Back in May, our esteemed Vijay posted the following:

$456 Billion Meme: This is twice in a row that someone else has tagged me ahead of the Arch-Tagger. Someone ought to tell her that she’s slipping.

Slipping??? Moi???

I’m not slipping! I’ve just been busy working on a top secret government project, and I’m not supposed to whisper a word about it to anyone! They’ve really had me all tied up with all of that super-secret stuff … *cough* ….

Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice that, as I’ve been busy taking care of, um, really important business, the memes have been piling up fast and deep at my doorstep …

I decided that I’d better tackle them now - before they completely take over!!!

MEME #1

First, I’m going to answer Vijay’s $456 Billion Meme. That’s a real tough one. If you haven’t seen Vijay’s response, you should - it was excellent.

If I could choose where to put all of that money, I would like to see it poured into healthcare. Among the things I’d like see done with it include programs which would encourage more young people to go into general medicine, since stats show that in the last decade, there has been a better than 50% drop in med school grads who chose to go into general practice. Reports are that we’re heading for a shortfall. A friend who left his practice to become a hospitalist told me last year that he expected family practices to be staffed solely by medical support staff in the next decade. This is not a comforting thought. I’m not knocking each profession’s role in the healthcare scheme, but I still believe that the family physician’s role should be performed by those who are, indeed, family physicians or internists. Their years of study and training were geared for exactly what they’re doing.

One more thing … I would not like to see the government be responsible for such a program. I think that the medical community understands its own needs better than anyone on the outside looking in.

MEME #2

Ipanema, that dear sweet lady, also tagged me in June. As I was going over her blog looking for the tag, I found yet another tag from this past January which I’d missed seeing. Now my face is really red! I guess I have been having a harder time getting in here and blogging than I realized … *blink* Please be patient with this old Moof … it’s not intentional, believe me …

This meme is about the “Top songs when I was 18!” Hey people, I’m not sure that music had even been invented by the time I was 18!!!

The instructions are as follows:

1. Go to www.popculturemadness.com
2. Select the year you turned 18.
3. Get all nostalgic over the hit songs of the year
4. Write about it
5. Pass this tag onto 5 others

Okay, as strange as this might sound, I’ve never followed pop music. When my peers were screaming and fainting at the sight of the Beatles, (and yes, I’m that old!) I was listening to folk music, and old French songs.

Here is the list of number one hits for the year I turned 18:

December 14 - January 31: - I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye
February 1 - February 14: Crimson And Clover Tommy James & the Shondells
February 15 - March 14: Everyday People Sly & The Family Stone
March 15 - April 11: Dizzy Tommy Roe
April 12 - May 23: Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) The 5th Dimension
May 24 - June 27: Get Back The Beatles with Billy Preston
June 28 - July 11: Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet Henry Mancini
July 12 - August 22: In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus) Zager & Evans
August 23 - September 19: Honky Tonk Women The Rolling Stones
September 20 - October 17: Sugar, Sugar The Archies
October 18 - October 31: I Can’t Get Next to You The Temptations
November 1 - November 7: Suspicious Minds Elvis Presley
November 8 - November 28: Wedding Bell Blues The 5th Dimension
November 29 - December 5: Come Together The Beatles
December 6 - December 19: Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye) Steam
December 20 - December 26: Leaving On A Jet Plane Peter, Paul & Mary
December 27 - January 2: Someday We’ll Be Together Diana Ross & The Supremes

Of those songs, I believe that only three of them actually made any impression on me at the time: “Aquarius“, “In the Year 2525,” and of course “Leaving on a Jet Plane“. Some of the others, I still don’t recognize.

The songs I could wax poetic over from that era would include music by Simon and Garfunkel, Peter Paul and Mary, Rod McKuen, Joan Baez, Marianne Faithful, Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie … et al.

Ipanema, my dear friend, please forgive me for dropping the ball with your lovely memes!

MEME #3

And now, another one by Vijay. Yes … dear, sweet Vijay … two, two in less than a month!!!

I’m trying hard to think up some appropriate retribution thanks for Vijay for being so kind … >;o)

This one is called: “Eight Random Facts.”

Here are the rules:

1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been
tagged.

Oh boy. Eight! That’s a lot! I’m not even sure I can count that high …

Let me see …

1) I prefer salty flavors over sweet flavors, which is bad, since I’m not allowed salt.
2) At the age of 13, I left home to attend an all-girl’s boarding school. I loved it there.
3) Over 20 years ago, I founded a retreat ministry. It was the first of its kind.
4) All of my typing is done with 9 fingers - my right pinkie has an old mallet fracture.
5) I’m about to be a grammoof again - very very soon.
6) I can’t get my favorite food (poutine) without driving all the way to Canada … :o(
7) I want to live in the south again …
8) I love to fly in small planes, but am terrified of flying in commercial jets.

I will do my best to not drop the meme ball again. For this time, there are are just too many memes for me to tag anyone, however if anyone would like to do one these, you can certainly consider yourself tagged! Just let me know so that I can be sure to come take a peek! :o)

I have one more week off from school - just bit more than that, actually. I hope to have time to do a full blogrun over the next few days; Bloglines tells me that I’m 6074 posts behind … I think it might take me a minute or two to get caught up again, eh? *blink* If I can make that happen, I’d like to actually get into here and do a few regular posts before I have to give up my life to my next course - a doozy this time: Connectivity with Lab. This is going to be another toughie for me. I’m taking CIS with a database track, because that’s where my strengths and interests are, and where I want to end up with Medical Informatics; I’m afraid that the technician’s side of the coin is never going to be my forte - someone else is going to have to troubleshoot gnarly networks and unresponsive routers …

Posted: Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 9:01 pm under: MEME Oh MY!. Comment Feed (RSS 2.0). Interact: Comment or Trackback.