I grew up about an hour north of NYC (on a dirt road, though!) and still consider myself a New Yorker, even though I've been living in VT for over five years now. I came to VT for a guy who dumped me in the beginning of 2007, and I'm stuck here because of a job that's too good to quit until I have to...which is coming up some time in July. (Keep reading for the explanation.)

I have 19 acres and a yurt in Central NY that I visit whenever I can. (No, I don't live in a yurt full-time.) I'm lucky that my compressed work schedule gives me long weekends off every week (Sunday to Wednesday), so I can make the trip out there or somewhere else pretty often. So if you're in the south-of-Syracuse area or the Utica to Binghamton/Route 12 corridor, I'm looking for friends out there, too.

The geek in me is intrigued by the algorithms behind this site. Hilariously, when I searched for my "enemies," I find someone who hates their algorithms and doesn't think they work at all. Next time I tried that, I got someone who's really Christian and works for the government. Yup, these algorithms work.

Well, a lot has changed since the New Year (2008). For those who read my profile before, you know that I was trying to get pregnant. I have finally succeeded with that, after 2 or 3 years of trying on and off with the ex, and eleven months of trying with the current BF. I was just about to move out when I found out. I'm due mid-August.

I did finally get all my stuff out of my ex's garage--I had to, when he moved to NH--but now it's in the current apartment's garage and in storage, not in a new building on my property where it should be, because I got started building too late last fall. That little building (8' by 10.5', on pilings) is in progress (March update: Yay, the floor joists are done!) and maybe it'll even be finished before I get too huge (by May, hopefully).

I sleep a lot more than before, but less than earlier in the pregnancy, when I could sleep 18 hours a day. It was hard to get much else done, other than making sure I ate really healthy food. Finally, I'm finding a little more time to start some seeds indoors, knit some baby sweaters and an afghan, get work done on my property, etc.

So, I know what my top priority is now, but the rest of the details for "the rest of my life" still need to be worked out.

- Hanging out, writing sloppy Perl code that gets the job done, "low-maintenance" gardening, *nix sysadminning (90% AIX at the moment), roadtrips

- Having too high standards for myself to put much in this category.

Not sure about "first," but the kinds of guys I'm into usually like the red hair. There's some correlation there with Rational NT types and/or libertarian computer geeks liking redheads, I think. (Mine's a reddish-brown, not strawberry or firey red.)

I never got around to re-reading my Milan Kundera collection last summer or fall like I planned. In fact, I hadn't been reading a lot of "dead-wood" books lately until this month (March 2008), just stuff from the internet (including tons of pregnancy research). But then I went on a little Amazon spree and just inhaled Prozac Nation and More, Now, Again by the same author (what a self-absorbed whiner!) and then the The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Oh, just before those, I read a more "serious" book, David's Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary, which was excellent. Up next are another two serious books: Africa in the Iron Age and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. March update: those two are postponed because of a lot of building-related and garden-related reading...on the web and from a few books I already had. Amazingly, the Burlington, VT library's online catalog says it has none of the major permaculture books. I am shocked, given the local demographics!

In general, though? I've always loved the Russian storytellers, playwright Eugene O'Neill, Voltaire's Candide, and some others I mostly encountered in high school. I read voraciously when young, and some of those--Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, Madeleine L'Engle (RIP), Cosmos, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, classic short stories--had a great impact on me growing up.

I have a fairly large, maybe half-read library, mostly contained in a dozen or so boxes in the garage right now--clusters of books on things that are hard to soundbite, other than the substantial foreign language section, some classic literature, and some worthwhile reference books I miss having nearby, like The NY Public Library Desk Reference. I also have a section for homeschooling materials, which I've been collecting for over five years now in preparation.

I like the "end of the world" or "mass epidemic" theme in movies as well as books. My Netflix queue is full of them. My favorite so far is probably The Day After Tomorrow, NOT because I buy into the whole human-induced global warming hype, but because it makes a brilliant premise for this fictional movie, with heart-warming human interest subplots and survival themes. It's got some superb CG "power of nature" scenes, shots of megastorms from space, NYC getting destroyed (but some proud survivors coming through, naturally). Highly entertaining! Related, but a separate favorite genre is cyberpunk, starting with the seminal classic Bladerunner (corresponding to current literary favorites Gibson, Stephenson, Vinge, Dick, Heinlein...) Related to those by The Matrix are the psychological "what is reality and how do we know" movies, from A Beautiful Mind to the wonderfully horrible Altered States that I got through NetFlix. I like Bond/Bourne and some silly movies (Airplane, Spaceballs), too. I haven't seen a whole lot of movies compared to most folks, but in the last few years, I loved V for Vendetta and Children of Men in the theater and Serenity on DVD...um, can't think of anything else offhand, but I'm sure there were some.

Update: I'm not really getting my money's worth with the NetFlix subscription, but I still like having it. I have to add Knocked Up to the list, because it seems to be the story of my life now. I also want to go see Juno, but I might not get around to it while it's in the theaters and might have to put it on the NetFlix list instead.

I listen to NPR and BBC news more than music. My musical taste is partially stuck in the 80s (favorites from that impressionable period: Echo and the Bunnymen and Duran Duran), with a few exceptions, like Natalie Merchant and that perennial geek favorite, They Might Be Giants. I love Bob Dylan, but haven't seen him live; I went to about a dozen Dead shows back in the day and saw Blues Traveller (wow!) once at the Felt Forum. I play violin and guitar a bit, am generally best at classical pieces; I collect folk songs and WWI and earlier war-themed music (the latter for slightly cynical reasons) and work on learning to play some more Irish tunes.

Update: Back in November, I fell in love with the Amy Winehouse album "Back to Black." I also got a Dixie Chicks album to listen to "Landslide" again and again.

For food, I love cooking, but can be a little too experimental for some folks. I love most non-U.S. cuisines, but I can't really handle capsaicin. I really dislike coffee, have never had a full cup. Mt. Dew Code Red WAS my crack, but no more caffeine for me now. I didn't like eggplant until my mid-20s, but now I do. I still don't really like licorice, but have gotten more into cooking with fennel, which I used to avoid because it can taste like licorice.

I ran into someone here who has listed some of my same exact top favorite things to order in restaurants: pad thai, thai iced tea, mango lassi, lambic framboise. I guess I have to go get some chicken korma from his list--my favorite Indian dish has been sag paneer so far. I love chocolate, plain or with peanut butter, especially. My sweet tooth completely disappeared during the first trimester, but it's back now.

I do have my most essential cookbooks unpacked and in the house: The Joy of Cooking (the 1997 edition is here, because my copy of the prior edition is at the yurt for the extensive wild-animal butchering advice, just in case), The Art of Russian Cuisine (Anne Volokh with Mavis Manus, very comprehensive), and Wild Fermentation (see http://www.wildfermentation.com/ ) plus the bread machine/yogurt machine/dehydrator manuals...which I haven't used in ages. (I've been making bread/pizza dough by hand lately, since I found a really easy little recipe.) Everything else I need is found quicker with a web search anyway. I just plug in something I pulled out of the pantry plus something from the fridge, and see what I can make. It's like the "Stump the Chef" game on The Splendid Table.

March update: I just had my first successful crop of sprouts, after I got a $10 sprouting container last week. I'd tried, but I never got sprouts to grow properly in a jar with cheesecloth over it.

Note: "boring" taste in food or a preference for U.S. fast food is a minus on my romantic scale, just as I'm sure my "boring" taste in music is for others.

Air, water, food, shelter, sex, internet-connected computer.

What do you want? I usually take things literally. If I try to not take it QUITE as literally, I still come up with concrete, practical things:

Laminated maps, sheet music, small bag of toiletries/personal hygiene stuff, a knife, a way to make fire, my cell phone w/camera

(it says THINGS, not people, not abstract concepts)

Where I'm going to live "the rest of my life" and with whom, other than the baby.

Late March update: Permaculture. Along with the indoor seed-starting, I've been planning this year's plantings for my property. I ordered a bunch of hardy fruit trees and bushes online, purchased the rest of the seeds I need locally, and have been reading tons of permaculture info online for ideas for plant companions. It's similar to what I've done all along (I was raised by a Ruth Stout devotee who always composted veggie waste), but I picked up a few good new ideas. E.g.: I'm going to build an herb spiral this year with an oyster mushroom section at the bottom on the north side.

I could go on, but it changes often and my Del.icio.us links tell half of the story in real-time. (Those are my 'permalinks'; my current events links go elsewhere.)

Still working 7pm to 7am, but now without the Mt. Dew Code Red.

Ummm...my sex drive is almost all gone, and I can't really blame it on the first trimester hormones and morning sickness anymore. It's kind of like my body said: "OK, goal accomplished." Or maybe it's the seemingly-constant pressure to have sex when I feel like crap. (Morning sickness was replaced by heartburn, lower back/tailbone pain and bleeding gums.)

You're a libertarian in NY or VT.

Warning: my situation is kind of "complicated" now, to say the least.