My name is Erin.
I'm this girl.

Those are the important things.

I enjoy having the ability/skills to be able to change people's lives for the better. I like knowing people.

My goals for this part of my life are to become more self disciplined and to travel more.

I like to think that I'm an optimist, but sometimes I think that I'm a pessimist with a masochistic bent. I try to make an active effort to be happy because I prefer it to the alternative. In any case, I've been told that my tendency to "look on the bright side" sometimes drives people crazy.

I also tend to be fairly analytical, for whatever that's worth.

I strongly value precision in language and thought.

I am really interested in things that I don't already know/understand.

I enjoy living an intentional and examined life.

Here's the short version of what I'm looking for:
Friends. If you're looking for a smart girl FRIEND, hit me up.

The other half of that story is that I ADORE being touched. (The other, other half is that I'm super picky about who I will let touch me.) It's one of the very most important things to me. I like having friends I can cuddle and kiss and generally be intimate (but not necessarily sexual) with. I feel like in any relationship, there comes a point where you have to touch someone to get to know them better; that you can't really get to know someone fully without touching them/exploring their physical aspect. I think this is *really* neat.

CAVEAT: I probably don't want to have sex with you. (And not in the "I'm probably not trying to have sex with you" way that guys put on their profile so that they're less threatening -- in that really, I don't especially want to have sex with anybody* . . . but I do love touching/being touched)

*There have been a few (to date, my lifetime cumulative total is 2) notable exceptions to this -- these two people are both very intelligent, exquisitely capable of social manipulations/games (distinct from relationship games, which are largely irritating) and extraordinarily driven/busy -- and I pretty strongly suspect that this is not a simple coincidence.

Finally, I'm very interested in learning about, but not particularly interested in attempting to practice monogamy. [EDIT: It is apparent to me that this is probably less true than I thought it was when I wrote it, currently I could IMAGINE myself being monogamous - but I suspect it would take a particularly. . .umm. . .unique? person to induce that in/from me.] I've tried it, and the reality of it, for me, is that I end up cheating on whomever I am allegedly dating exclusively. I don't like cheating, so I've stopped making agreements that make it so that I could cheat if I were feeling so inclined. I generally feel the same way about religion. Fascinating, but not for me.

I'm having lots of fun. I work a lot, I play a lot, I do what I want.

Jobs:
* I work as a private duty nurse in a guy's house overnight Thursday through Saturday. (I have lots of time to chat, if you happen to be awake between midnight and 8 am over the weekend.)
* I also work on call as a hospice nurse for several Denver area hospices. I hear this is supposed to be depressing, but in reality I find it to be really uplifting, if somewhat emotionally draining.
*I also stab people, for fun and profit (Sept-Nov, most years)

As for the rest of my life. I adore meeting people, and knowing people, and learning about people. If it were up to me, I'd probably hang out with people all day long. Suffice it to say that I'm somewhat of an extrovert. I think I score in the range of 95% extroverted on Meyers-Briggs scales.

I'm working on re-taking the MCAT and getting into an osteopathic medical school. I think.

Learning to run. Developing core strength. (Both both literally and figuratively.)

Predicting what people will do (Once I know them a little. . .it's fairly un-clever to use this as a conversation starter, because I've never met you. . .unless I have, and then why do you need a conversation starter?)

Customer Service

Learning new things - quickly

Equivocating/qualifying statements

Asking weirdly specific questions

Listening to other people

Talking about myself

That I'm loud, or my smile. Depends on whether they see me before they hear me.

My friend recently told me that I put people on "tilt."

Books: Kushiel's Dart, et al., The Gargoyle, Enchantment, Mindless
Eating, Cocaine: An Unauthorized Autobiography, Atlas Shrugged,
Anthem, The Splendid Solution, The Emperor of Scent, Cautionary
Tales for Children, The Sneeches and Other Stories (I'm not so much
a fan of The Sneeches, but I enjoy all of the other stories quite a
lot.)

Movies: Lucky Number Slevin, Save the Last Dance, Mr. & Mrs.
Smith, Italian Job, Martian Child, Race to Witch Mountain, Taken,
Easy A, Brick.

Shows: I don't actually own a TV with service - the one we have is
connected to computers for movies and gaming. That said, I only
watch television shows once the season is over: House, True Blood,
Pushing Daisies, Firefly, Castle, Penn & Teller.

Music: A friend once said to me, in all seriousness, "it's not that
you have bad taste in music, it's that you have no
taste in music." That pretty well covers it. I have very specific
taste in music, which is difficult to describe, but which once you
know, you know. It spans pretty much all genres and other
categories (As a note: I'm incredibly skilled at picking what
nearly everyone describes as the worst of the music they listen
to.).

Food: I tend to like ethnic foods. Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese,
Ethiopian, Mexican, Indonesian (but you can't really get Indonesian
food here), Greek. I also like french fries. But not a lot. I just
like them some. And milkshakes. I like those a lot. I might
consider being a vegan just to see if I could do it (not on any
moral/philosophical platform)... but I already know I couldn't,
because how could I live without cheese? I don't like bananas or
avocados.

I have contemplated with some regularity that I could just walk away from the VAST majority of my worldly possessions and never miss anything. I like that. It contrasts strikingly with the materialistic impulse that it seems like most of the people I know have.

On the other hand, I adore popsicles.

P.S. I hate this question. And I hate people who think there's a *right* way to answer this question. I cheerfully defy them.

Monogamy/kink/social constructions surrounding sexuality

People and why they believe in gods.

How to improve my life.

Other people's life experiences - how they're different from mine.

How many academic degrees I could reasonably attain while continuing to work full time. . .and how many I want.

Where I'm going. What I want to be doing. How to get there.

Working.

But the wonderful thing about my work is that I don't have to be there until 10pm. This means that even though I have to work every Friday night, I can still have most of a social life. Especially since I don't drink, and most of the things to do after 10pm revolve around alcohol.

This used to say that I was terrified of alcohol. I'm not *actually* terrified of alcohol anymore. (Though, for what it's worth, it makes me viscerally uncomfortable to be around alcohol and/or (most) people when they are drinking alcohol.)

I've had sex with almost all of the people I consider to be my best friends. Most of these people are still just friends.

You disagree with a particular part of my profile. (i.e., you want to debate politely and without ad hominem attacks.)

You think I'm interesting (and can articulate why).

You like puns.

You want to hang out.

You're bored in the middle of the night.

You think that you are particularly precise in speech/thought and value that quality in others.

You're excessively awesome.