Thank you all for letting me get to know you better! I love being in a community with so much healthy variety.
I'm 57, grew up in a city in a desert (El Paso), put in a few years in L.A., and then moved to a city in a rain forest (Seattle). I've lived in the PNW for over 30 years now, and still see rain as something like money falling out of the sky. I mean, the folks here have good eats for WEEDS! (Blackberries take over everything.)
I'm a technical writer who ended up in a high-tech career largely for the flexible hours. Ever hear of "westward drift"? That's where you stay up really late working on a project... and the next morning you get in a little later than usual... so that night you work even later... and the next morning you start later still... I LIKE westward drift. And I'm a bit of a gadget-geek. My Google home page has RSS feeds for science and technology news.
I use a
Fingerworks keyboard and a
Dvorak keyboard layout.
Met my S.O. about a dozen years ago. It felt like we'd been married for a couple of decades but had been inexplicably separated for, oh, about as long as we'd been on the planet. We were living together within a week or two. Realized that we were living together a few weeks after that. I had a nice little house in the city when I met him. He wanted to live in the country. Talked me into moving when they were repaving the freeway 2 blocks from our bedroom window -- again. We found an amazing Tudor-style house on 1.25 acres, with a seasonal stream in back. Good layout although there are some things we want to change. Neither of us considers a load-bearing wall to be a Hard Stop -- more of a Serious Consideration.
When I burned out at work and needed to recuperate, this house was a blessing. I love all the green around me -- again, that's magic for a desert-grown kid. Love the critters. We've seen bobcats
just outside the window, deer in the garden decimating the roses, eagles and hawks soaring overhead. At night we hear the owls and coyotes and the frogs.
Can we say "predator-proof the run"??
Started a business doing high-end faux-finish walls (I'm good at that, it turns out), but I've let it die down what with gas prices. I can telecommute the tech writing. Don't know how any of you survive without a high-speed internet connection.
I rented goats earlier this year (to get the blackberries and salmon berries under control
). LOVED the goats. Want goats! And for the goats & chicks, a Great Pyr. I've never had occasion to spend much time outside (the heat in the desert would lay me flat when I was growing up), and I'm amazed at how energizing it is for me.
We have 5 cats. They tend to be in whatever room I'm in, which Himself finds a little frustrating since he loves them too.
I like to do beadwork & just got into Ndbele stitch and netting. I like working with size 14 and smaller beads. Some antique beads are like stringing sand.
I like a nice pot of tea (oolongs mostly, or an aged Pu Erh for a treat). For years, working at a big computer company on high-tech projects, people would drop into my office for a cup of tea when they needed a few minutes to decompress. I liked that role -- nurturing, but not to the exclusion of all else. Like with chickens!
