Here's a basic rule of thumb for me: if you wouldn't walk up to a complete stranger in public and say it, don't use the anonymity of the Internet to say it to me here. In other words, PLEASE don't open a conversation with me with not-particularly-witty innuendo, comments about my breasts, or whatever your personal version of "Nice boots, let's fuck" might be. I don't mind salacious repartee if it's smart and if I like you, but I have to know you first. Talk to me like we're both human. Like you don't see every woman as "Slot B," or like anything with a pulse will do. Talk to me like you're a functioning adult with a brain and a sense of humour and interests and hobbies and awesome things you love to do and people you hang out with and places you go and a LIFE. I want to know who you are. I'd like to believe you want to know who I am, too.

So. As I was saying.

I can try to tell you what makes me me, but I've been told I'm useless in photographs. I'm a liberal, an artist, a writer, a carnivore, Jewish, an overthinker, decent communicator, and I live for brains and passion. I CANNOT STAND textspeak from anyone over the age of nine, I have a fluid relationship with deadlines, I live in mortal terror of ever having to drive on the left, and am perfectly content to have my heart broken by a beautiful turn of phrase in a well-written book.

I love learning. I have an insatiable curiosity. I'm discovering now that the very basic bits of cosmology and physics are NOT utterly incomprehensible, and that while my middle school may have failed me, there's no reason I can't start studying such things now. What's next? Don't know yet. Biology? I'll figure that out as I go.

I am one of these, two of those, and oh, one of that, too.

I'm a corsetmaker. Honest. I make corsets for a living. I do various shows throughout the year, and I sell online. I made a TARDIS corset that went viral, which was an utterly surreal experience. Go on: Google it. For realsies. Most awesome job ever.

I go to London every few years for a veritable orgy of Shakespeare. Of course, last time, I got sick whilst there, but you can't have everything, right? Hoping to go back soon, though that seems to be for ever-changing variables of soon. I have discovered, in a chat with a fellow traveller, that I travel to collect experiences and photographs. And embroidered silks.

Trying to finish a novel. Isn't everyone?

Spending far too much time hunched over a sewing machine or drafting table. Or maybe it's not enough time-- I can't be sure.

Drafting patterns. Picking fabric. Biting my tongue over jokes that should not be made in polite company. Being a passenger on road trips. Napping. And I've been told I'm a dynamite kisser, but that's on a need-to-know basis.

After the cleavage, you mean? Yeah, I know. And hey, that's how I got into corsetmaking in the first place, so it'd be rather ungrateful of me to resent The Girls. As long as they stay quiet, we get along well.

Now, what I'd LIKE to believe people notice first is my sparkling eyes and equally sparkling wit. The reality, however, is that they probably first notice that my hair is a mess and I've just knocked over my chair. And that I'm decked in cat/dog hair where I missed a spot with the lint brush.

Books: Yum. On the lookout for new books about Shakespeare, who is really someone we can only know from his negative space, since personal records from 400 years ago tend to be a bit thin on the ground. I'm an enormous Fantasy fan, especially Urban Fantasy. Tad Williams completely rocks my world. Er...in a literary sense, that is. Austen, Bronte, Dumas. Working my way through all the Sherlock Holmes tales yet again.

Movies: Si Taenia Est, Non Vidi. I swear I'm going to have that made into a real heraldic motto one of these days. Though I AM pretty jazzed about The Avengers.

Music: ElderGoth, and have the Manic Panic lipstick to prove it, buddy. Not big on rap or experimental jazz. Not big on hardcore anything. Love classical, though I don't listen as much as I used to. (Puccini and Tchaikovsky are particular favourites.) I used to listen to a lot more Country than I do now, but then, I also used to live in the South. I tend now to listen to a pretty broad range: EBM/Futurepop/synthpop, Celtic, Goth, singer/songwriter, independent bands. That translates to Duran Duran, Del Amitri, VNV Nation, Covenant, And One, The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Tchaikovsky, Indigo Girls, Neuroticfish, Assemblage 23, Over the Rhine, a-ha, Corvus Corax, and, all too often, the sounds of one of my cats gakking on the carpet, which is not likely to climb any chart, any time, anywhere.

Bonus Section!

TV: Doctor Who and Torchwood. (Matt Smith is definitely a truly brilliant Doctor, though David Tennant and Peter Davison will probably always have my heart.) The wait for Sherlock is killing me. West Wing and Firefly DVDs. Um...that's really about it. Oh, Top Gear, sometimes. No, wait-- Daily Show and Colbert Report. And THAT'S about it. Really. Though I'll often have HGTV on in the background. Oh, never mind.

I'm not much into sports, but I have one shining exception: cycling. Honest. Bicycle road racing. The Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France, and the Vuelta a España. Chess at 50mph-- love it. No, I'm not ready to talk about Lance Armstrong. REALLY not ready to talk about Levi Leipheimer.

1. The pets. Though they could prolly do fine without me. Except for the opposable thumbs bit. S'only reason they keep me around.

2. My laptop. My perpetually unfinished novel's on it. My email. My step-by-step plan for world domination. Cute photos of my dog.

3. A sewing machine. Yeah, it's for work, but...I do kinda like what I do.

4. Sushi. Good sushi. After a few weeks without, it becomes an almost unreasoning, overwhelming need.

5. Some kind of creative outlet. Singing, writing, corsetting-- something.

6. Passion. Something to light up the day. Something to get me out of bed and moving. Sometimes it's my work, sometimes it's some new obsession. But there has to be something.

Patterns. Shows. Possibilities. Love, sex, death, dinner. You know-- typical.

Depends on if I have a show or not. If yes, probably trying to finish an order or a stock piece. If not, well, writing, reading, lounging at a diner, seeing friends...did I mention the pondering world domination? I didn't? Okay. You didn't read that, then. Move along, move along.

Durannie. Yes, Duran Duran. Big time. So...you know...nyah.

...you think we'd suit, and you know where apostrophes go. And where they most assuredly should not.