Current location:	New Pad
Current mood:	thoughtful
Current music:	Heater blowing and kitty meowing

Five Thingies!
omg! I feel like I'm part of the real blogger world, I've been "tagged" with a "meme" by Berserk! Five things people might not know about me...

1. I look like my dad. We've got similar straight brown hair, facial structure (including weak chins), easily tanned skin tone, medium height and builds. You can really tell that we look alike in pictures of us in childhood, if I can find one of my dad I'll post them both. My mom has curly black hair, fair freckled skin and is short and round. Strangely, as I've gotten older, I've started finding not grey hair but curly black hairs mixed in w/ my straight brown. I'm becoming my mom?

2. I haven't yet left the Western Hemisphere. Mostly I've traveled within the US (the four corners, not so much the middle), and a little in Canada and Mexico, but in the last year I also visited Ecuador to see the Amazon jungle and the Galapagos Islands. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. What fewer people know is that I traveled to Honduras in my teens as part of a Christian medical "mission" with my doctor uncle and similarly-aged cousin. The Christian part was super low-key, thankfully, so mostly I got to be part of treating some of the impoverished people of that country, contributing by directing them around the "clinics" that were set up. I found it super fulfilling and after that wanted to grow up to be a missionary (by which I mean helping people, not converting them). However, I didn't end up doing that.

3. A rare nervous system disorder runs in my family, Friedreich's Ataxia. I know this because two of my cousins have the disease, including the similarly-aged cousin I mentioned above, Inga. She didn't show many symptoms then, but now she is in a wheelchair. I very much admire that she's living a good life with a challenging job and still takes fun vacations despite her disability. Her younger sister Becky also has the disease, but shows fewer symptoms. Their older sister Nesa did not inherit it. I feel lucky that I did not as well. There is no cure for the disease, but they're testing drugs to treat it.

4. I stripped at a Mexican strip club in the off-season in Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo. Jason (my ex) and I had traveled there on vacation and decided to check out the local strip club. Since there were only seven or so customers the women weren't super motivated to dance. Happily, they had no issue with the gringo chick getting up on stage and doing her own dance. I had a lot of fun and it fueled my fantasies of stripping in the states. Unfortunately, I've never felt good enough about my body or had the courage to do it here, so so far my career has been limited to South of the border. :) That was also a missed chance for me to experience a prostitute as someone offered us a cheap price to be our "escort" for the night. I don't really regret that though.

5. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Working on computers is fun and Pixar is a blast! Sometimes I think that I want to be doing something closer to my interests, especially with/for the environment. I haven't figured out how I could contribute yet, but I'm keeping my mind open. Assuredly any change I would make would mean a vastly reduced income and is a serious thing to consider. Maybe it's better to continue helping make great movies and give money/time to the causes I value? And it's pretty scary to consider any career change... thinking about this gives me renewed respect for the mid-life career changes my parents both made, my dad from paper mill pipefitter to law librarian and my mom from psychiatric nurse to hospital computer system analyst.

Oh, I'm supposed to "tag" five other people I think. Whee!! I'm not sure they'll participate, but what the hell...

calmkelp
Lars
Victor
Kyle who could explain why he hates the moon
Keith