an about me from before I was married.
Well, everyone else is including an about me section in their website so maybe I should too? I dunno. I'd rather force you to figure me out by getting to know me than by getting some shallow idea of me based on physical stats. In fact, skip the stats, you don't need them. No a/s/l. I hate the question. Till one knows someone well enough to have good cause to believe there's romantic potential, what difference does that info have anyway?
#1 question I hear, am I single? Well that depends. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. I'm very loyal and won't even flirt if involved with someone. So, while I'm not married, neither am I even vaguely interested in casual sexual relationships at this time. So that means, get to know me, take your time, see if I'm that best friend you've been waiting to find, then worry about the rest. Meanwhile I may get hitched to someone else :-)
Hobbies, well mostly they've been eclipsed by the computer. I spend so much time on the computer some days that my ass goes numb and my hands ache from typing. I don't do that in the summer, then I spend a lot of time outside doing things in the sun. I've got my A+ on the computer and often get called on by impoverished acquaintances to barter my tech skills for whatever they can afford. I don't mind. Theoretically I could earn more money but money and I really don't have much in common and I'd rather just give it away and let it flow back. Mind you, I am still very frugal. I have to be, my living budget is very tight.
Other hobbies include painting on stained glass, you can see a couple pics of that in the personal pictures page. I like to play with broken mirrors, you can see some of that in the pics of my attic. I sometimes get out my tatting shuttles and whip up some lace. Other times I dive into a sci-fi or fantasy novel (sometimes just ordinary drama). I take pleasure in housekeeping when I actually get into it. I love to cook, but again, only when I get in the mood. Another sporadic hobby I've taken up sometimes is wood carving. I wish I had a dremel moto-tool. Chisels are just too tedious for me! I don't do much on a daily basis really. I also have the garden, house and several pets. Most of the time I have a lot of trouble pulling myself away from my computer.
What do I do on my computer? Well I'm on several email lists and involved in a couple chat communities and a private Usenet group. I have my cyberworld, Asper. Then of course there's just the general tweaking, installing, testing, maintaining and so forth that goes with this whole thing. I want to get a software router setup and switch the webserver and worldserver over to my other computer.
That in fact is a good next topic. I have more than one computer but they're all substandard by today's measure and 2nd hand all. The one on which I do most of my work is a 350mzh AMDk6/2 with 128MB RAM and 15G hard drive. It is the one currently attached to the internet and I'm running so many tsr's with the cams and the servers, plus icq and email and whatever I'm doing (the outerworlds client is heavy) I overload the poor thing and it just freezes up. That's why I will sometimes suddenly just quit responding then vanish without explanation from live chats. My other system in the living room is a cyrix mmx 266 with 96MB RAM and a 3.2G drive. It has the hp cdrw and the phone modem. It collects from the doorcam and answers the phone. I'd like to put it on the net and stick a software router on it, do all my �playing� on the 350 and let the 266 do the steady work. Both of these run in win98SE. I use a single monitor with a switching box. Both computers have Cirque Cats instead of mice. There's a learning curve to start but DAMN it's a nice pointing tool!
I have a 5 port hub and from these two machines, wires going all over my little Villa Sub Rosa. These Cat5 wires are for my laptop. I have two of these, one is a bit less functional, with a b&w screen and fubar'd PCMCIA bay. Both are 25mhz 486 Versa E laptops from NEC. The batteries are shot and they have to be plugged in to work. I only use the color screen one. It has a 250MB hdd compressed to 400mb and 20MB of ram and runs win95. There is no cdrom drive on it. Like the two towers, this tiny machine uses a cat, not a mouse. I use it all over the house for reading and writing. It spends most of it's time in my bedroom loaded with the Novel du Jour.
In storage I have 2 486/133 overdrive machines, all with drives under 500mb but memory around 64MB. One is loaded with slackware 7.1 but I got frustrated at being unable to initialize modem or ethernet card and put it away last spring. I have been hitting my head against the linux wall for 3 years but I run into one problem after another, almost always hardware related. I get stuff that's supposed to be compatible but on my budget it's always inferior 2nd hand stuff. the other is a training machine for a friend currently operating as a DOS box. Then there's another 486 slated to be given away to someone as a starter machine. I have yet to find anyone that isn't too proud to use a 486 till they can afford a pentium. There's also an old 286 with dos that doesn't really do anything anymore. I made it surf years ago but that ISP is gone and I don't know of one who still offers barebones connections. It's a great hobby isn't it?
Work, hmmm. Underemployed due to timing and my Asperger's Disorder and ADD. Or maybe I'm just too damn annoying. Or maybe I'm too something else or not enough of another thing. After 25 years of struggling with it I just don't give a damn anymore. I get contracts for painting or housecleaning now and then and have a steady gig as cleaner at a theatre (pics from main page). I also get paid for my computer skills. Someday maybe I'll figure out how to get someone to pay me for writing, if my hands don't fall off from doing it volunteer first! In winter I'm on nightshift, in summer day shift. I kinda like it that way.
In pets I have a beloved cherished rabbit, Freyr. He's more important to me than anything else I've come to realize. If someone forced me to choose between his company and having a home of my own I'd pick the rabbit. I can't explain it. It's the only thing/creature/person I've ever known that never fails to make me feel joy bursting over. Even just to think about him. After 9 years with him it's still like that first infatuation with a lover. No, it's not sexual, but it IS very sensual. Stroking his incredibly soft fur while he covers me with herb scented kisses all over my face. ~sigh~ That is Bliss, that is what Perfection feels like. That is All there is and All that matters. I cry to think how old he is and how little time I have left with him. He's still in very good health though. I have a dog, Christi, a bichon frise in punker hair. She's 4 now and has a lame leg from a car accident, her second such disaster in life. I groom her myself and I'm always amazed after a bath at how lovely-squishy-soft her fur is, she's like a living plush toy.
Then there are the birds. The oldest is the male zebra finch, Zebediah. He's so old now, 7yrs, he can't sit up on the perch all day and sits instead on the floor of a small cage I've given him. There are 2 very young finches, male and female, in his old cage. He's made his share of babies and now they will take over, they're Zelia and Zephyr. The other small bird in there is my canary, Taliesin, he's about 5 now and sings lovely. He's a bit lonely since Carol Angel died, his mate. In fact he was bought for her after her first mate died. I hate it that animals die. I hate it even worse when they die of something stupid. Carol died because I lost track of time (I often do) and left it too long checking the water. Poor thing. I still hate myself for that. I check much more often now, panicky that it could happen again.
The last bird is Lilith von Fraumench and I can't even say I want to keep her. I found her broken in the park and after the vet patched her up she didn't heal properly. One wing hangs odd and the feathers grow unevenly. It is unlikely she can compete in the wild, but I'm going to see if she can get out in there this spring. If she can't live wild and I can't stand living with her, I may be faced with having her killed. That's harsh, but after all, it's a crow. But then she's an endearing crow. She says hello in every inflexion humans use, and can laugh, and likes to take food from me and be scratched on her head. I wish I knew someone who actually wanted a pet crow and could take care of her. She's that one pet too many in my house. It's a quandary I dont have to solve yet. Perhaps my experiment of letting her out in the yard and setting her up there with housing will result in a convenient natural death. Sad, but life is often like that. My other pets are getting less care because of the extra load. No, there aren't any local institutions that take in crows. They're considered a pest, a nuisance, something to be culled regularily. She's got awfully glossy feathers from the excellent diet I feed her.
Something I like knowing about people, their housekeeping! I used to be annoyingly eaxacting about my housekeeping. Well, sort of. I've gone back and forth between perfection and abject foul messiness! I prefer to be neat. I certainly am fussy about what goes where. These days I'm fairly precise if not visually tidy. Everything has it's place, it is just cluttered. The cleaning is allowed to get a bit slack then caught up on. I don't let it get smelly or grimy, I just let the dishes pile up till there's a full load and stuff like that. I think it boils down to comfortable. The big trick with housekeeping is preventative maintenance techniques.
My goals in life? I want to be a really cool old lady. There's been other dreams come and go and sometimes to return, but that's one I think I can actually achieve!
Morals and ethics? Yeah, I do actually have a very strong ethical code that guides me. I try to take the high road, to be a perfect gentleman even though I'm female. I'd rather be disliked than a liar, even though this is part of my economic condition. I'd rather die under a bridge than compromise my honour. I don't think sex is sinning, but I do think that abusing it is sinning. Sex is sacred, you don't just run around rutting with anything that triggers your hormones.
I was born believing with every fibre of my being that there is no excuse to raise your hand, no reason big enough to allow for violence against another. Unfortunately I've got a lot of passion including a loud temper. I was dreadfully abused by my peers in my childhood and often found myself in a red haze attacking back. This filled me with remorse. Somehow in all this I've always seen the real person inside the bully and felt some compassion through my hatred and anger. I can hate what someone does and who they project to be, but when push comes to shove, I discover I care about them. Still, I can be as cold as the Saskatchewan winter.
I have incredible self control outside of my emotional reactions. I cannot stop from feeling how I do, but I can stop from acting out of those feelings. I have no real fear of personal pain. Maybe because I'm familiar with it, maybe just because I'm so damn stubborn. I fear the pain but not enough to back down from it. I just cry and keep going forward. I don't mean to be concieted or prideful or insulting but I honestly don't think I've met anyone as strong as me in character. My father maybe, but then no, because he won't admit when he's wrong. He can't take it to be the bottom rung of the ladder. I can. But then I am seen as weak because I cry over almost anything. Yeah, I cry. But it is like sweating palms, my eyes sweat. It doesn't stop me. It is not a precursor to some permanent harm. When I do something, be it to go forward or back off, it's a conscious choice. Nothing ever makes me do it for anything. I dont believe one ever lacks choices, only that sometimes the choices suck.
Something I never put up with is guilt tripping, projecting your problems onto me, or just plain taking it out on me, trying to control me, etc. I am a submissive (hence the lack of capitals on my nick) but I do not submit to just anyone. I am not a dog, I am a wild thing that will submit to when someone earns my complete respect and not before. Why would a strong person to submit to anyone not her equal in strength of character? I demand that I am treated with respect, honour and dignity and I promise the same in return, even if you don't do same. The worst thing I will ever do to you is cease to interact with you.
Well, for someone who wasn't going to write an about me page I sure wrote a lot huh?