A case of the fours

[dianeduane]

...I was starting to wonder why OOA was all of a sudden getting all these referrals from Joey's blog. The far-famed Accordion Guy has tagged me for a list-of-four meme.

Well, let's see now...

Four jobs I've had:

• Florist's assistant (1968-69)
  
• Psychiatric nurse (1975-77)
  
• Writer's assistant (1978-80)
  
• Story editor (1985-86)
  

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster ("Godzilla! Such language!")
  
• A Christmas Story ("It's...it's smiling at me!" SFX: WHACK!)
  
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum ("Smartly done.")
  
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Oh, you know the line.)
  

Four places I have lived:

• Manhattan Island
  
• Northridge, CA
  
• Bala Cynwyd, PA
  
• Philadelphia, PA
  

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• Battlestar Galactica
  
• The West Wing
  
• Hotel Babylon
  
• The Muppet Show
  

Four places I've been on vacation:

• Ayrshire, Scotland
  
• The US Virgin Islands
  
• The Black Forest
  
• The source of the Rhine
  

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Maluns. (Ideally, as served in the Bündnerstube in the Romantik Hotel Stern in Chur. Tart apple compote on the side and a nice glass of Zizerser Gewürztraminer, please....)
  
• Peter's incomparable goulasch: never the same twice, and better every time. (Took that picture about twenty minutes ago: as soon as I'm done here, I get to go make dumplings for it.)
  
• In springtime, the gitzi (that's deep-fried kid nuggets, for the rest of you. ...Oh, come on, not that kind of nuggets! Tsk.) at Kaiser's Reblaube in Zürich
  
• The steak frites at "Ma Bourgougne"
  

Four websites I visit daily:

• The International Herald Tribune
  
• The Young Wizards discussion forums
  
• Blog of a Bookslut
  
• Fandom_wank
  

Four places I'd rather be right now:

• On the Moon, in a spacesuit...looking down. This is about the right time of month for that...
  
• In the picture to the right. (Well, in the picture to the right again.) Summer solstice of 2003, in the hot-spring-fed infinity pool at the Hotel Source des Alpes in Leukerbad, looking up at the Gemmiwand mountain-wall, the week after we turned in the first-draft screenplay for Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. It was a sublimely happy time: perfect weather, the best company, great and genuine relaxation...
  
• Zürich HB (see also this morning shot), waiting to catch a train to...just about anywhere, really. Budapest might be nice this time of year. Meanwhile, let's go over to Brasserie Federal and have a Calanda Brau while we decide...
  
• Right here, at the desk, when the phone rings and it's my agent telling me that the TV series has been greenlighted.
  

And now, to continue the meme, I tag:

• Matt
  
• Bob
  
• Charlie
  
• Ursula
  

Comments

[terani.livejournal.com]

John Borland "Jack" Thayer 3d. Jack Thayer, the 17-year-old son of John and Marian Thayer, survived by swimming to an overturned collapsible lifeboat.

His father, John Borland Thayer 2nd, however, died.

"Thayer had no intention of boarding a boat. He stuck with his friends George and Harry Widener and Charles Duane Williams. When all the boats were gone Colonel Gracie saw John Thayer looking "pale and determined" by the midship rail aft of lifeboat 7 talking with George Widener. They may have moved towards the stern like so many other passengers and crew because when Gracie returned a short while later they had gone. John B. Thayer's body, if recovered, was never identified." - http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/biography/297/

Sadly, his life was cut short after he had a nervous breakdown after one of his sons died during the war in the Pacific.

I got Googling into his life when I picked up his "boarding pass" during my visit to the Titanic Exhibit here in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry.