Tagged, I'm it...

If my friend Erika could take time away from her prophetic quest to see the church into a healthy and vibrant future to answer these questions and then tag me, I suppose it's the least I can do to take time away from CPE and house cleaning to play along.

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD
Lifeguard -- the only summer I ever had a tan.
Photography teacher at a boy's camp in North Carolina -- the only time I ever had a summer love (the odds were in my favor).
Solutions Editor -- my favorite job title and perhaps my favorite job in my 22 years in journalism.
Pastor -- starting this Sunday!

FOUR MOVIES I CAN WATCH OVER AND OVER
Groundhog Day -- It's a fun way to think about new life.
Casablanca -- For multivalent reasons, not the least of which is Bogie. Another fun way to think about making life-giving choices.
Back to the Future -- If you know me, you know why. (And it's not just Michael J. Fox -- that crush was a fleeting Family Ties thing.)
The Music Man -- because the ending always made my Dad cry -- because of that and the pick a little talk a little ladies and the City Council barbershop quartet and a very young Ron Howard and the Trouble in River City song and, and, and...

FOUR PLACES I'VE LIVED
Paris, Texas -- of all the Texas places I've lived, it's the coolest to say out loud, and I lived there the longest. Though, soon, I will have lived in California longer than Texas!
Tuxedo, North Carolina -- see jobs, above.
San Diego -- California, not Texas.
Claremont, Calif. -- Commuter housing at Claremont School of Theology, a place and a group of people I'll never forget!

FOUR PLACES I'VE VACATIONED
Yosemite National Park -- Got married there, too.
Wales -- on a bus tour of Great Britain with my grandmother. My favorite stop was Tintern Abbey
Creede, Colo. -- a favorite vacation destination of my Dad's. Our family first traveled there in 1979. And Dad wrote a play about the place that was produced there.
Route 66 -- Took my first detour onto the old road on an early vacation with Jeff, including a stop in Valentine, but my favorite stretch is through magical New Mexico and my favorite place to stay is The El Rancho in Gallup, NM.

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE DISHES
Jeff's chocolate chip cookies
Anything Ryan concocts in the kitchen
Jeri's stuffed shells
Erika's enchiladas with an assist from Krista and Molly.
My grandmother's "light bread" and pecan pie and canned green beans.
My other grandmother's red beans and rice.
My mother's chicken-fried steak.
In short anything cooked in love by loved ones.

Four sites I visit daily:
Yahoo email -- keep those emails coming
blogger -- though you couldn't tell by recent posts
favorite blogs -- though I'm not rewarded daily for such loyalty
Yahoo headlines -- it's the way I get my news now, isn't that sad?

Four places I'd rather be right now:
The Grand Canyon at either sunset or moonrise, whichever comes first.
Snuggling with Ryan on the sofa.
Hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls again with Jeff -- and in the shape to do so!
Grounded in reality -- though that sometimes limits my creativity.

FOUR PEOPLE I'M TAGGING:
Marian
Jeri
And any of my lurking readers brave enough to play. Jan? Alaina? I'll even post it as a comment if you want to send it by email and avoid the hassle of creating a blog.

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO MADE IT TO THE END, HERE'S SOME BONUS TIME TRAVEL FROM SUMMER 1977 -- THIRTY YEARS AGO.

Hey, my hair still looks like that, and I still like ice cream.

Maybe this is why the career as a photographer didn't take off!

What was it with horizontal stripes and the '70s?

AND FINALLY, A FUNNY WEBSITE I FOUND IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG POST

Biff