Important dates

Born: June 1971. I hear tell I was a bit late for this significant event, establishing my procrastination tendencies early.
Began working: July 7 1988. People's Drug. My second paying job; my first was working at a fruit/veg/produce/flower shop.
Graduated high school: June 1989 FREE AT LAST!!!
Somewhere in here, People's became CVS/Pharmacy and I got management training.
Met future husband: 1993. When he transferred into the store I was working at. "Hmm, I hope we'll get along ok."
Married: August 1995. "No, I'M the lucky one!" : D
Bought home and got first cat: Also 1995; it was an eventful year. Mischief was two then.
Got second cat: Winter 1996. Rascal was about 11 weeks.
Discovered the Internet: Autumn 1998. My, that was interesting.
Left CVS for Giant Food: July 7 2000. After 12 years of CVS, 6 of them as assistant manager, departed in search of my mind.
Visited Scotland: Two weeks in summer 2004, fell in love with the Highlands and swore to return some day.
Submitted manuscript to DAW books: 2006. Declined, alas, but there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Voted in a National Election for the first time in my life: Nov 2008. : D

Interests History

I discovered the Hardy Boys first, in Elementary school, during Day Care. There was a little reading niche in the back of the room and I usually spent my 'rest' time there, thumbing quietly through a number of books. The first Hardys book I ever read was Mystery of the Desert Giant, and over the years my collection gradually grew to include both hardbacks to digests. I remember getting some as presents, in fact... By the time the Casefiles came out, though, I had moved on to other things. Like...

ThunderCats! I was a first-generation viewer of the TCats, and older than most; they came out in '85 and I watched what I could of the morning episodes before leaving to catch the bus for high school. At the time, I thought it was behavior that few teenagers indulged in, so I kept it very low-key. Despite the fact that my sister watched DuckTales whenever she could. ;) After three seasons, the show went off the air and the effect on me was twofold. First, I immediately started writing fanfiction, and second, I went looking for something to 'replace' them with. By happy chance, I discovered the Sci-Fi channel (#99) and got mildly intrigued with-

The Ronin Warriors. I wasn't too sure about these guys at first, since I didn't have much taste for anime. (Still don't.) I recall that my first impression was, "Well, I guess they're interesting- but they YELL too much!" The TCats were still very much in the front of my mind, so the Ronin were more of a background interest to divert myself with between bouts of writing and comic-searching. Then I got online and discovered the TCats websites and community, and the Ronin didn't stand a chance. The irony is that I had been blase' about the Net until I saw an Internet product being displayed at my local mall; they were using the TCats intro and needless to say, my interest was piqued! It was not long after this that I began the slightly nervous business of submitting fanfiction to archive sites. AFTER a couple rewrites. Nothing like reading someone's poorly written fanfic to make you realize how much worse your own is...

Things went very well in TCats-verse for a while, but then difficulties started to develop. Disagreements, arguments, flamewars, backstabbings, chatroom brawls... I discovered a fair talent for scorching people who had been cruel to my friends, but was deeply dismayed when my friends began turning on each other. Here's the telling point: my persona in the group began as Felina, a kind healer and ended as Axelle, a cold torturer. After some months of dismayed outrage at how the place was imploding, I let myself be distracted by 'Kidnapped', the classic by R.L. Stevenson. I went off on a wide book/movie/actor tangent and by the time I was done, I had become a firm fan of the 1995 movie and an even firmer fan of the gentleman portraying David Balfour in it: Brian McCardie. By then I had gotten the mere basics of webpaging down (kudos to Frontpage!), so I added Lights, Camera to my interest page.

When it was safe to come out again, I did, and veering away from the ruin of the TCats group, I looked around for something interesting. It was a moment of sheer boredom one night that led me to investigate the Hardys area of the 'net, and I was delighted to find active websites and a friendly community. I revived my fanfic, which had fallen by the wayside, and added the Hardys section to my site.

In the spring of 2006 I happened to get my Ronin interest flared up again (hello, Ryo) and I got more or less abducted, writing-wise, by those five boys. And all because I ran across an old TCat site that was counter-linked to mine; it mentioned my Ronin page, which I had actually taken down! "Well," I thought, "I could put that up again...do I still have the old pictures? Yes, but I lost the page itself, so I need to find the info and collect some new links..." And off I went.

My last and most enduring interest (read obsession) is Scotland. All my kin were born in America...but only since about 1900 onward. Before that, quite a few of them were in Kerr territory in Scotland, and there's a Kerr castle still in use in Ferniehirst, not far from the England-Scotland border at Jedburgh. I love the accents; my dear is half-Scot and spent three years growing up there...is it any wonder that 'Kidnapped' captivated me? :) The only thing I didn't enjoy about our '04 visit- well, two things. One, they seemed to be skipping summer that year, and two, we had to leave...

Other, Less Obsessive Interests

Cats, large and small... RiverDance... Monty Python and the Holy Grail... swords, knives and other weapons... 80's music... Tiger Eyes (the semiprecious stones)... The Maryland Renaissance Festival... the North Woods of Wisconsin... Eagles and other predator birds... thunderstorms (but not tornados, thanks)... horseback riding... wolves... sci-fi and fantasy books... ElfQuest... my cousin Al's artwork (I'm obsessed, but I have to wait for him to produce it, so...) cougars... cobalt glass (bottles and such)... um...I'm sure I'm missing a few.

A poem I'm very fond of:
High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I have climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and
Soared and swung.
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along,
And flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
---Written by young Canadian pilot, John Gillespie McGee-- (This poem is filled with his own love of flight --he died in an accident while flying his SPITFIRE on December 11, 1941, at Tangmere, England...)

-Isms

Socialism: You have two cows. Give one to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. Give both cows to the government and they may give you some milk.
Facism: You have two cows. You give the milk to the government and they sell it.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes both cows.
Anarchism: You have two cows. Keep both cows, shoot the government agent and steal another cow.
Capitalism: You have two cows. Sell one, buy a bull.
Defeatism: You're thinking of buying a cow, but they're so much work; you'd have to build a barn to put it in, and then there'd be all that mucking out the stall and you have to get up early to feed it and then milking's hard to learn anyway, and then more than likely it'd get sick with something, probably mad cow disease, or if not that it might try to run away and injure itself; or someone might steal it, and even if all that didn't happen it would probably be lonely all by itself so you'd have to get another one to keep it company, but with your luck they'd probably fight all the time and stick their horns into each other, which would mean vet bills unless you had the horns cut off, which isn't exactly a cheap procedure itself, so since it's all clearly doomed from the start, you might as well forget about it.
Cynicism: You have two cows. You'd buy another, but as soon as you do the price of milk will fall.
Procrastination: You have two cows. One of these days you really will go and buy that pedigree bull you keep talking about.
Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government makes you take harmonica lessons.

(That last one always makes me laugh. My government teacher taught me the same thing in my senior year, only with chickens.)

Quotes

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our fathers used in the great struggle for Independence."

"May those who love us, love us. And those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He doesn't turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles, so we'll know them by their limping." (Old Celtic saying)

Most fanatics seem to take the "Thou shalt not kill" commandment to mean "Thou shalt not kill unless it furthers your agenda." (Credit: Mummraa)

"Dance as if no one were watching; Sing as though no one were listening; And live each day as if it were your last."

"A common criticism of the Internet is that it is dominated by the crude, the uninformed, the immature, the smug, the untalented, the repetitious, the pathetic, the hostile, the deluded, the self-righteous and the shrill. This criticism overlooks the fact that the Internet also offers- for the savvy individual who knows where to look- the tasteless and the borderline insane." -Dave Barry In CyberSpace. Welcome to the borderline insane area of the internet!

"Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out-of-body experience." -Suzie, to Calvin (Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes)

For more of these, check out the Monty Python section, the Kidnapped section, the- you get the idea.