1. When I was seven I learned to bait my own hook with a worm.
2. In kindergarten, when they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, and gave us the paper that’s lined on the bottom and clear on top so you can draw, I wrote across the whole page, FREE. Does this tell you anything about me now?
3. I have a ridiculous fear of spiders.
4. I have broken or dislocated both of my ankles, both wrists, my right shoulder, my back (13 discs) and my right knee.
5. My tongue and nose have each been pierced three separate times.
6. I was a PyroVixen in the Cirque de Flambe for two years, and apprenticed under an award-winning rope jumper from Cirque du Soleil.
7. I can damn the religion of the mother of the person who taught you to drive in Arabic.
8. I have a pencil lead in my hand from when I was six, and a piece of magnesium in my leg from when I was 30.
9. I have been to Burning Man eight times, to the playa a handful of times besides those events.
10. I have three tattoos.
11. I trained agents for the TSA/Homeland Security in 2002, in the effort to federalize all airport security employees. The bad news is that it’s no safer now to fly than it was before 9.11.01. The good news is that it was always safer to fly than any other means of travel.
12. I played the piano, recorder and accordion as a child.
13. I went to The Bahamas with a near-stranger for Valentine’s Day 2004, on his dime. No romance ensued, but it makes a great story. (Hi, Fred!)
14. I used to emcee a pirates and fire burlesque troupe called the Treasure Chests.
15. My father was tried for mutiny at sea over a kitten.
16. Some of my favorite sounds are: breaking glass, ice chunks skidding across a frozen lake, laughter
17. I came in second place in the school spelling bee in sixth grade, losing for misspelling c-a-r-r-i-a-g-e. I have not misspelled it since then.
18. I consider myself a foodie, but if left to my own devices with nobody to cook for/with, I could subsit entirely on a diet of cold cereal with soy milk.
19. I smoked cigarettes for 18 years. I stopped doing that for good when that was half of the years I’d been alive, over a year ago.
20. I was the Strongest Link on TV’s The Weakest Link game show in 2001.
21. I won Seattle’s Haiku d’Etat, an annual haiku competition, in 2007.
22. I have not grown since eight grade. I towered above most of my classmates then, and now I am just above average height (about 5′7″).
23. I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane once, at dusk, 14,000 feet above the ground, looking straight out at the summit of Mt. Rainier. With a parachute, and a reliable parachute operator, strapped to me.
24. I almost always get a great picture on my driver’s license.
25. I graduated massage school with honors and earned my license in Washington state, in 1992.

All who don’t have a crush on the President-Elect, raise your hand.

Yeah, I thought so.

Abundant sunshine. It’s October 24. I’ll take ‘made the right move’, for $1000, Alex.
There’s a little gloat in here, but it’s mostly delight.

Come visit any time. I’m on the sunny side of the Bay. It’s good here. And when it does rain, it’s milk and honey.

I’ve landed in Oakland! I finally made it, after what seems like eons of waiting and logistic-ing, I’m here. I have a home, I have some work coming my way in the form of odd jobs, and I’m registered with a couple agencies that are nibbling at me. Life is good.

I’m settling for the time being at least, in a fabulous loft in the Fruitvale area of East Oakland. I’ve slept here two nights and not heard a single gunshot, mom- don’t fret. (that *will* change, I’m sure)

I have great roommates and fabulous neighbors just down the hall, a great beau, and a community of new friends who already feel like old friends.

Aside from the nasty cold/flu thing I’m presently down with, all is well. I am looking forward to exploring my new neighborhood, and the extended neighborhood of the entire Bay area. It still boggles my mind that that water, right OVER THERE, is the San Francsico Bay! Finally.

It was hard, the weather was grueling. I learned a lot about myself that I wasn’t expecting to learn.  We laughed, danced, sweat, slept sometimes and had a riotously good time.