maradydd: (Default)
Swiped from [livejournal.com profile] fanlain and [livejournal.com profile] lilamp.

In 1980 I was three years old, living with my mom, dad, and new baby sister [livejournal.com profile] superbridey in a one-story house in southwest Houston. I had recently learned to read, wanted to be a scientist and an Air Force pilot when I grew up, and attended preschool at St. Francis Episcopal.

In 1990 we had been living in Kingwood for two years, and my other sister [livejournal.com profile] briaer was five. I had been wearing glasses for seven years and contacts for five, so no Air Force planes for me. I played the piano a lot. I started high school that fall and was probably in the most socially awkward phase of my life so far. I ran on the track team, lettered in forensics/debate, and spent as much time as I could with my school's writing club. I had approximately two friends the entire year.

2000 was a busy, complicated year. I left my ex-husband that January, moved back in with my parents for a couple of months, got a web design job at a computer refurbishing company that turned out to be an extremely underpaid e-commerce development job in disguise, and quit that after a month or so for a year-long technical writing contract at Compaq. I got my first apartment without roommates, bought a car, and had a remarkably successful fiction writing career for the amount of work I put into it. Around July I decided that tech writing and I did not have a future together, got in touch with the linguistics department at the University of Iowa, and got myself into their MA program, though I didn't start until fall 2001. I spent most Thursday and Friday nights at #s and met [livejournal.com profile] pandorasfox, [livejournal.com profile] digitalusrex, [livejournal.com profile] batty, [livejournal.com profile] michaelodwyer, [livejournal.com profile] cassandrasimplx, [livejournal.com profile] xtopher42 and lots of other neat people. (I'd known [livejournal.com profile] mycroftxxx for a few years already.) I also started this blog.

Here in 2010 I'm living in Belgium and have been married to [livejournal.com profile] enochsmiles for three years. I write code instead of fiction, have co-authored some respectable if not world-shattering computer security papers, and spend most of my spare time hacking with electronics, software, and/or biology. I am seriously considering taking up playing the bass. My local friends are mostly musicians, university students, other hackers, and people who do fire art. I gave my first-ever invited talk this year, which was pretty awesome.

In 2020 I expect to still be living in Europe, though whether that ends up being Belgium, the Netherlands or somewhere else remains to be seen. I have no idea what I'll be doing; I seem to have a sea-change in my interests about once a decade, and I'm about due for another one.
maradydd: (bad post!)
Everyone has their guilty-pleasure music -- the tracks you'll gladly belt out along with the car stereo as long as no one else is in the car with you, the CDs you listen to over and over but don't keep out on the shelf where people can see them.

What are yours? Anonymous commenting is enabled and I'm disabling IP logging.

And, to encourage you to contribute to this little experiment, my answers will be in the comments somewhere ... but only once enough people have commented that I feel I have a sufficiently large anonymity set. ;)
maradydd: (Default)
I don't have anything interesting to post today, so you get yet another meme that amused me. Ganked from [livejournal.com profile] michiexile.

Put your music player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title.

I'm surprised at how well this one worked, though the origin of the title cracks me up (ten journalpoints to the first person to guess it!), and the last line is just fucking bizarre. Also, I swear to God that perfect juxtaposition of Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash was a complete accident.

"When I look around me"

Breathing in an air, permeated, soaked in darkness
Well, we've always had a bumpy ride and this is where it ends
Anywhere old prince nez goes
I don't want to change your mind

Well that was easy, way too, everything's easy now
You my weakness, sweetly wreck me
Have you seen my love?
You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar

Often on the weekend I'll jump in my car
Empty spaces, what are we living for?
The birds they sing at the break of day
Hear that lonesome whipporwhill.

Many men have loved the bells
Frosty the supervisor lives by himself
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
All the fear has left me now

You can't hear me
When they kick at your front door
The rains move in eastward in waves of succession
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge.

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maradydd

September 2010

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