Meme: Getting to Know You

[hells_half_acre]

I've stolen this from borgmama1of5. It seems like a brilliant idea...

I know very little about most of the people on my friends list. Some
people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this
opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing
at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's
Thingy ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's
friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.)
Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In
return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an
answer*.

*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.


The truth is, there are a lot of you who have friended me over the past 4.5 years, some I've friended back and some I haven't. A lot of you are regular commenters regardless of whether I've friended you back or not, and I love you all very much....

But, um, I sometimes get you guys confused with each other, so I thought this would be a nice way for me to associate specific things with specific people, and maybe that'd help me a little.

Also, there's been some new people lately! Yay! So, I'd like to hear from you too. :)

Anyway, just thought I'd give this a try.

Comments

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

I'm a retired librarian. One of the reasons I friended you is because as a librarian I love facts and being able to have concrete evidence for them, so I LOVE your timelines. I have a wonderful daughter who has her Masters Degree in Geography. She currently lives with me so she can pay off her college loans faster. I have 2 cats and my daughter has a small dog. I'm divorced. Fairly boring all in all.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo, a librarian! I just applied to a librarian job, but I don't think I'll get it because I have several things working against me...(like: the job is in another country, and I've never worked as a librarian before)... still, a girl can dream.

That's nice that you let your daughter live with you to help pay off her loans. :)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I've been following you for at least two years, but I've always felt guilty about not commentig more. I think that you're absolutely brilliant and doubly so because you're Canadian. :)

I, too, am Canadian - a Westerner, even! - mostly from the tiny liberal stronghold of Edmonton, though I now live in Ottawa, doing an MA in Public History. As for a fun but distinguishing fact about myself... I have a twin sister, and we both learned French in school (as you do in Canada) but because of our work lives, in recent years we've developed completely different French accents. So we look similar and sound similar when we speak English, but sound shockingly different when we speak French. She sounds very Quebecois, and I'm more of this odd Norman-Quebecois hybrid that apparently sounds Belgian.

In keeping with the Canadian theme for my question... if you could live anywhere else in Canada aside from the greater Vancouver area, which would you choose? (Not that Vancouver isn't AWESOME. :D )

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo!! Public History in Ottawa! How's that going? Is it a good program? What university are you at? (Sorry, it's just that I have an MA in History, but Public History is maybe more practical? I don't know...I've been having trouble finding work, and one of my options is to screw work and get a second degree in something. If you don't want to tell me exactly what university you are at, you don't have to...I don't mean to be like...stalkery. :P)

That's really neat about your twin too. I wonder which accent I would like best. There are some french accents that kind of grate on my nerves a little, truth be told. Some of it can be quite sing-song and melodious though and I think those accents are beautiful. My bestfriend speaks Acadian-french in "mountains and valleys" (as I tried to describe once - basically, it's like his french is constantly in iambic pentameter.

To answer your question, I think if I could live anywhere else in Canada, I would live in Montreal. I tried to live there once, but I couldn't find work. (I don't speak french, unfortunately, which didn't help at all). I've got really good friends in the area though, and it's close enough to where my mum lives (just outside of Ottawa) that I could visit really easily, and then there's the train that I could take to visit my family in Southern Ontario... but it's also a major city with everything I could need, like a really good yoga place and lots of good restaurants, and an international airport.

[harrigan.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of your geekiness! Clothes, timelines... I embrace it all!

I'm a very sporadic writer of SPN fic (and 1 J2AU); I'm not as old as John and Mary Winchester, but am a lot closer in age to them than Sam-n-Dean. Also, I like money and cereal.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, thanks! I like money and cereal too - but only one specific cereal. ;)

[borgmama1of5.livejournal.com]

I'm am trying to think of something about me that would surprise you...

In 1999 my 3 girls and I made a cd "O'Carolan's Daughters and Friends Having Fun" that was Celtic music and fun folk songs, and we used to sing at coffee shops (my youngest was about 7 when we started performing.)

Hmmm, a question for you...how many siblings do you have and where are you in birth order?

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

That sounds like tons of fun! :)

I have 4 siblings (3 sisters, 1 brother). I'm second youngest, with my younger sister being six years younger than me, because she was the "surprise." My eldest sibling (sister) is from my dad's first marriage, so she grew up mostly in a different city with her own mother. She's ten years older than me.

[nerthus.livejournal.com]

I teach pre-k (4 & 5 yr olds), am 50 years old and divorced for a LONG time now; I have 3 grown children, youngest (daughter)is an electrical engineer, middle child (daughter) has special needs and lives with me and needs 24/7 care. My oldest (son) works for a nursing agency and is, fortuitously enough, the caregiver for his sister while I am at work each week day. He is a Buddhist, a poet, and lives with me as well to help out with bills and his sister, etc. I used to write Stargate fanfics ages ago, love reading and my fave fandoms and have a dog (part pit bull, part Boston terrier!) named Zero and 3 insane cats (a calico named Kirara,a gray tabby named Itty Bitty--who WAS the runt as a kitten but is now a whopping 19 lbs and no longer 'bitty', ha--and Gabster, part Maine Coon who loves to climb and get into EVERYTHING and tends to CHOMP down on your closest available body part without warning, ha!) I've lived in Texas all my life and have never really done anything exciting,so yeah...that's about it! (Oh, and I LOVE owls, hoot hoot!!)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I do not envy you your job. I'm horrible with children. :P Your son sounds like a nice fellow, it's nice that he's around to help with his sister. And yay, pets!

Here, I found a shirt that I think reflects your interests! (http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QC-YOLO&Category_Code=QC)

[yalumesse]

That's a good idea! The problem I've been having over at my just-made-new-friends introductary post is that there's just way too much information to swallow. I should have done this. Oh well.

I'm almost literally obsessed with figuring out the how, when and whys of everything in my fandoms. Like your timelines - I've made timelines for other fandoms before, as well as maps and such, and spent months trying to figure out how everything worked in the dream worlds of Inception. Like, literally everything. And my personal computer files are organised to the hilt, with cross-referencing within files and folders and numbered so they're always in the right order, because it drives me crazy if I don't know exactly where everything is. (Funnily enough, this doesn't translate to my physical books and other belongings - just computer files.)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo a fact-based person!

I'm a little like that too, I guess. I like to know where everything is - on my computer AND in the physical world, but sadly it doesn't necessarily translate to "tidy" because sometimes I know "that thing is in the pile of junk on my desk" and the reason that pile of junk is on my desk is because that's where all that junk belongs. :P

I can't cross-reference inside files and folders on the computer, but everything has to have a logical place - even if the logic is "I keep it there, because when I first started that folder, it made sense to... it no longer makes sense to, but I have to keep it there because that is where I look for it."

If there's anything about Supernatural that you need to know and you can't find a resource on - let me know! I love creating resources. (I'm working on a massive resource project at the moment, but it's slow going.)

[ashkiryn.livejournal.com]

Well, hey there. I'm honestly trying to come up with something that's slightly interesting and identifying---oh! Duh, I know. :P

In real life, people often recognize me because I collect pins, and I have them all over my hats---which I generally wear whenever I'm out in public. I only started this when I left for college, because we weren't allowed to wear hats in high school, but I became pretty recognizable as, "Oh, you're that girl with all the Disney pins on her hat!" And, yes, I'm that, but I've also got Wicked and Phantom pins and other random ones that my friends have started giving me as gifts---one of which was from Berlin. :)

There. I figure that's mildly more interesting than in saying something about how I'm disabled, or I tend to have One Big Fandom that I participate in for each medium (books, video games, tv shows, anime, etc). ;)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo pins and hats! Now whenever you comment I will picture you wearing hats with interesting pins :) Did people sometimes not recognize you if you were not wearing your hat? When I met my best friend, he often wore a black fedora and it was easy to pick him out of crowds - when he didn't wear them, it was less so. :P

Supernatural is really the only fandom that I participate in. I mean, yes, I've written Sherlock stories, and crossovers with Merlin and Harry Potter... but I just tend to lurk in other fandoms for some reason. Also, for some reason I can't really get into book fandoms that much (Harry Potter excluded.) Anyway, basically, yeah, I understand having the One Big Fandom thing, as mine is limited to really only one medium.

[liliaeth]

I love being positive about things. One of the main reasons I've friended you, aside of your fic and meta posts, is because you are usually positive in your reviews. You don't instantly try to find something, anything negative just to have something to complain about, which gets rather tiring, rather quickly.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yay! And that is also why I love talking with you! I like liking things and I like people who like things. :)

[etoile444.livejournal.com]

Fun! I think I keep track of my friends list based on their geographic location first, then their fandom affiliation, and finally theory within fandom preference. So you are the lucky one who lives in the blessed city ( Vancouver) and likes SPN and writes positive and lengthy and "must read" reviews in a timely manner. I don't know if you are a Sam or Dean girl, you seem bi-bro. You organize well. Maybe you are linear-sequential like me. BTW, I was a history major. I ended up going into Special Ed. Teaching. It's been good for the most part, but I wouldn't recommend it in these times.

I am jealous because you are Canadian. No matter your adventures, don't give that up. Canada is not perfect, but it is one of the best places on Earth to live. I went to both Ottawa and Vancouver this year. I've been to your capital, but not my own. I live in eastern NY, only 4 hours from Montréal. I still need to go there!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I like to think of myself as bi-bro. I am a Jared-girl though (not that I don't love Jensen as well, of course... but Jared is my Helen of Troy).

Us history majors tend to organize well, I find. ;) And wow, Special Ed. Teaching. That's really cool - yet another job that I don't think I'd be cut out for, but I definitely admire people who are.

I love being Canadian. I don't think I could ever give it up. I DO like living in Europe too, but I like to have Canada to go home to. We have our problems, but everyone does really.

You've been to the two Canadian cities that I've spent the most time in! I grew up in Ottawa. :) Montreal is a great city, I do recommend visiting it. I'm thinking of maybe flying back for a weekend in April and spending time with my friends there. As much as I love Vancouver, I do miss "the east" and everyone that I left behind.

[pxr5.livejournal.com]

Hey there....I am not a very interesting person, I am afraid. I friended you as I wanted to stay updated on your supernatural/HP fics. Stayed for the conversation.

Most of my fannish activity is IRL, rather than on the net. I am active in my local community (primarily for written genre material, rather than media fandoms.). I have a day job working in IT and another part time gig running a bookstore online and at cons.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

That's neat about having IRL fannish activity, and writing genre material! That sounds interesting to me! And online/Con bookstores are cool too!

I'm hoping to maybe get another SPN/HP story up this summer - but it all depends where S8 leaves us. In the meantime, I'm glad you enjoy the conversation! ;)

[dairygirl.livejournal.com]

Hi Alix! (waves vigorously) I hail from Wisconsin (also known as America's Dairyland) and I love dairy products so hence my name. After several years of planning and nearly a year of searching, I purchased and moved into a 100+ year old farmhouse on five acres where I am hoping to make all my growing-my-own-food plans come true--if the maintenance on the farmhouse does not drain all my financial resources.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo, 100+ year old farmhouse on five acres! That's awesome. I hope that you can make all your grow-your-own-food plans come true. :)

[nic]

Hello! I friended you because we both live in Vancouver and I adore your SPN posts - as someone else commented, it's great to read such positive responses to the show. :) (I also enjoy your other posts - especially those about extra work. Sooooo interesting!)

Random fact about me - I move countries. A lot.

Question for you: Did you ever have a dream of "what did you want to be when you grow up" and how far from that are you?

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yay! I don't think you live very far from me either. :)

I haven't been doing extra work this year, because my "day job" is much busier (and more lucrative) than it was last year. But who knows, I might start that up again at some point.

I've moved countries only once (well, twice, because I came back).

Question for you: Did you ever have a dream of "what did you want to be when you grow up" and how far from that are you?

Ah, that old question... yes, I did have a dream of what I would "be" when I grew up. And let me now serve as a warning... because when I was a child, all I wanted to do was to go to university. Now, that all seems lovely, but let me tell you, once you've been to university, and you suddenly find yourself at the age of 25 with no life goals left... well, life kind of stretches out... 50-75 years that you just have no idea what to do with.

So, although I accomplished what I wanted to "be" when I grew up - I didn't think far enough ahead with that dream. I think besides wanting to go to university, I also wanted to travel a lot. And I have done, but it's hard to travel and pay the bills...so I'm still not 100% on that dream.

[elliemurasaki.livejournal.com]

They might know me all around the world
But, y'all, I'm still a Mississippi girl

I miss Mississippi. NO FUCKING COLD. NO FUCKING SNOW. I do not miss Mississippi half bad enough to ever set foot in the state again (it has only one abortion provider and they're trying to force that clinic to close; fuck that noise), but I miss Mississippi.

How many places have you lived? If more than one, what's your favorite?

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I've never been to Mississippi. I've read about it in books though! Being Canadian, it's hard for me to comprehend places that don't get cold or have snow. It's a shame about the politics in that part of the US though. I'm very thankful to live in Canada where the anti-abortion movement is very very small.

I've lived in 5 different cities (in four different provinces) in Canada, and 1 city in Germany. I've also traveled quite a bit. It'd be hard to pick a favourite, because there are different reasons that I loved each place. It's also hard to compare Germany with Canada.

St. John's, Newfoundland, was basically like discovering my own personal Hogwarts... so it ranks right up there. Vancouver is the most international Canadian city, and also the best urban-planned city, that I've ever lived in. Freiburg, Germany, is GORGEOUS and has the benefit of being in Germany which is a pretty rad country to live in. I also really liked living in Montreal, though the driving there is horrible and I couldn't find a job. And then I also have a special place in my heart for the back roads of eastern Ontario, because that's where I grew up and is imprinted on my heart.

So...yeah, how do I pick? I guess maybe St. John's? Just because it felt like I had stumbled into a secret world full of friendly awesome people...and lots of moose. :P

[et-tu-lj.livejournal.com]

My day job is managing a bookstore. I've been there a decade, and loved it, but now it's changed enough I'm trying to get out.

I'm married, with two cats, and that's the closest to having kids I ever want to come in my life. Besides writing, I like to play video games (I love co-op, when I can find someone to play with me) and watch box sets. I'm usually reading several books at a time, and I'm always watching multiple TV seasons with different people. I like to sing, as does one of my closest friends, so we play Rock Band a lot and are trying to beat every song in the game on expert level vocals. (Though I like drums too and play that the rest of the time. Only on easy though, I can survive just barely on medium, but it makes it stop being fun.)

I started lurking because I like your writing, but I friended you because of how well spoken and insightful you are, in your comments and in your meta. It made me want to get to know you better, and I'm very glad I did. :)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Rock Band is a lot of fun. I've only ever played it once at my brother's place, but I enjoyed it. I like the singing part the best, but I can't play the drums very well at all (in the game, or IRL). Me and my best friend basically built our friendship around playing co-op games together, maybe things have changed, but back then it was really hard to find good (hotseat) co-ops - especially in the RPG genre (his favourite). Or maybe we just burned through the games that were available too fast.

Thanks for saying I'm well spoken! I often feel like I'm mashing unintelligibly at the keyboard trying to give voice to thoughts that continuously escape my attempts to assign them words. :P

I'm glad you started commenting, as I've very much enjoyed our various conversations, and the process of getting to know you better. :)

[marlowe78.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool, so I'm doing this here as well ;-)

I'm from Germany (I think you know that?) and I studied Forest-Sciences and nowadays, I'm a forest-educationalist (is that a word??) and teach kids or adults that forests are awesome and why it's good if you use a forest, and HOW you should use a forest so it'll keep being awesome for the future.

I also have a dog and work as a trainer for Mantrailing, but "just" the fun-kind, I'm not actually out there finding missing persons. Just persons who have been deliberately displaced :-D

Oh, and I MIGHT go to Vancouver in August!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

:O It'd be awesome if you came to Vancouver in August!!(I'm usually away for the first half of August, but I'm always around for the VanCon and the last half.)

Forest-Educationalist is no doubt a word in German. We'd probably call it something different here that was more pretentious or something... I don't know. It sounds like a nice job though! Teaching people about how to care for the environment. And tracking down deliberately displaced people sounds like fun too. :)

[khek.livejournal.com]

I'm quite late on this, but there you go--the first quirk about me. I open tabs all willy-nilly and don't get back to them for days. Weeks, even.

I'm a childrens/teen librarian. I love reading and writing, but recently, I can't seem to get further than a few pages written. My dog is my baby, a 95-pound coonhound/harrier/borzoi/random hounds mutt. I grew up in Vermont, the oldest of four sisters, all about a year apart in age. My grandparents were Canadian, from some very tiny farming communities not far from Montreal. Sadly, I'm pretty boring. This winter, I've decided that I really hate snow.

I friended you for the clothes lists, the timelines and your wonderful Damned Demented Demons stories!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Cool! I went to Vermont once. It was pretty there.

That's a long time to have a tab open! I shut everything down at the end of each day, so tabs don't stay open more than 12-14 hours for me. That being said, I will sometimes bookmark something at the end of the day and then forget about it for 6 months. So, I'm not sure which one of our systems is better.

Man, the east has been DUMPED on this winter - and here I am sitting in surprisingly sunny Vancouver, while my poor mother back home tries to dig herself out of her house. :P