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starladyI've been meaning to make a proper introductory post for a while, so here it is! Hopefully it gives a sense of where I'm coming from when you see me posting and commenting around the DW/LJ verse. (Oh, and btw, this post is totally inspired by inkstone's formatting.)
Lightly edited 7/3/2011.
1. When asked to pick a random number, I will, 99.99% of the time, choose either 4 or 8.
2. I am right-handed, but for some reason I have a long history of being mistaken for a left-hander. (Fun fact: My sister is a left-hander who was forced from the age of about 4 to write right-handed, so that she eventually forgot she was left-handed. We rediscovered her left-handedness three years ago while trying on boots.)
3. In terms of what I don't talk about on this journal, my sister is probably the single most important lacuna. I don't talk about her much (though you'll see I talk about doing things with her) for various reasons, but she exists. Suffice it to say, she is younger than I am and quite a lot like me only more so, and I love her to death. She's also the sciences person in our family, since I called shotgun on the humanities, though we do have a certain amount of cross-training, and aptitude (by which I mean, she's as good at languages as I am or better, and I love calculus).
4. Our mother died almost a year ago, in April 2009, of ovarian cancer, at the age of 57. I am telling you this because it is something that is pretty central to understanding my perspective on a lot of things.
5. I also have webbed toes (aka syndactyly of the feet). As far as we can tell, it's a dominant gene; my sister, my father, and my father's mother all have or had them. No, it does not make me better at swimming; it makes me unable to wear 99% of toe socks (which is one reason I do love tabi socks).
6. I am a middle-class, mid-twenties white woman from New Jersey, cisgender and asexual. I went to college in Minnesota, graduated with a degree in Asian studies and in classics, and lived for a year after that in Kyoto, Japan; in August I will be moving out to the Bay Area to start a Ph.D. in history. As the most East Coast, south Jersey person I know, the idea of six years in California is somewhat unnerving. (This is a good time to thank Minneosota for civilizing me and my wild Delaware Valley ways.)
7. I first started writing fanfiction at the age of…12 or so, with a long, strange, anthropomorfic piece of Encarta/Microsoft Word juvenilia, and then moved on quickly to Star Wars fic and a Tortall epic. None of that will ever see the light of the Internet, and it's only in the past three years or so that I've really started being in fandom, but writing of all stripes and fandom itself, as well as individual fandoms, are hugely important to me.
8. The first anime I saw was either Outlaw Star or Revolutionary Girl Utena, my sophomore year of high school, one on Toonami and the other at my high school's short-lived anime club. I decided that when I went to college I would take Japanese, because I'd been wanting to learn a living language for a change. The rest, bizarrely, is history. (For the record, my first manga, in college, was Doraemon, but right after that I started reading Bleach.)
9. I translate manga on this journal, mostly two ongoing Clamp series, xxxHOLiC Rou and Kobato. I started doing translations when I was living in Japan and, quite frankly, had too much time on my hands, but it's been really great, and I love doing it. I also translate for the OTW; I'm hoping that the Japanese version of the website will go up sometime before the end of this year. Oh, and I'm a member of the OTW's International Outreach committee, and a tag wrangler on the AO3.
10. I was privately educated in Quaker schools from kindergarten through my senior year of high school, and went to a Lutheran private liberal arts college. That was initially my parents' choice, at considerable personal financial sacrifice, and it's one of many debts that I will never be able to repay. The experience has left me self-defining as an atheist Quaker, and as someone who absolutely believes that public education in the States needs a revolution in funding. In my own education the excellent teachers I had made 100% of the difference, but the money to hire them and to give us all the resources to amplify instruction and learning made an additional 99%.
11. I wrote two other introductory comments recently, one here atdeepad, the other here at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
queering_holmes.
12. Oh yeah, I have a bird. He is a Meyer's parrot, about twelve years old, who has lived with us for the past seven. I don't know why I don't talk about him on this blog, because he is a riot. And he would love to meet you all, because he likes a) people; b) being the center of attention; and c) people he thinks look like men (I'm sorry to say his judgments on that score are quite superficial).
13. If you think this sounds like a lot of privilege, I agree with you. I am doing my best both to educate myself about what that entails and to bear both the privilege and its ramifications in mind as I interact with my fellow human beings, but I'm depressingly certain that I will slip up eventually and inevitably. When I do so, it will be out of ignorance.
Questions are welcome.
And on that light note (sarcasm, I admit), Happy May Day! The weather here is gorgeous, and I have high hopes, comparing it with this time last year, that it presages a normal, hot, humid summer for 2010, rather than the cold, grey, rainy nonentity we had in 2009. That was a little too much pathetic fallacy for my tastes, I won't deny.
inkstone's formatting.)Lightly edited 7/3/2011.
1. When asked to pick a random number, I will, 99.99% of the time, choose either 4 or 8.
2. I am right-handed, but for some reason I have a long history of being mistaken for a left-hander. (Fun fact: My sister is a left-hander who was forced from the age of about 4 to write right-handed, so that she eventually forgot she was left-handed. We rediscovered her left-handedness three years ago while trying on boots.)
3. In terms of what I don't talk about on this journal, my sister is probably the single most important lacuna. I don't talk about her much (though you'll see I talk about doing things with her) for various reasons, but she exists. Suffice it to say, she is younger than I am and quite a lot like me only more so, and I love her to death. She's also the sciences person in our family, since I called shotgun on the humanities, though we do have a certain amount of cross-training, and aptitude (by which I mean, she's as good at languages as I am or better, and I love calculus).
4. Our mother died almost a year ago, in April 2009, of ovarian cancer, at the age of 57. I am telling you this because it is something that is pretty central to understanding my perspective on a lot of things.
5. I also have webbed toes (aka syndactyly of the feet). As far as we can tell, it's a dominant gene; my sister, my father, and my father's mother all have or had them. No, it does not make me better at swimming; it makes me unable to wear 99% of toe socks (which is one reason I do love tabi socks).
6. I am a middle-class, mid-twenties white woman from New Jersey, cisgender and asexual. I went to college in Minnesota, graduated with a degree in Asian studies and in classics, and lived for a year after that in Kyoto, Japan; in August I will be moving out to the Bay Area to start a Ph.D. in history. As the most East Coast, south Jersey person I know, the idea of six years in California is somewhat unnerving. (This is a good time to thank Minneosota for civilizing me and my wild Delaware Valley ways.)
7. I first started writing fanfiction at the age of…12 or so, with a long, strange, anthropomorfic piece of Encarta/Microsoft Word juvenilia, and then moved on quickly to Star Wars fic and a Tortall epic. None of that will ever see the light of the Internet, and it's only in the past three years or so that I've really started being in fandom, but writing of all stripes and fandom itself, as well as individual fandoms, are hugely important to me.
8. The first anime I saw was either Outlaw Star or Revolutionary Girl Utena, my sophomore year of high school, one on Toonami and the other at my high school's short-lived anime club. I decided that when I went to college I would take Japanese, because I'd been wanting to learn a living language for a change. The rest, bizarrely, is history. (For the record, my first manga, in college, was Doraemon, but right after that I started reading Bleach.)
9. I translate manga on this journal, mostly two ongoing Clamp series, xxxHOLiC Rou and Kobato. I started doing translations when I was living in Japan and, quite frankly, had too much time on my hands, but it's been really great, and I love doing it. I also translate for the OTW; I'm hoping that the Japanese version of the website will go up sometime before the end of this year. Oh, and I'm a member of the OTW's International Outreach committee, and a tag wrangler on the AO3.
10. I was privately educated in Quaker schools from kindergarten through my senior year of high school, and went to a Lutheran private liberal arts college. That was initially my parents' choice, at considerable personal financial sacrifice, and it's one of many debts that I will never be able to repay. The experience has left me self-defining as an atheist Quaker, and as someone who absolutely believes that public education in the States needs a revolution in funding. In my own education the excellent teachers I had made 100% of the difference, but the money to hire them and to give us all the resources to amplify instruction and learning made an additional 99%.
11. I wrote two other introductory comments recently, one here at
deepad, the other here at queering_holmes. 12. Oh yeah, I have a bird. He is a Meyer's parrot, about twelve years old, who has lived with us for the past seven. I don't know why I don't talk about him on this blog, because he is a riot. And he would love to meet you all, because he likes a) people; b) being the center of attention; and c) people he thinks look like men (I'm sorry to say his judgments on that score are quite superficial).
13. If you think this sounds like a lot of privilege, I agree with you. I am doing my best both to educate myself about what that entails and to bear both the privilege and its ramifications in mind as I interact with my fellow human beings, but I'm depressingly certain that I will slip up eventually and inevitably. When I do so, it will be out of ignorance.
Questions are welcome.
And on that light note (sarcasm, I admit), Happy May Day! The weather here is gorgeous, and I have high hopes, comparing it with this time last year, that it presages a normal, hot, humid summer for 2010, rather than the cold, grey, rainy nonentity we had in 2009. That was a little too much pathetic fallacy for my tastes, I won't deny.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 18:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 18:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 19:23 (UTC)*cracks up*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 19:29 (UTC)Well, okay, I am being ever so slightly sarcastic. But it's true even so!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 19:33 (UTC)Thus the cracking up. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 19:44 (UTC)I was going to provide an illustration of what I mean about New Jersey being uncivilized thusly:
I have a T-shirt with a picture of New Jersey on it that says "New Jersey: Only the strong survive." That is the nice version of the T-shirt. The not-nice, hardcore version says "New Jersey: Where the weak are killed & eaten".
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 19:59 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 20:40 (UTC)You're very interesting, just so you know.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 20:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 21:11 (UTC)*makes secret history sign of coolness at you*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 21:13 (UTC)no mannersvery sharp elbows.(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 22:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 22:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 22:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 22:35 (UTC)eta -- (I recognized my own sisterly attitude in your sentence, is why.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 22:49 (UTC)Someday my sis and I will make good on our plans to visit the Continent, maybe we'll be able to confirm in person... :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 23:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-01 23:01 (UTC)In much of Canada, we don't have to kill and eat you. The winter picks off the weak (or those so disruptive we throw them out of the house) all by itself.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 01:45 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 01:48 (UTC)You might be right about South Jersey. I would be all for us seceding from North and central Jersey if we could have the five-county area out of Pennsy too. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 05:36 (UTC)i would love to read some of your fanfiction! where it is???
do you write for Star trek fandom as well?
I miss Holic so much!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 13:20 (UTC)I have written one Trek story, based on one of the novels.
I miss Holic too! It feels weird not translating it every week.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-02 20:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 18:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 19:33 (UTC)I understand that they share aggressive driving, but I won't really have a car, so...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-03 21:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-15 18:22 (UTC)But then I saw you listed quakerism as one of your interests and poked around and saw that you'd gone to Quaker schools and now I have to ask the ritual former-Quaker-schooler question: so, where did you go to school? I'm a Westonian, for whatever that's worth. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-15 22:12 (UTC)And yes, I went to Quaker schools--Moorestown Friends, Westfield Friends, and Friends Select.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-15 23:50 (UTC)Also, if you have any allergies I should note, I'd love to hear about them, as well as what your preferred type of brownies out of the three I offered would be. *g*
Also, also: I have cousins who went to Moorestown and friends who went there and Friends Select, it being a small Quaker world.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-17 19:43 (UTC)They're all pretty tasty sounding! But as much as the gingertastic ones sound amazing, I think I need to go with the mole brownies. Unless you have any pertinent suggestions about which are better. :)
It's a totally small Quaker world, particularly on the east coast.