A meme without following the rules or passing it on

I am in a quandary about the meme thing. On the one hand, they can be quite interesting to read. On the other, they can feel a bit like a chain letter.

I did it once, and then the two people I reluctantly tagged very kindly complied, but didn't tag anyone else. Which was fine - I understood completely. But at that point I decided that I wasn't going to play the meme game again.

And then I got tagged twice in as many days. First by Megan, who just got back from working in South Africa for a couple months, whose Africa stories I'm looking forward to reading, and who has a no tag policy but kindly put me on a list of people she'd like to hear more about. And then by charming H, who I met once at a happy hour, and who I think, from reading her blog, had the same kind of peripatetic overseas childhood I did.

The coincidence of both made me think, huh, maybe I should play along. So I'm listing H's eight things, but some of them fall under the categories of Megan's.

1. Growing up overseas and then always living in cities, I didn't start driving till I was 27 and moved to San Diego, where there are five lanes of traffic and people haul ass. My friend Maude, who then had only been driving six months, taught me to drive stick and we drove cross-country DC to CA. For the first month there, every time that I had to drive on the 5 I would be so nervous I'd almost throw up.

2. I almost never go to movies. It's not that I don't like them. Rather, it's that I'm so rarely in the mood to commit to sitting still in the dark for two hours straight.

3. I am a massive procrastinator. When I'm in a time crunch I can get an astounding amount of stuff done, and done really well. But I can also malinger like nobody's business.

4. My iPod shuffle is one of my all-time favorite toys. I love that it's so small I can clip it to my shorts to go running. And I love that I don't have a ton of songs to scroll through and choose from while I work out. I have to decide beforehand. This works for me.

5. If I were a millionaire. . . I feel like I ought to lie and say I'd help orphans or something. But the truth is, I'd buy a fabulous flat in Rome (OK, I'd have to be a gajillionaire for that, but still) and head straight to the Via Condotti for an insane shopping spree.

6. Peanut butter on a big spoon straight out of the jar is one of my favorite snacks. Crunchy, organic, salted. Because to me creamy peanut butter is like decaf coffee - pointless. And I live alone; I can eat anything I want right out of the container.

7. A song I know all the words to: Delta Dawn by Tanya Tucker. Cringe factor on this is quite high.

8. Leggings are something I would never wear again. I embraced them in the 80's, and I do remember how comfortable they were. But an old boss said, when I told her I was tempted to do the jeans tucked into high boots, "I learned a long time ago that if you were there for the trend the first time, you should never, ever repeat it. No matter how cute you think it is."

And you know, those are some words I now live by.