- Female, but not girly.
- Mechanical Engineer with a minor in a foreign language.
- Geeky and a little nerdy.
- Jill of all trades, master of none. I'll surprise you, and enjoy doing so.
- Low-grade grammar nazi (mostly spelling).
- Gothy, though I'm pretty fond of pastels and colors.
- 80% straight.
- Generally more sane and less Drama-filled than most girls.
- Equally comfortable with screwdrivers and sewing needles.
- I'd rather live in Chicago or Boston or San Francisco, but the business I love is pretty much only in Houston (human spaceflight), and I'm not leaving it again.
- Guns are bad, mmkay?
- Other turnoffs include smoking and drug use.
- Built like a farm wench - sturdy and strong, with a little softness to get me through the lean years.
- Too nice for my own good sometimes.
- Not poly. I've nothing against it, but have found it's just not for me. (If you have to ask what I mean by that, you don't need to worry about it.)

Helping keep future astronauts breathing safe air. Helping care for my roommate's adorable little boy. Gradually financing the infrastructure repair of my aging house (HVAC, roof, foundation, and windows done; replumbing and doors to go, plus a million little projects that I mostly do myself).

All four categories in Cranium, but especially yellow.

Making things happen for myself. I'm responsible and proactive and self-reliant (to a fault). I generally have my shit together. If I don't know how to do something I need done (usually involving fixing something or beating a computer program into submission), it often becomes a personal mission to figure out how to do it myself.

My employer believes me to be really good at my job, because they keep giving me awards. I think I'm pretty average, but I'm told my expectations are intimidatingly high.

Being invisible in crowds. Every time I go out people always walk into me and otherwise ignore me.

Learning languages. I only list a couple formally any more, as the others are pretty rusty. I have a minor in German, took Chinese for several years to acheive the fluency of maybe a 5-year old (just enough to follow a dinner conversation with daylightfalters' family), and have taken various introductions to Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

Hair, especially my buzzed nape [edit: need a new pic, as my hair is, as of 11/2011, very short and the nape is not so buzzy]. Reportedly: smile, though those are less frequent of late. I'm typically very quiet, which is sometimes notable.

Current favorites in the literary world: Harry Potter series, Jim Butcher and select other urban fantasy authors, Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, Paolo Bacigalupi, good juvenile/young adult fiction, Hitchhiker's Guide, Siddhartha, and all the free or super-cheap stuff I downloaded for my Kindle (now I finally have a good excuse to read all those classics I never got around to!).

Current favorites in the world of cinema: most anything Tim Burton but especially Big Fish and Nightmare Before Christmas, Pixar films, American Beauty, Galaxy Quest, What Dreams May Come, Jackie Chan flicks.

Current favorites on the boob tube (which is no longer a tube...): Firefly, Star Trek (particularly DS9), Scrubs, Battlestar Galactica, The Muppet Show, This Old House, other Joss Whedon stuff, and select anime (Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Hare + Guu).

My music collection is large, but not large enough, and varied, but similarly not varied enough. Things that I have a lot of or particularly treasure include: Michael Gulezian, Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Dead Milkmen, Thomas Dolby, Peter Gabriel, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Rasputina, R.E.M., Rush, Peter Murphy, Dead Can Dance, They Might Be Giants, Yello. At the club I enjoy EBM, but I don't own much. I'm reasonably well acquainted with a lot of classical music, though I own almost none. I'm generally not a fan of country or rap, but there are select exceptions (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Kenny Rogers).

I like food to the point of addiction, but one can't exactly quit eating. Consequently, I struggle with my weight a bit. At least I have good health-risk motivators for keeping it generally in check. Select favorite foods include good sushi (no tentacles or mollusks), blue cocktails, thawed frozen sugared strawberries, ice cream, quality teas, and ethnic foods of all sorts.

1. Either a job or a person with which I share mutual love. Ideally it'd be both, but so far the universe hasn't ever let me keep both for long. Right now it's the job (though the current Government is trying to take that from us), but I'll keep trying for a person too.
2. Something to read. When I was a kid I'd even read shampoo bottles while in the bathroom, so I'm decent at pronouncing those huge polysyllabic chemical names.
3. Regular social interaction. Despite my general misanthropy, I've found I go stir-crazy without it. Sadly, a trip to bum around Barnes & Noble only barely counts as social interaction when I'm actively going stir-crazy. Getting a roommate (who's also my best friend) has helped a lot.
4. At least a little space that's all my own - under my control for mess or not, and a safe haven when I need to get away from everyone. I can handle short periods without this, but nothing permanent.
5. Things that make me go "SQUEE!"
6. I'm pretty darned fond of my 4-in-1 screwdriver. It's a flathead and a Philips driver, it's a chisel, it's a hammer, it's a nut driver, it's a pry bar, and more. I thought that was a space filler, but I haven't been able to come up with anything more deserving of the spot yet, so it stays.

Whatever project I've most recently thrown myself into: lately I've been trying to reclaim my house from the dirt and spiderwebs, and learning to jog with a couch-to-5k program and a friend (I still won't like it, though). When not thinking about work (which I try not to do at home), I'm also finishing up wiring my house for video and data, retiling part of my shower, repainting my mailbox, plotting building a new closet in my bedroom, dreaming of a window bench design to go under one of my newly-replaced windows, working on a few different counted cross stitch projects, reading several different books at once, and more.

Alone. I sometimes go out just to be near people, either dancing at Numbers or shopping, but it's not the same as being _with_ people. Lately I've been babysitting for my roommate, sickboyw, frequently, but a sleeping toddler doesn't really count as company. Every once in a while I get a friend to play with me or go play with them. Rockband nights at a friend's have been the most common variant of this lately.

I find this site fantastically depressing 99% of the time, but I keep coming back to torture myself.

...you like speaking into the void, because I almost never write back. 80% of the messages I get are crap from the get-go, 10% are just not my type, and the other 9% I hang onto to think about but never get around to writing back. Feel free to take your chances at being in the 9% or even the 1%.

You should NOT message me if you are incapable of spelling out simple words such as "you" and "are" and "you're." If I see a violation of this in the first preview line, the message is simply deleted unread. You should also not bother if you're likely to delete your account within a couple of weeks of first messaging me; I'm getting tired of that.