I'm an explorer in any sense of the word.

Longer version:

1) From a very early age, I wanted to learn everything I could about anything I could get my hands on. I was reading by the time I was three, so I was able to make sense of, or at least be curious about, many things about the house: my father's EMT training books, the family computer, my mother's car, etc., etc., etc. Many things were disassembled, most were reassembled. Those that weren't... well, we'll forget them for now.

2) I eventually settled into science, namely genetics and enzymology. My goals for the future involve research, preferably regarding metabolic disorders.

3) Most of my favorite leisure time activities (provided that I have leisure time) are centered around me learning something new or going someplace new. I take the long way everywhere and usually find something to tell a story about.

4) My idea of a perfect trip: The Mongol Rally. Driving a Trabant (or similarly tinily-engined car) from London to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Learn about car repair, bike repair, bartering, bribery, and government corruption, all on one three-week trip! And it's for charity! I will do this one day, it's just a question of when.

Also, because for some reason this seems to matter, I'm an INTP.

Tutoring chemistry and calculus because it's fun.
Doing crossword puzzles on the train.
Admiring the graffiti along the path of my daily commute.
Tying my bowtie for work without looking in the mirror.
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Job-hunting.

1) Being kindhearted and generous. I love volunteering and community service. In casual settings, I am funny and irreverent, but will instantly become comforting, softhearted, and loving if my friends or family need it.

2) Cooking (sort of). I make amazing baklava, cookies (notably of the oatmeal raisin and molasses varieties), and can make you fall in love with me with a bowl of my soup.

3) Making bizarre connections between things. My mind, despite all my efforts to train it otherwise, does not work in a linear fashion. My writing, as a result, is seriously disjointed. I'll have a central idea, and everything webs out around it, darting back and forth between sub-idea and sub-sub-idea and back to the central point. I speak, write, and think in parentheticals almost constantly. The only reason I don't have long, numbered footnotes in my everyday conversations is that I haven't figured out how to do so yet.

4) Deriving happiness from everything. I frequently have bursts of unmitigated childish glee, usually about things that don't necessarily make sense to be gleeful about. (To give you an idea of how this works: http://xkcd.com/231/ -- yeah, that last stick figure? That's me.) Examples of things I get unreasonably excited about: dandelions, the DC Metro (actually, mass transit in general, but I do have a deep, inexplicable love for the Metro), the first 48 hours after a snowstorm, small children, and paper airplanes.

I have a lot of freckles. Like, a whole lot. Seriously.

Books: All the King's Men, Still Life with Woodpecker, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, Stiff, Fungus the Bogeyman. I also have this (what some have described as peculiar) setup where I have a handful of books that I describe as "comfort reading", books that I've read dozens of times that I read when I'm sad or sick or bored or lonely... They are good and familiar, and I don't have to pore over every single word, but I fan through it in an hour or so and feel all the better for it. Palahniuk's Lullaby, Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading collection from 2005 are my comfort books.

Movies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting, The Magnificent Seven, Leon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen. Recently, Waltz With Bashir and Let the Right One In.

Music: The Mountain Goats, Beirut, The Decemberists, Iron and Wine, DeVotchKa, Sufjan Stevens, Beck, Fleet Foxes, Tom Waits (or any singer whose voice sounds like it's been run over by a truck on a gravel road), Bob Log III, bluegrass in general, Elvis Costello, Matt Butcher, Beck, Johnny Cash, Joy Division, Talking Heads, Interpol, Neutral Milk Hotel, Calexico, !!!. I also think making out to Philip Glass is just about the sexiest thing in the universe. This may help, as well: http://www.last.fm/user/burgettk

Food: Ethiopian food, perfect watermelon, dosa, orange juice with pulp, collard greens, minty sweet tea.

Sensations (why not?): padding about barefoot with caution as my eyes adjust to the dark, kissing soft skin, the flush of cold from stepping outside from an overheated room (and vice versa), folding dryer-warmed towels, the way I ache all over after a bout of hysterical laughter, a cool hand on the back of my neck when I'm feverish.

NPR
milk
cheap notebooks (preferably quad-ruled composition notebooks)
science, Wikipedia, and the ever-editable world
conversations taken out of context on the Metro
long-term memory

Where on earth my shoes are

No, really, where did I put them?

Why my bedroom is twenty degrees colder/hotter than the living room (seasonal)

Semantics of English (and, slowly, Arabic) grammar/dialect

Breaking down accents and dialects into constituent phonemes

If we define Friday as "the actual day of the week that is listed on the calendar as 'Friday'," then I'm probably working.

If we're going for the "night before I have an entire couple of days off from work/obligations" essence of Friday, then I'm probably watching a movie at the AFI in Silver Spring, exploring DC while still trying to make it back to the Metro in time to not miss the last train, or playing board games with a handful of friends.

I grew up in Arkansas and I love Prairie Home Companion. Neither is really private, but I'm hoping they're things you don't hold against me.

You're interested in a science and knowledge acquisition-oriented girl who will almost never say no to a new activity out but is equally comfortable curled up on the couch watching the news or a movie.

You're creative, obscenely intelligent, and will not just play along with me in my moments of silliness, but have moments of your own.

You can teach me something.

If you play cello, piano, or slide guitar, that earns bonus points.

Also, feel free to message me on AIM. I'm angstromthurmond, and I'm usually friendly.