It took me twenty years to quit biting my nails.

I only like a couple very similar video games even though I read lots of webcomics about other video games I've never played. I fall in and out of infatuation fairly easily, to the point where I like lots and lots of things but those things change pretty frequently, and I've never been really hardcore about anything in particular. Even Buffy and Firefly, my favorite shows in the world, have never inspired me to actually write fanfic or attend conventions. Those sort of people creep me out. I change my haircolor and clothing style several times a year, for the same reasons: I just like so many different looks and I don't like one more enough than the others to stick to it exclusively.

I can't hold any sort of sharp object in my hand without imagining accidentally poking my eye out, nor can I stand on a train platform without imaging being somehow jostled onto the tracks.

I hate fingerprints on wineglasses. I love eucalyptus scented anything. The feel and sound of styrofoam make my skin crawl.

I'm not as patient as I think a perfect teacher should be.

I'm allergic to raw fruits of the Maloideae and Prunoideae subfamilies of the Rosaceae family - apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, and almonds. (Did you know these were all in the rose family?) I often pretend to be allergic to several other things I don't like, like bell peppers and mushrooms, so that I can decline to eat them without looking merely fussy. I also pretend to understand more French and Italian than I actually do. Perhaps I should have put those last two sentences in the private admissions section.

I always score so close to the middle on binary-variable personality tests that several possible results describe me pretty accurately. I value sex and love about equally; I am both logical and creative, graceful and clumsy, shy and outgoing, nervous and bold, well-dressed and anti-fashion, feminist and romantic, a procrastinating overachiever. Since joining OKCupid, I have been Half-Cocked, The Playstation, The Peach, and The Maid of Honor.

Starting the morning after my last day of grad school, I drove 2,800 miles across the country to a new job as a multi-grade coteacher at a tiny new K-4 charter school north of Portland. My east coast man joined me a few months later, and nearly two years later, we've just bought our very first home, and I've moved on to being the ESL teacher at a really cool grade school in Hillsboro. I have no idea what I did to deserve all this awesome.

I'm a Philly girl born and raised, but I became a Portlandia girl pretty quickly. It's fantastically chill out here in the northwest, and my heart settled in a lot faster than I thought my brain would be comfortable with. I've always been pretty nomadic. Even before I spent two years teaching in Korea, I was a high school exchange student in Mexico. I went to three high schools in two countries, switched campuses halfway through college, and managed to go through three apartments in Korea. I even lived at the Jersey shore the summer before starting grad school at Penn. But I got pretty tired of packing and unpacking every year or so, up to an including just this past month getting into the new house, but here we are, making a life and putting down roots.

I'm the most proud of having taught myself how to knit and crochet. At first it was all just stuff for myself, but I finally started an Etsy account in an attempt to recoup some of the money that I have poured into my newest passion. Yarn and hooks and needles and books aren't cheap! The quickest way into my good graces at the moment is to lavishly compliment one of my projects. As I tell my students, flattery will get you everywhere! ^_^

Teaching, I hope. Knitting! Crocheting! Reading bad penmanship. Reading IPA. Writing, and spelling, and knowing when to use things like semicolons. Drawing (well, I'm talented enough on the fly to impress people, but not enough to ever really make a life of it). Listening to people talk and figuring out where they're from. Faking accents. Making fabulously tasty coffee and sampling microbrews - I *so* moved to the right city!

I'm exceptionally polychromatic, from my bright blue eyes to my lime green tank top, purple sweater, blue jeans, pink belt, and brown shoes. If I *ever* blended into the wallpaper it would have to be some seriously cheerful wallpaper.

I could also mention that I have four non-ear piercings and two tattoos (or eleven, depending on how you count them). Some of those are in immediately noticeable places, although as they become more and more commonplace, I get fewer comments about them. *sigh*

(a) The book that rocks my socks the most is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, and only partially because his sister is so hot. ^^ I love anything by Anne or Charlotte Bronte, Michael Crichton - especially Sphere and Timeline, Jasper Fforde, Augusten Burroughs, Philippa Gregory, Gregory Maguire, Steven Saylor, Douglas Adams, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Christopher Moore, or Anne Rice. My favorite sci-fi book is a tie between The Diamond Age and Snow Crash, both by Neil Stephenson, and close runners-up are Frank Herbert's Dune series and Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Not much into elves-and-orcs type fantasy, but I do enjoy a strong magical element in more modern fic. Also love: Shakespeare, Hemingway, and trashy romance novels, especially Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series. Grammar textbooks. City restaurant guides. The OED. The helpful little booklets that come with DVD boxed sets. Notebooks. Pocketbooks.

(b1)Serenity, Hackers, Run Lola Run, Amelie, Benzina, Nirvana, Josie and the Pussycats, Saved!, Penelope, Juno, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Predator, Alien/s/3, The Station Agent, Being John Malkovich, Igby Goes Down, As Good As It Gets, Something's Gotta Give, What Women Want, Labyrinth, Pan's Labyrinth, Mirrormask, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Grosse Point Blank, Back to the Future, The Mighty Ducks, Swing Kids, Chicago, Meet The Robinsons, Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time, Kim Possible: So The Drama, Ginger Snaps, Practical Magic, Timeline, Cherry Falls, Pitch Black, Cruel Intentions, Hellboy, Elizabeth, Better Off Dead, Miss Congeniality, The Bone Collector, Se7en, The Game, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Snatch, Red Dragon, The Fifth Element, Die Hard, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense, Death to Smoochy, Keeping the Faith, Thelma and Louise, The Banger Sisters, Bruce Almighty, Shrek, Tomb Raider, American Beauty, K-PAX, Get Shorty, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Memento, Identity, Happy Feet, Lucky Number Sle7in, Puff the Magic Dragon

(b2)Buffy, Firefly, Dexter, Farscape, Dr. Who, Torchwood, The Dresden Files, House MD, Heroes, The Daily Show, Samurai Jack, Teen Titans, Kim Possible, Futurama. I'm getting into Stargate: SG1 starting at the first season. It's pretty awful, but I'm enjoying the cheese.

(c)Aerosmith, Alanis Morissette, Amy Winehouse, Anna Nalick, Angie Hart, Avril Lavigne, Bif Naked, Blackthorn, blink-182, Blur, Brand New, Chairlift, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Counting Crows, Cowboy Mouth, The Cranberries, Cree Summer, Da Vinci's Notebook, The Dandy Warhols, Dar Williams, Dido, Evanescence, Everlife, Fiona Apple, Franka Potente, Freezepop, Garbage, Goldfinger, Hercules and the Love Affair, Jack's Mannequin, Jamiroquai, Jem, Jewel, Kate Nash, Keith Urban, The Killers, Lauryn Hill, Less Than Jake, Letters To Cleo, Lily Allen, Lisa Loeb, Liz Phair, Lizz Wright, Madonna, Maroon 5, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Metric, Nick Drake, Nikka Costa, No Doubt, Orbital, Ozma, The Plain White T's, Poe, Polaris, Presidents of the United States of America, Prodigy, Puffy Ami Yumi, R.E.M., Rasputina, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Remi Nicole, Shakira, Sheryl Crow, Shivaree, Simple Plan, Smash Mouth, Spacehog, Switchfoot, Tom Petty, U2, Vanessa Mae, The Wallflowers, Weezer

(d) Italian, German, Polish, Mexican, Southern, Indian, Moroccan, Greek, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai... I'm sure there's more. Does Philadelphian count? I could live off of cheesesteaks and soft pretzels. I'm a carnivore and a carboholic. I'm in love with cheese even though I'm lactose intolerant. I really don't eat a whole lot of vegetables. ATTENTION LADIES: A SALAD IS *NOT* A MEAL; IT IS AN APPETIZER OR SIDE DISH. Also, I really don't have a sweet tooth. I love my coffee pure black, my wine very dry, and my beer crisp and bitter. I am addicted to salty snacks, and so junk foods of choice are sun chips, triscuits, hummus, pretzels, and goldfish crackers, and of course absolutely anything with cheese on it!

Black coffee, dry wine, bitter beer - especially Arrogant Bastard, Victorian literature, international friends, the internet, Joss Whedon, Questionable Content, fresh paper, cheese, goldfish crackers, costumes, multicolored pens, my laptop, iPod, and Crackberry, things that are purple.

Yeah, yeah, six, I know.

Yarn, the things I can make out of yarn, my sweetie, the internet, and yarn.

8-Bit Theatre, 9 Chickweed Lane, Able and Baker, Aikida, Beaver and Steve, Butternutsquash, Count Your Sheep, CRFH!!!, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Devil's Panties, Diesel Sweeties, Get Fuzzy, Girls With Slingshots, iLL WiLL PreSS, JEFBOT, Joe and Monkey, Orneryboy, Pearls Before Swine, Penny Arcade, Punch an' Pie, Questionable Content, Sam and Fuzzy, Scary Go Round, Sinfest, Sore Thumbs, Striptease, Suburban Tribe, The Beevniks, VG Cats, Wapsi Square, Wigu, XKCD, and You Damn Kid.

Drinking Widmer Drifter and watching, at the moment, very old Stargate episodes with xlshadow. We have a huge hard drive hooked up to the TV and we're not afraid to use it! Before that it was Dexter, and we're still waiting for more of those!

Sometimes I wish I could be angry at my dad for making my life ten times more complicated and difficult and exhausting when he died, because it's so much harder to be angry at faceless bureaucracy.

You knew what "polysemous" meant before you Googled it.

Or, you think I'd be a fantastic best friend, and can't imagine a world where you don't get to hang out with me. ^_^ For real though, I have fallen in love with an amazing man who miraculously loves me back and looks at me in a way I never thought I'd experience. I'm very outgoing and social, and since I'm still pretty new to the northwest, I'd *love* to make new friends. But that's all. Sorry, guys!