar dissolving my teeth. Love everything about it, except the gut that those 150-calorie-per-serving delights have left me with. I have a refrigerator full now of various diet sodas. The goal is to wean myself off of soda entirely. A few weeks of repulsive diet sodas ought to do the trick. We'll see. I've tried this a few times before, and have not been successful in the least. I now understand how hard it must be for a dedicated smoker to quit smoking.

As for the other parts of the SIP: Nothing. Still ate crap, in copious amounts; exercised not at all. But I really did think about it ...

We began painting the exterior of our house during Thanksgiving weekend. Of 2004. We were going to finish this week.

Didn't happen. Too damn hot. And even if it had been 72 with no humidity, well, it still probably wouldn't have happened.

I was going to think about work not at all.

... until the phone rang Wednesday. Small problem, easily resolved. Then Thursday. Bigger problem, but also solved in one call. Then Friday. Real big problem. Had to intervene. Multiple calls, incoming and outgoing. So much for vacation. At least I was able to handle it all remotely; back in the newspaper days, I would not have been able to avoid dropping everything and going into the office for an issue of that magnitude.

I didn't go to the high school reunion.

Now I kind of wish I had. The committee just sent an e-mail a few hours ago with a link to the pictures (technology rules!) I was stunned at the number of people I didn't recognize at first or second or third or fourth glance. Where the hell did all those 38-year-old Realtors and teachers come from? I saw about 70 faces in the pictures, and was able to get solid ID's on about 15 of them -- and at least five of those I could only recognize because I could read their name tags. As Joe Walsh sang, everybody's so different, and I haven't changed.

Yeah, right.

---

I certainly wasn't bored this week. I did get to see the wonder of the Young Daughter becoming a first-class swimmer. I did spend a lot of time just hanging out with The Wife, and she in turn was able to catch a little bit of the break from some of her routine. I read a couple of Bill Bryson books. I had a great motorcycle ride last Saturday.

But other than that, I accomplished nothing in the last week. I crossed nothing off my to-do list. And I'm OK with that. I needed to waste a few days. I've spent a pretty long stretch trying to cram 1.6 days into every one day. I think I was owed a few. We're even now.

Just sit down and write

My life doesn't really allow much time for calm reflection. As I write this, I'm in an almost-empty house. It's basically pretty quiet, except for the two 5-year-old girls screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Well, actually, it's just the Young Daughter who's screaming. She does that a lot. That's how she earned the nickname Diva of Decibels. The other little girl, YD's best friend, generally gets her points across more quietly.

The rest of the group is out at a local water park. YD and I aren't much into water parks, so we stayed home.

I'm on "vacation" this week. It's my first extended time off since last year's family trip to Washington, D.C. It comes at the end of a(nother) marathon travel stretch, the kind of travel I thought I was going to be able to avoid after having been promoted. The deal was that, rather than project trips lasting 5-8 days, I'd be doing support-type stuff and management schmoozes lasting a day or two each. That's basically true. However, I just did five of them in the last three weeks.

My 20-year high school reunion will be held this weekend in Anytown. I won't be there. A small part of me wishes I was going; I'd love to renew some of those connections and hear what these people are up to. But that small part has been drowned out by the larger part, the part that doesn't want to see the interior of another aircraft for a good long time. I'm tired of talking to my wife and kids on the phone.

I'm still taking the week off. There's a garage to clean, walls to paint, kids to watch. It's nice to prioritize those sorts of things above work, for a little while.

I've been thinking a lot about writing. I've been thinking I just need to sit down and tap keys for a while, just to see what comes out. I've certainly had some interesting experiences the last few weeks, the kind that in years recently past I would have chronicled almost immediately.

In fact, I just spent the last 20 minutes chronicling one of them before giving it the Click-Drag-Delete treatment. After writing it all down, I decided it just wasn't that interesting.

Not all that long ago, I had a voice in this forum. I can go through the archives and see that time was when I could sit down and construct a series of coherent sentences. I've learned many things in the last two years: How to install and manipulate a database, how to manage an enterprise-wide software installation project, how to get a flight on another airline when my originally scheduled flight is hopelessly delayed, how to read and speak rudimentary Danish and French.

Somewhere along the way, however, I seem to have forgotten how to appreciate the things going on around me. That's a skill I need to regain.

Data transfer interrupted

I am reachable, by one medium or another, pretty much 24 hours a day, every day. The only time that I am completely out of pocket is during the one or two hours that I am on an airplane going somewhere.

Being constantly available, of course, does not mean that I am providing better service. It just means that I can half-ass more stuff. It means that I can be in a meeting while driving a rental car from a customer site to an airport. It means that, while a customer is paying some absurd sum for me to be on site, I can simultaneously be helping two other customers who are not paying for the privilege.

This is a true story, and yeah, it's a little gross, but it's an illustration of what American business has become: Yesterday, I was on the phone with a customer and answering an e-mail ... in the bathroom. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And don't think that I don't know where to find the "Ignore" button on my phone. There are plenty of unanswered items in my Inbox. At some point, I do have to sleep. At some point, I'm with my family, and that means With My Family. At some point, the sign has to turn around to "Closed." But every one of those Ignored calls and unanswered e-mails is still a tiny little failure.

One thing that makes my job extremely complicated is that the European co-workers on whom I depend heavily have a minimum of five weeks of vacation. Over there, it's acceptable to basically accomplish nothing in June, July and August. Over here, it's not acceptable to be unavailable while you're in the john.

I'm not complaining. I have a family which is very well-provided for. My roof covers a large number of square feet. The bills are paid and times are largely good.

But I know in some way, I'm paying for all this prosperity. And I also know I'm not the only one. This is the way We live. I just wonder what the end result really is.

As the fog descends ...

What would be fun, really, is to sit here and write while I'm at the complete edge of exhaustion, just to see what would happen. I've been in constant motion since last Wednesday: fly, drive 2 hours, meeting, drive 2 hours, fly ... one-day weekend lull ... fly, drive an hour and a half, meeting, drive an hour and a half, fly, get another rental car, hey! why is there a traffic jam in downtown Boston at 11:30 at night? lost in Boston, find freeway, drive an hour and a half, meeting, and eeew, that was why there was a traffic jam in downtown Boston.

So I'm in New Hampshire right now, with another day of meeting, fly, drive in front of me. And yeah, with the downtown Boston tunnels closed, it's going to be a bitch getting into Logan. Tomorrow's flight goes to North Carolina, where thankfully the meeting will be held in the same city in which we're landing. Then, fly and drive home Friday night. Weekend lull, then off to Southern California next week. Fly, drive an hour, two days of meetings, drive an hour, fly.

Then, a week of vacation. No plans, just vacation. The plan does not include moving eight miles a minute, as Seger once sang.

So writing all that was a long way of saying no, I'm not going to go to the reunion. That would be another three days of flying and driving, and I'm just not up for it. I can come up with more reasons to not go than reasons to go.

The fog is coming faster, the eyelids are getting heavy, the thoughts are coming both fast and slow at the same time. It's like the gears are turning without any actual power, the perpetual-motion brain that is spinning 7,600 rpm on the way to nowhere. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten why I'm in New Hampshire, and why I'm going to North Carolina. I'm just here, typing, not even in full control of the text I'm currently entering. I wonder how much longer I can do this.

Ken Lay, 1942-2006

Another thief bites the dust, and far too soon ... I really wanted to see that bastard suffer as an old, formerly rich man in prison for a while. Too bad Enron pensioners can't be made beneficiaries of his life insurance policy.

Resetting

Technical difficulties. Testing only.

Four days in Paradise

It's been a helluva fun weekend. No details are really necessary ... it's just been a wonderful string of perfect days. Such a string deserves to be acknowledged.

No greater love

Back in the late '80s, the high-school girl who would become my wife was simply a tall, skinny girl named N, who was around our house a lot, a friend of my little sister. N and my sister were part of a larger group of girls, whose main recreational activity during their junior year in high school involved driving around in somebody's 1965 Mustang and teasing fraternity boys at college parties.

Among this group of girls was a girl we'll call Marie (not at all her name, but it's better than a pronoun.) Marie was a bit spoiled, and she knew it, and she was OK with it, best I could tell. I didn't know Marie as well as I knew my sister's other friends, but what little I knew of her suggested she was the one of that group with the "reputation."

She was also the one who ended up pregnant that year.

Marie was by no means the only person I knew in high school who became pregnant. She was the only person, however, who ever showed a visible sign of it. Marie chose to carry the child the term.

I can't imagine this was an easy decision, even for a girl who herself was adopted. She had to put up with the stares and the pointing and the ostracism and the talk of those who simply said it confirmed her "reputation." None of that mattered to her.

As the rest of the group drifted away from Marie, N stuck by her. This foreshadowed the adult N, by the way; the girl who stuck by her friend in a tough situation became an intensely loyal woman, a woman who people can depend on no matter what. This is cool, and is one of the things I love about my wife. Back in 1987, though, she was just a girl who was trying to do the right thing.

Marie's child was born on N's 17th birthday. N was there for her at the hospital. I'm pretty sure he was the first newborn boy she ever held.

A few days later, Marie's child was headed home, home with his new parents. Marie went home, too, back to her parents. She was back in school a few weeks later.

Even at 17, a girl has maternal instinct, and that instinct would rebel mightily against separation. Marie had to be convinced that he was going to a better place, a place with people more qualified than she was to provide what that baby needed. I can imagine nothing more beautiful, and more painful.

Life went on. Marie never quite reconnected with that group of girls; she had been forced into adulthood, and acted accordingly. She and Natalie were still close, sort of, but nobody would ever fully grasp what Marie had been through, and it probably didn't matter to Marie if they did. They all graduated from high school a year later and went their separate ways.

Marie contacted my wife by e-mail several years ago. The electronic reunion was brief; a couple of messages exchanged, then life moving on.

Natalie still mentioned Marie's boy on his birthday the first few years we were married, but hadn't for many years. As I was giving the new Dixie Chicks album its 249th spin on my iPod, I gave a close listen to "Voice Inside My Head," a heart-shredding song from the perspective of a woman who gave a child up for adoption.

Immediately I thought of Marie, a person who I hadn't thought of since we received that e-mail four computers ago. I did some quick math, and I said to Natalie: "Remember Marie's baby?" She said, "Yeah, he was born on my birthday."

I said, "Yeah. He would have just graduated from high school a few weeks ago."

"Oh. My. God."

My wife has recently developed excellent research skills. If your name has ever been snared by Google's spiderbots, she'll find it. She found Marie. Marie is now living in a large East Coast city; she married exceedingly well, has two little girls and by all accounts wants for absolutely nothing. They're exchanging e-mails again.

That little baby boy that N held is off to college, or a job, or the military, or whatever. We'll probably never know. Life went on, and it went on very well for Marie, which is as it should be.

Marie called upon some serious strength that day 18 years ago, and that strength is having to carry her through the rest of her life. I admire her, and other women who made the same decision. Unplanned pregnancy brings up complex questions that can't be answered the same way for every person. They most definitely cannot be answered politically, or through legislation.

The 16-year-old Marie, even though she likely didn't know it at the time, came up with the right answer for her situation. Things worked out for her. Hopefully they worked for that little boy, too.

I still have to think that no matter how gilded your life is, though, that's gotta be a hard memory to carry with you, and that you wouldn't be able to help but wonder how things might have been different if ...

20 years now; where'd they go?

Rumors keep circulating that my high school class is going to have a 20-year reunion this summer. A few days ago, I received an e-mail detailing the program. Looks like a lot of fun; a golf tournament, a cookout, a trip to a Class AA baseball game in Anytown. I'm still not sure I can bring myself to go.

For one thing, we're 1,400 miles away, and even with the absurd amount of airline miles I've amassed in my recent travels, it's not enough to get all five of us there. I'm not sure I can pull off going to Anytown without my wife and kids; the rest of the extended family back in Anytown would be profoundly disappointed. Plus, I have a fair amount of business travel scheduled for July. Since my recent promotion, I'm not doing as many five-day trips, but I still have to do a lot of one- and two-day schmooze-fests, and I have many of those in July.

For another, I don't need people pointing out that 20 years ago, I had hair past my shoulders and weighed 100 pounds. I have dramatically less of the former and quite a few more of the latter now. I'd take the under on how quickly I get sick of people pointing those facts out.

I rather liked most of my high school classmates. I had a lot of friends in high school, many friends who crossed many of the different strata of a high school class. You remember The Breakfast Club? At one time or another, I would have hung out with all five of them.

I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not having kept better track of these people over the last two decades. I've done quite well over the last 20 years, in my career, as a husband, as a father. The thing I sacrificed to do all that was my friends. Truth be told, I was like that before I left Anytown, probably, but I became even worse when I could use distance as a weak excuse. I'm a shitty, awful, rotten friend. Too busy for this, too busy for that, too busy to send a simple e-mail or Christmas card.

In short, I suck. I'm not sure how squarely I want to face that fact.

So I toss this out for feedback: Should I go, or should I clean out the garage that weekend?

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-SHADDUP!

No vacation here, sorry. Still trying to figure out the mysteries of ASCII characters 0D and 0A. For now, everybody's having fun around me. Oh well; my time will come.

I was right, I was wrong

SPOT ON: See the post headlined May 23: iTunes downloader ready. I was right; The new Dixie Chicks album is damn good. It's an exquisitely manicured middle finger standing tall against the crap they've had to endure over the last three years.

And it is, thankfully, more than that; it's a nice transition out of the hard-core country world into tunes that cross many lines. "Easy Silence" showcases the voice not of Natalie Maines the Texan, but that of Natalie Maines, the former Berklee student.

All that said, it's hard not to point out that the Chicks have been the top album download on iTunes all week while the president's approval rating struggles to stay above 30 percent. Take that, rednecks.

EATING MY WORDS: I wrote this in February 2002 after the Super Bowl. Musing about the commericals:

Cadillac has finally figured out that its customer base is, like, almost dead. The average age of a new Cadillac buyer is 69. The marketing folks catch a clue: Cadillac cues up the Zeppelin, finds a '59 Eldo, and voila, a star is born. Not crazy about the CTS; it's kind of a funny-looking car.

Well, maybe, I might have to amend that: Everybody else's CTS is funny-looking. The one that'll be in my driveway for the next 39 months looks pretty cool.

On the clock

I have 20 hours to complete two PowerPoint presentations for an upcoming conference. During that 20 hours, I must also have dinner, sleep, have breakfast and get children ready for school, and I'll lose one more hour to commuting.

How do you like my chances?

Flight 93 tapes out

First gut response while the CNN babe is reading her transcription of the Flight 93 tapes released today in Alexandria, Va.:

Am I to believe that, under moment of great stress and trauma, that these hijackers would be sending their final prayers to Allah ... in English?

UPDATE: The New York Times notes that the hijackers were indeed speaking Arabic. Which still leads me to wonder how a presumably non-Arabic speaking CNN reporter would know just minutes after the tapes were released what was being said. No tinfoil-hat stuff here, just saying ...

Sad and pathetic

A lot of heavy stuff here lately ... time for a chuckle in my most favorite way -- at my own expense.

Funny scene on the streets of suburban Tampa on Friday afternoon:

Guy in a black 2006 Rapidlyagingdudemobile, late 30s, sun shining off his receding hairline, windows down, 7-speaker Bose cranked up to the max, just absolutely rocking out ...

The song? "Behind these Hazel Eyes" by Kelly Clarkson.

Hi.

Simple rule

And one that would save me a lot of money: When you're not hungry, don't eat.

The latest

The Wife was telling me a story the other night about one of her dogs throwing up.

The Young Daughter observes this mess and says something along the lines of, "She must not have taken her medicine. When I take my medicine, I don't get sick."

The Wife was quite surprised by this. We had no idea that The Young Daughter had drawn the connection between her medications and her episodes of the past few months, which were usually punctuated by vomiting unconnected to any real nausea or upset stomach or carsickness or any other condition that usually generates vomiting.

Among the medicines she's taking is Thalidomide, the drug immortalized as one of the memories of the '60s in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." (Third verse: "Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide.") Baby boomers remember that the drug was originally the miracle cure for morning sickness, with the unfortunate side effect of horrendous birth defects. The drug was taken off the market in the United States until 1998, when it was approved for heavily controlled clincal trials. There are those, including one of the doctors that we are seeing, who believe it might be effective in treating neurofibromatosis.

I, of course, am in favor of most things that might help. Research seems to indicate that only serious side effects of this particular treatment are in utero. The Young Daughter's 5; that's not a high risk. But that doesn't make us any less apprehensive about it.

In two weeks, The Wife and The Young Daughter are traveling to Birmingham, Ala., to meet with the man who literally wrote the book -- actually, several books -- on NF1. Will he have some answers? We don't know. But we'll keep asking the questions.

------

I am reminded of a story from May 2002 (click here and scroll down to May 10, 2002), back when I had no understanding of the realities of this situation and wanted said understanding even less.

The link to the press release in that post was active until fairly recently. It's been awful quiet out of Dr. Parada's office lately. He said "five years." He has one year and one month left to restore my faith in the medical profession. The clock is ticking.

The clock is ticking, goddammit. Find a way to fix this. Now.

I stand and salute

From our wire services:

CHATTANOOGA, TENN. -- The only U.S. conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor in the Second World War has been buried at a national cemetery with a 21-gun salute, although he refused to carry a weapon while serving as an army medic.

Desmond Doss, 87, died March 23 in Piedmont, Ala., where he and his wife, Frances, had been living with family.

A horse-drawn hearse delivered the flag-covered coffin to the gravesite Monday in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. Military helicopters flew overhead in a tribute formation.

Doss was ridiculed for his beliefs but "remained true to his convictions even when it was not the most popular thing to do," said Patti Parks, a retired U.S. navy commander and director of the Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga.

Doss, who refused to carry a weapon during his wartime service in the Pacific, was the subject of a book, The Unlikeliest Hero, and a 2004 documentary, The Conscientious Objector.

Medal of Honor Society records show he was among 3,461 recipients of the highest U.S. military honor.

While under enemy fire on the island of Okinawa, Doss carried 75 wounded soldiers to the edge of a 120-metre cliff and lowered them to safety, according to his citation.

During a later attack, he was seriously wounded in the legs by a grenade. According to the citation, as he was being carried to safety, he saw a more critically injured man and crawled off his stretcher, directing the medics to help the other wounded man.

"He wanted to serve. He just didn't want to kill anybody," said a veteran who attended the service, Fred Headrick, 85. "Most all of them (Medal of Honor recipients) received their medal for killing someone. He received his by saving lives."

Now this dude's a hero. There's a way to be a patriot without killing other people in the process.

Why I hate technology

I'm so disgusted by this story. I would be just as disgusted if the guy wasn't a high-ranking federal official in an agency entrusted for securing the safety of the American people. If he is found guilty of the crimes for which he's charged, he's both sick and stupid, and I hate the fact that my wife and children share a planet with people like him.

The Wife and I have been batting around the idea of letting the Old Daughter have limited, heavily guarded, heavily filtered Internet access on the computer in her bedroom. The Wife has always been staunchly 100 percent opposed to it; I was 99 percent opposed to it, thinking that there might be an argument in favor of letting her have some freedom to do research, play her games, e-mail her friends, etc., without having to use the centrally located desktop in the living room.

The Old Daughter, of course, is 100 percent in favor of having Internet access in her room. We were almost ready to bend; I proposed that as long as she was fully open to random and unannounced searches of her browsing history, e-mail sent items, and the rest of her hard drive, I would consider it. The Wife reluctantly agreed to that proposal.

I've changed my mind. If I caught something in a history or a cache, it's too late. That toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube. I'm now back to being firmly opposed to letting children have Internet access in a non-common area of the house.

In my house, at least, I'm sure the problem wouldn't be outgoing material. And if an indecent proposal did make its way in, I'm sure it would be reported the second it hit the screen.

But we can't take the risk of letting the sick and the stupid into our house.

Another day, another airplane

Sitting in coach Sunday afternoon, on an airline where I don't carry Gold status. It's much more entertaining to people-watch in coach. In first, you see several variations of the same person, either the old white guy in a suit or the overdressed 50-ish woman self-consciously knocking back a bloody mary before takeoff.

From Seat 7D, I quietly look around from under the earbuds, only seeing, not hearing. It's much easier to make up stories about people when you can't actually hear what's going on ...

-- At the bulkhead, there are the young parents with the 5-month-old baby. They're trying desperately not to be Those Parents. They're both looking around just the slightest bit; whenever they make eye contact with someone, they give the apologetic "I'm sorry she's so loud" look. They're doing fine, though, in comparison to ...

-- ... The Militant Single Mom, three rows back and across the aisle. She sits in the middle as her kids (I'll call them Tyrone and LaKeisha) fight over the window and the aisle. Tyrone and LaKeisha are generating enough volume to get in under my Shure E300s. MSM, meanwhile, doesn't give a shit, and she just absolutely dares you to say something about it. Her big brown eyes are spitting fire; it might be directed at the kids, and it might be directed at you. Best not to find out. It's all she can do to get these kids back home. She's been taking crap from them for an entire week of "vacation," and she doesn't care at all that you're going to get two hours of it.

-- Taking a deep breath and running his fingers through what is left of his hair is the guy on the aisle across from MSM and her brood. He's wearing a white polo shirt with a logo of some small software company, as anonymous as the one for which I work. Clearly, he's carrying the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. It's written all over his face. I'm reading it line by line. He's been traveling too much and working too hard, his marriage is faltering, and he'd rather be getting an ice-water enema than making this particular trip. Two things are true about a business guy traveling on Sunday: 1/he's outbound, not inbound, and 2/he's leaving behind stuff he'd rather be doing and stuff that, in the scheme of things, is more important than whatever he's headed off to. Both, I can tell, are true of this guy. He's been sitting in his seat quietly enduring MSM to his right and the baby up front; he gets his laptop out of its briefcase and taps away idly on it. If I got out of my seat to go to the bathroom, I'm pretty sure I'd see a typical business traveler's work: a half-hearted game of solitaire.

-- The Young Lovers, he in a New York Giants jersey and gym shorts, she in a pink sweatshirt and flip-flops. Their spring break didn't go well. They probably won't be talking come May. Wonder who paid for this trip.

-- The old fellow next to me has a hospital bracelet on. He apparently broke his arm during his Florida business trip. He takes up way more of his middle seat than a guy his size normally would. He looks very fragile. I'm scared to bump him for fear he might shatter.

Turn off your electronic devices, turn off your brain, watch as everything that's really important to you disappears at 1,000 feet a minute. Sit back, relax and enjoy the flight as best as you can.

My life, brought to you by iTunes

A tremendously fun meme. Simple rules:

1/Get your iTunes library.
2/Set it to shuffle
3/Ask the questions below and hit Play (or next)
4/Whatever song comes up, go with it.

Q) How does the world see you?
A) The Road Goes on Forever / Robert Earl Keen
This is a song about a girl I knew back in Anytown. Several of them, actually. However, the story never ended as well for any of them.

Q) Will I have a happy life?
A) Drinkin' on the Job / The Rainmakers
Now there's an idea.

Q) What do my friends really think of me?
A) Manic Depression / Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
They could certainly be excused if that's what they thought.

Q) Do people secretly lust after me?
A) Free Bird / Lynyrd Skynyrd
Yeah ... probably not.

Q) How can I make myself happy?
A) A Million Miles Away / The Rainmakers
This song is a really really deep song about a guy who could be recovering from a traumatic experience, drug abuse, or homelessness. I always took it as that he was contemplating suicide, but that might be reading a little bit more into it. It does feature one of Bob Walkenhorst's very cool turns of phrase:

And the landscape in the dark,
it could have been New Zealand
New York, or New Mexico
So what else is new? Jim thought

Q) What should I do with my life?
A) More than a Feeling / Boston
Ah, a great song from the speakers of the Trans Am in the mid-'80s. Not much guidance there, though.

Q) Will I ever have children?
A) I Know My History / Van Zant
My history would suggest that I'd have a big family. By 21st-century standards, I do.

Q) What is some good advice for me?
A) The Three Fine Daughters of Farmer Brown / Eddie from Ohio
Hmm ... nah, that would probably cause trouble.

Q) How will I be remembered?
A) Creepin' In / Norah Jones
That's me, sneaking into places where I don't belong, over and over.

Q) What is my signature song?
A) Small Town Jericho / Sugarland
I always wanted to live in a small town. I never have. And I think it would be too late now. If you weren't born there, you'll never belong.

Q) What do I think my current theme song is?
A) Take Me Down / Kelly Willis
I don't believe the words you're saying
And I know the game you're playing
So it's only just for now
That I will let you take me down

Q) What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
A) Wide Open Spaces / Dixie Chicks
I lived in one place for 25 years. I haven't lived anywhere else for more than three. Might explain a lot about a lot.

Q) What song will play at my funeral?
A) The One That Got Away / The Rainmakers
The old man's lament.
Well I did this and I did that
And I guess I did OK
I did whatever I had to do
And I did it my own way
Whatever hand I drew
Whatever hand I played
From place to place
I come face to face
with the one that got away"

In a lot of ways, that's strangely appropriate. I've never felt I've made the most of the opportunities I've had.

Q) What type of men/women do I like?
A) If I Wanted To / Melissa Etheridge
Odd that she'd pop up in that spot.

Q) What is my day going to be like?
A) Snakedance / The Rainmakers
This is the lion's den ... And yeah, I knew that before I came in.

From largelypro.com (and please note: the fact that the blogger had a close association with a band that popped up repeatedly in the above list had no influence on the content).