Marginal Utility

by Tom Bozzo

I was tagged by Corndog.

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.

1) Overread
2) BrightStar
3) dr four eyes
4) corndog
5) Marginal Utility

or (Corndog was double-tagged)

1) zydeco fish
2) doris
3) jayfish
4) corndog
5) Marginal Utility

Next, select five people to tag

I've been declining to tag people for memes lately, but I hereby announce a change in policy and span the globe with:

1) Janelle Renée
2) Sara
3) Tina
4) Tonya
5) Xtin (a new inbound link showing up in Technorati; hey there!)

What were you doing 10 years ago?

January 1996: Making arrangements to travel to Madison for the on-site interview for what would turn out to be my present job (*). Commuting from Wilmington, Delaware to College Park, Maryland to teach two classes at Maryland. The fraction of the commute I did by train allowed me to read Infinite Jest that semester. I finished my dissertation in 1998.

What were you doing 1 year ago?

January 2005: Enjoying life with Julia (and the rest of the family) as she was leaving the brand-new newborn stage. Maintaining a small outpost in the war on the Republican war on Social Security. Wondering where the G5 PowerBooks were. So much easier to remember with a blog archive to consult...

Five snacks you enjoy:

A. Butter spritz cookies.
B. Cheese and crackers. Can be fancy cheese and fancy crackers, or an everyday cheddar on a Ritz. I am less picky than you might think.
C. The spicy nuts-and-seeds mix that they put on the table at Frontera Grill. Better that Rick Bayless doesn't know my willingness-to-pay for that.
D. Chips and salsa/guacamole/hummus (not hummus at the same time as the former two, though).
E. Green olives marinated in gin and vermouth.

Five songs you know all the words to:

A. Robyn Hitchcock, "Uncorrected Personality Traits"
B. The Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed"
C. The Folksmen, "Old Joe's Place"
D. Cocteau Twins, "Aikea-Guinea" (kidding)
E. The Kingsmen, "Louie Louie" (ditto)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

Um, I'll take the minimalist definition of "millionaire."

A. Say "adieu" to most present creditors. (A credit card is required for too much of modern life to flip them all off.)
B. Move up from having Quite an Awful Lot of LEGO pieces to having Tons, by the Fibblesnork LEGO Survey's classifications.
C. Build a garage and fix a few other shortcomings of our house, but otherwise pretty much stay where we are and with what we have.
D. Struggle with whether it would be remotely worth it to pay to have one or more of the kids sit in a 680-student class with N. Gregory Mankiw (six lectures a semester?!) as the tiny, fast-talking dot in the front of the lecture hall, vs. a small section with a non-famous professor at a less-fancy-pants university, rather than the how.
E. Do "L'Etoile Me."

Five bad habits:

A. Staying up way too late playing computer games, idly checking favorite blogs for improbable updates (a task recently automated), attending late movies, etc., as if I'm still 22 and can violate my sleep constraints with impunity.
B. Getting into standoffs with John of the "You must eat your peas!" "I don't want them!" variety.
C. Using the other electronic babysitter when I don't really want to help John with the TtFTE website.
D. Being cryptic when I know exactly what I want.
E. Being cranky when I know that I have far less to be cranky about than most people.

Five things you enjoy doing:

A. Cooking.
B. Building LEGO spaceships for John; Duplo animals for Julia (which she promptly destroys).
C. Gathering information.
D. Re-transmitting portions thereof.
E. None of your business (copied from Corndog's responses)

Five things you would never wear again:

A. Loafers without socks. Maybe my feet have become smellier with age, but probably not.
B. Any pair of pants I owned in grad school. In a few cases, this is only because 4-5 trips a week to the gym don't quite make up for the loss of walking all over campus and eating a near-zero-fat grad student's diet.
C. Velour. I'm all about very soft natural fabrics for sweaters these days.
D. Plaid shorts.
E. I am not totally opposed to designer logos, but I try to avoid being a walking advertisement where possible. I also have a T-shirt exemption for bands, charitable events, beloved software purveyors, and academic institutions with which I've been affiliated.

Five favorite toys:

A. LEGO
B. Bricksmith, LDGLite, and Mac Brick CAD, the main LEGO CAD tools for my computing platform of choice
C. L3P and POV-Ray, for making nearly photorealistic renderings of creations from (B)
D. Fortran (almost, but not quite, kidding)
E. A sturdy sauté pan.


(*) Really, the predecessor of my present job, as much of my time now is spent directing other people who do stuff I used to do myself.