Four things, part one

There's something I wanted to write about today, but I'm feeling like I need more time to do the subject justice. So it's two days in a row with a meme.

I came across the four things meme on Ruth's site. Here goes...

4 jobs I've had

-Temporary employee as a police report transcriber. The Huber Heights Police Department employee I replaced for the summer was having surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. After several forty hour weeks of listening to reports on tape and typing them up, I understood why she had to have the procedure done. To add to the madness and aching hands, I worked overtime some weeks in an effort to pull in good money and help catch them up. There was an ongoing murder investigation, so I had plenty of the detectives' mini-cassette reports, many of which they dictated while eating meals. The work could be pretty interesting and really depressing.

-Statistician for the Dayton Wings, a World Basketball League team. I kept track of the minutes players played. The league folded before the season ended. I want to say that I showed up for a game after my work at the police department and found out that the league was shutting down, but I don't remember if that's true or not.

-Music researcher for a rock radio station. I called people who had signed up for contests at station events. If they fit the desired demographic, I would play clips of about thirty songs for them to rate. I would call two more times to do music tests before revealing who I really was with. (We identified ourselves as Metro Research, although the AM station housed in the same building showed up on caller ID.) One of the more ridiculous developments was when the program director didn't want us to use our first names any longer. Instead we were supposed to all go by Chris Johnson, male and female alike. Worst experience: calling to speak to someone, getting his father with the same name, and finding out his son had died.

-Little League baseball umpire. Parents are ruthless even if you are just fifteen or sixteen.

4 films I would watch over and over

-Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
-This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
-The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (Jacques Demy, 1964)
-Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

I won't commit to calling these my four favorite films of all-time, but I've seen all of these several times and would watch them again in a heartbeat.

4 places I have lived

-Phillipsburg, Ohio
-Westerville, Ohio
-Dublin, Ohio

Yeah, I only have three. What a bore. I lived in two different homes in Phillipsburg and several different places in Westerville, but the fact remains that I've only had three different zip codes in my life.

4 favorite TV shows

-NewsRadio
-The Office (US and UK)
-Lost
-The X-Files

I always have a hard time with questions like this, but NewsRadio is one of those shows I never tire of watching. Onto the list! Both versions of The Office are very funny. Lost is one of the most ambitious and compelling shows I've followed. The same was true at one time of The X-Files, which eventually crumbled under the weight of its own muddled mythology, but this was can't-miss TV for me. Go figure that I don't think I've ever seen the last episode. If I remember correctly, it aired the same time as the Survivor and Alias season finales. My interest had dropped off by then, and I could only watch one channel and record another.

This four things meme is awfully long. (C'mon, meme creator, where's the symmetry with nine categories?) I'm going to cut it short here and finish it some other time, maybe tomorrow.