I am the kind of person who cuddles spiders and is afraid of fish. Don't we all know someone just like that? I will be your friend, if you ask.

I am horrified by starfish. SO MANY TUBE FEETS.

My life is basically consumed by the need to do science, geek out and play video games at all times. I also enjoy sleep.

I have sound -> color synesthesia. This is not as awesome as it sounds. Mainly it prevents me from enjoying perfectly good music because it is puke green, and made learning to drive very difficult. However, if you want to know what color your voice is, I can answer that question.

I'm kind-of pretentious, but I hate pretentious people.

I really like watching professional hockey. My team is terrible, but I love them anyway.

I'm in a herpetology graduate program at the University of Texas at Arlington. I should be done with my Master's in June, and I've just accepted an offer to attend the University of Nebraska at Lincoln for my PhD.

My study taxa include amphibians, crocodiles and turtles. I used to work on fossil crocs, but you should know that I really, really dislike most vertebrate paleontology. Except that I'm apparently getting my doctorate in vert paleo. I don't know. I have mixed feelings, probably...

Crocodiles are my favoritest animals ever, and I cannot be trusted within a hundred yards of a crocodilian. I'll do something terminally stupid, like try to hug it.

I'm an excellent editor, but a rotten writer. I have a good sense of how to make a story work and a complete inability to write more than four pages of fiction. I am tolerably good at useless pontification and I make a mean cup of tea.

Oh, and I am trying to work on my photography. I like to take pictures of insects, and while I'm not amazing or anything, I have taken a picture or two that probably qualify as 'not bad,' and not as a complete accident.

I like to bake. Currently, my cupcake recipes are tacked on to my fridge next to giant Celtic knots, because the only thing more awesome than red velvet is graph theory.

... is that I've spilled coffee on myself. Again.

Books: The Lord of the Rings, Dead Souls, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Rushdie), Midnight Robber, On the Banks of the Yaryn. I like Terry Pratchett a lot, but sometimes he's a privileged idiot.

I'm a fan of good science fiction and fantasy and I don't like people who are too pretentious for genre fiction. I also like a good non-fiction book, especially if it's about parasites. I read entirely too many scientific papers, but I don't really enjoy them.

Oh, and I read comics. I keep up with Uncanny X-men, and I read some other Marvel stuff. I hated Watchmen. So much.

I can write Quenya. I am that much of a goddamned nerd.

Movies I like: Tank Girl, Pan's Labyrinth, Iron Man, Star Trek, Star Wars, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Shows I like: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, How I Met Your Mother, Futurama, What Not To Wear (Which is deeply ironic, given that they would HATE me and my Utilikilt), Planet Earth.

David Attenborough is my favorite person ever.

Oh, and the way to my heart is undoubtedly through Stargate: SG-1. But not Atlantis or SGU, because that'd just be shameful.

Food I like: Japanese food (omg miso on everything, please), Indian food, Thai food, Mexican food, grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.

Music I like: Great Big Sea, The Weakerthans, Gaelic Storm, They Might be Giants, The Tolkien Ensemble, Tori Amos and an unhealthy amount of classical music. I like Haydn and Bach's Chacconne. Mozart is overrated.

My books, my computer, weasels, tea, my camera and pants

My pets, my research and good books. Also Portal.

Drinking tea, landmarking photos and making wild assertions about phylogenetics.

That, or drunk bowling.

I'm wearing Spider Man underpants. That's pretty personal, right?

Also, I'm trans. I guess that matters? To some people?

...you are always P-body and never ATLAS.

...you are okay with dogs as pets, cats as pets, snakes as pets and crocodiles as pets.

...you write socially conscious, transformative fanfiction that reimagines your fandom in interesting, progressive ways. (Especially if that fandom is Marvel comics.)

... you ♥ Star Wars but find the fetishization of Slave Leia totally objectionable.

...you want to make some badass vegan cupcakes.

... your Risk strategy is more interesting than 'take Australia, build up troops in Papua New Guinea.'

... you want to listen to someone ramble for hours to you about dissociation, modularity and evolutionary novelty.

... you are queer and/or queer-friendly, but would much rather talk about mantidflies than queer politics.

...you want to go for a walk and stop for every ground beetle we find along the way.

...you don't mind that I am really, really flaky at answering messages here. You should probably ask me for my gchat or facebook if you want to talk to me, because I'm awful at checking this.