A-Z About Me

Maggie, of I Could Be Arguing In My Spare Time, nominated me for the Awesome Blog Content award. Thank you, Maggie! So the task set to me for this award is to write an A-Z list about myself.

Adventure – what I look for in my fiction. In life, too, when I bother to put down the book

Baking – something I don’t have the patience to do myself, but I’m seriously addicted to the end result (especially when fruits have been baked into the dough)

Camping – something I did a lot as a kid, as part of this big cultural immigrant get-together thing; amazingly I’ve managed to fail to learn anything practical from my experiences

Day, Felicia – who I want to be when I grow up (except without the acting part). Yes, I can dream.

Exploration – quite possibly what I live for. For me, fiction explores possibilities. History explores people and personalities. And science explores the world around us. Of course, old school exploration is also fun, when you go somewhere just to see what’s there.

Fantasy – my favorite genre, and possibly where my brain lives while the rest of me is stuck in real life

Greek mythology – my gateway drug into fantasy; everything started with my 6th grade fascination with these stories

Historical fiction – my gateway drug into Greek mythology; I can’t remember if I’d read anything before I found this genre, but the first book I remember reading, ever, is Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile by Kristiana Gregory. Thus igniting my love of the Royal Diaries series as a child, and my fascination with ancient history in general

Internet – somewhere I spend a lot of time

Jacobins – the topic for the research class I took to get my history degree was the French Revolution, which means that I’ve had to read primary works by Robespierre and his contemporaries. I’ve never gotten over the trauma. (For those interested in the details–Seriously, one of Robespierre’s pro-war speeches [to the people governing the country with him, not the general public] argued something along the lines of France’s men being the equal of any ten of the enemy due their revolutionary fervor. And that’s just the one example I remember a year later. On the other hand, Vergniaud’s works were like a ray of light in the darkness of revolutionary rhetoric. He actually used things like basic logic, for instance.)

Knowledge – something I think is really cool, especially in a general sense; for instance, there’s the stuff that you don’t need to memorize because it’s more efficient to look it up, and then there’s the stuff that actually needs to be understood

Language – a form of communication which has a fascinating affect on thought process; sometimes, I’ll be thinking or talking, and a phrase from my other language will pop into my head because it makes so much sense in context. But even if it can be translated, it won’t have the same significance

Morning – a time when I enjoy being asleep, but am frequently not

New York City – my current place of residence, and the reason I have access to tons of cool events, like New York Comic Con and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Cherry Blossom Festival

Oblivious – mostly to appearances; for instance, you have to chop off a huge amount of hair before I start wondering if you look different

Procrastination – a case may be made that this is what I am engaging in now–rather than working on my genetics assignments, I’m composing this list. To be fair, though, it’s a weekend and my brain would probably explode if I had to work 24/7

Quality – as in, over quantity

Rome – the venue of my study abroad, and a treasure trove of history; I haven’t seen/done half of the things I want to there, and the number one thing on my list for when I go back is to bike down the Appian Way (and see all the historical sites down the road)

Swimming – my sport of choice; I haven’t had the chance to really swim in a while, and I miss it

Tea – my beverage of choice–I especially prefer it to be fruit flavored (ex. blueberry, black current, mango), and with a bit of lemon. Occasionally, I might also be seen indulging in lemonade or hot chocolate

Universities – I like these places, and I like the idea of these places. Of course, ideas always win over reality, but the notion that there’s a place where knowledge congregates is fairly awesome

Volunteering – a hobby I’ve engaged in since middle school, and one that adds a lot of contentment and variety to my life

Whedon, Joss – my master

X chromosome – I happen to have two of these in each of my somatic cells. What, X is hard

YouTube – where I spend a lot of time on the internet

Zoology – a branch of biology with which I have had no experience whatsoever. But I’m putting it in some writing stuff anyway (which probably won’t materialize for years), and that should be enough for it to count

In turn, I’d like to nominate Calico Reaction, a fantastic book review site.