About Me
I am an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a puzzle. Seek me out, explore me like mapquest. Just don’t get lost or you may never find your way back….Bwah Ha Ha Ha…fiendish laugh dies off! Fade to black.
Education
Grand Valley State University, 1992
Michigan, United States - Russian Studies
Loyola University, 2001
Chicago, Il - M.ed.
Music
Found Music! If you hear it while driving your car and have to pull over to get the title or singer’s name, it’s a keeper: Viva La Vita by Cold Play, Wheels by Cake, James Blunt’s “Beautiful”. I like the sad song. Sometimes, you just gotta be blue! My radio is a divining rod for inspiration or emotional predictions: if Elvis Costello comes on playing a driving rock number, my day is going to soar. Learning to sing “Jockey Full of Bourbon” just about broke me. Andrea Bocelli fixed in me a passion for all things Italian and a bad habit of warbling in the shower—off key and out of range!
TV Shows
Character driven works for me. Bring on P.B.S. mysteries with slow pace and absolutely no guns! Let’s get (a) physical with Hugh Laurie on House! Ooooo, cranky doctors are much sexier on tv than in real life! Alton Brown combines two of my favorites: food and science! C.S.I.—the original only, no copycats need apply. If you know who ate Queequag then you know why I dyed my hair red for a couple of months just to try it out! But, tv doesn’t fill my chakra. No, it is an escape hatch from thinking. So, I like to keep it off, or I will get nothing done!
Movies
I love a good feel bad movie! I loved to weep at loss of innocence with the young lead in Empire of the Sun. Then I can bounce back with zesty fun: my favorite position is over-the-top in the entertaining, sexy, raunchy, vaudeville-esque Moulin Rouge even if it leads to a feast of disappointment and heartbreak. I cannot look away from Forest Gump, so, I try to pretend I didn’t see it if I am channel surfing. But, I also love the brain-candy pleasures of Men in Black (I not II), Independence Day and Galaxy Quest: “Never give up! “Never Surrender!”
Books
Jasper Fforde—I love your brain. Please move to America so that you when you are inspired to write more Friday Next novels I can break into your house like a psychotic fan to read your discard notes! I think my favorite book is the next one I discover. If I find an author who has written several and I like one, I approach each new one like the missing Christmas present that you find the next day tucked under the tree skirt. There is no other magic like that!
Quotes
“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Percy Bysshe Shelley
“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
