Me
Well, it eventually occured to me that some of you might actually be
interested in me as well as whateve else I put up here. As in more
than I already put about me on the first page. So, to humor you,
I'm adding this page that has more stuff purely and exclusively (kinda)
about me. So now I have to actually come up with something to say
about me.... Plus, I have, at long last, gotten my absolute favorite
picture of me scanned, so that's down this page somewhere. You'll
know it when you see it- it being the only picture on this page, and
all. Of course it's not quite as nice as the actual photograph, but
I'm still happier with it than any other. (Note- this is no longer fully accurate. That pic being something like 3 years old, I've now added up a new one, which is at the bottom of this page. Scroll on down to see it. January 19 2000)
Well, I guess I can start with kind of the basic autobiography thing.
I was born in Gorham, Maine, but we moved fairly soon after that to
upstate New York, where my parents went to graduate school at Cornell
University. What I really remember about it there was that we had
great food- home grown meat (sorry, vegetarians, but it's good
stuff. Also that was where I went to kindergarten, where I fought for
a time against learning to read- I had people to read to me, why
would I want to do it myself? Once I started, however, I took a
liking to it, and started improving at it quite quickly. I think I
read the full length version of Black Beauty between kindergarten and
first grade, one of my first full-length, non-picture books.
When I was five we moved to Hyattsville, one of the suburbs of
Washington D.C. There I entered what I rather think was the worst
school on the face of the earth, because it was right up the street
from us. Tis the only school I know of where each teacher is worse
at his or subject than any other. I remember my speech teacher, who
was almost impossible to understand (I had, and still have, really,
an interesting accent that nobody is quite certain where came from)
and my brother's English teacher telling my parents, at a parent
teacher conference, "Ian be smart. He do good when he try." And I
remember one of the teachers who sometimes got recess duty- he hated
it when he got it, and always had all the students line up in these
long rows and do military drills. Also, my parents didn't force my
brother to skip a year of school, since when he tried it he was
miserable, even though he was very intelligent. This annoyed the
administration, who got bonuses for each child that was skipped so
they decided to toss me in remedial reading. I didn't really care,
and just read See Dick Run in school and Ben Hur at home. My parents
didn't realize what was going on until yet another parent teacher
conference when the teacher looked at them for a moment, then, slowly,
stated, "You know, I don't think Eve is retarded." At that point, my
parents waited in line for several hours and got us places at the
talented and gifted school that was a ways away, and we went on to
another (rather better) school.
It was there that I made my first two friends that weren't just next
door neighbors. One of them, Barbara Allen, I'm still in touch with,
every now and then. At that school, I had my first experience at
writing. Every year they had the write-a-book contest, the winners
from the school going on to state, and so on. The second year I
entered (and the second year I was there, for that matter), I won
first place for my age group for the school and, indeed, was sent on
to state. Where my book was disqualified for- get this- not having
a hard enough cover. Do I sound bitter? Shoulda seen me then- I was
spitting nails. My cover was not made of a hard enough cardboard.
That was my first, that I can remember, and that still infuriates me,
really bitter experience with writing. And, in fact, my only one due
to other people rather than myself, that I can think of.
My experiences with DC were quite a bit nicer than those of a lot of
people I know. The only problems, crime-wise, we had there were
bicycles. We must've had a half dozen bikes stolen from us over the
years, but, ah well. People weren't particularly friendly there,
which I have since grown to expect more in people I just kind of meet,
but, you know, it wasn't a bad place. And it had a wonderful library
system, which I miss incredibly.
At the end of my fifth grade years, we moved to Divide, Colorado. A
town so small that the first time we drove through it, on the way to
our new house, my father told me we were in Divide, and I literally
didn't see it, and missed it altogether. I had, as you might guess,
a slight case of culture shock. I was not used to being a small town
girl, especially not one with no library system at all. And the
nearest city about an hour away. I went to school, there, at Woodland
Park Junior High. In itty-bitty little school widely populated by
the Cowboys for Christ, an actual, honest to god group that wanted to
ban all classes of mythology from the classrooms for teaching pagan
religions, as well as get rid of all fiction (and everything they
considered fiction from the classrooms. Looking back, I think
those were the worst years of my life, up to this point. I hope they
may continue to hold that place of honor, because I'd just as soon not
have worse. I made no real friends in the two and a half years I was
there, and was, more or less, miserable.
Anyway, after two and a half years, we moved to Colorado Springs (the
city that was about an hour from Divide) which, to its credit, has a
very nice library system that I still yearn for when I'm not there.
Maybe not quite as good as the one in Maryland, but definitely not
bad. There I went to half a year of middle school, then was off to
high school. The interesting thing about all my years of school was
that, until my senior year of high school, I had only one semester as
being among the highest grade in whichever school I was. At Oakcrest,
my school in Maryland, elementary school was until grade six. I left
just before that, to Divide, where middle school was from sixth to
eighth grades. Halfway through my eight grade year I moved to Colo.
Sprgs. where junior high was 7-9. Then, between my eighth and ninth
grades, ninth was upgraded to highschool. Actually convenient, for
me, because in seventh grade I'd started algebra, so in eighth I was
in geometry which, in the springs they offered only to 9th graders at
the junior high, so I was stuck in with them, and if 9th hadn't been
upgraded to highschool I would have had to repeat a year of math.
My junior year of high school, Drea and I met in Ms. Ray's Honors
English class, a wonderful class by a wonderful teacher, and became
friends, mostly drawn together by our mutual mocking of the
fundamentalist side of the classroom, which tended to have a
definite lack of logic when arguing, and ability when doing anything
else. No offense intended to anyone, I'm simply stating things as
I remember them. I think she introduced me to Josh, Leah, Chiara, and
Robin on the last day of school, and I remember wandering through the
town with them after eating lunch in a sandwich shop, and everyone
lying jumbled over each other under a tree (except Chi, who tried it,
then said she didn't like relaxing, and stood leaning under the tree
instead) and later playing in the fountain in front of the town hall.
We've been friends ever since.
Hm... what else is there to say about me? I like animals in general.
Tigers happen to be my absolute favorite... I started seriously
writing, mostly in the fantasy genre, when I was twelve, and have
around two thousand pages of incomplete stories at various levels of
completion lying around on paper and on my computer, and one complete
book, with it's sequal about a hundred pages underway. Every now and
then I'll even go back and work on one of the others. My parents are
separated, and my father is now a peach-farmer in Cortez, while my
mother is still in the springs. My brother is, at this point, with
the Job Corps in California. I'm in college, but planning to take a
year off next year, to work and try to get my book published....
W'okay, just realized that its been like nearly a year since I've updated this page, so I may as well change whats going on. Went to college last year, like I said and found that it was not for me at this point in my life, and, looking over my other options, decided the best thing for me would be to join ye olde Air Force. So I am currently working my way through hip deep bureacracy working my way into the Air Force. The main thing holding up the process being that my silly psychiatrist from years back is REFUSING (delaying, procrastinating) to write a note to my recruitor saying I haven't been on antidepressants in years. Once thats sorted out, all should be well. Test scores marked me ready for any job they have, outside of ones I would be disqualified for due to gender or physical stuff, which are probaly jobs I wouldn't want anyway, so I'll get back to you when I finally know whats going on. Thazzit for now.
Well, that's all I can think of about me for the moment that has even
the slightest chance of interesting anyone (I can't really think that
what I already wrote would particularly interest anyone who didn't
know me, but what the hey, there's sure to be someone who already
knows me reading this at some point, and you never know, somebody
else might be interested to. It could happen.
Anyway, I'm off to put up the writings page.
This would be... Friday, May 28, 19 hundred and 99. So, my therapist did at long last get the paperwork in, and all was well with the world right? Wrong! The Air Force then sent the paperwork up to get looked over, and were told, sorry, can't have her. Because I was depressed for one year in high school while my parents were going through a divorce. Or, more precisely, because I admitted to being depressed in high school. Anyway, I haven't been in therapy, on medication, whatever in nearly two and a half years, I was never suicidal, homicidal, or any other cidal you can imagine, I just wasn't happy. And when it comes down to it, I do some of my best work when I'm depressed:p Tend to get a wee little bit obsessive about whatever I'm workign on when I'm depressed. So where's the problem? At any rate, next week I should know whether or not I'm getting my Surgeon General's Waiver and, if not, we'll be coming up with plan B. Which will, unfortunately, probably include workign my way through college, which sounds like a pretty reasonable facsimile of hell to me. But we'll see what happens.
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