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I'm a playful and witty but introverted philosopher/math geek who somehow manages to find herself in some fairly surprising situations with ever-increasing frequency. I sing (alto with delusions of tenor), dance (all kinds), play several instruments in a very dilettantish fashion, and am finding more and more people these days who think I'm neat. This is a very welcome change from my teenage years.

With regard to the little cartoon section below: I find it amusing that I'm somehow both "less spontaneous" and "less of a planner," even if I can't really manage to argue with either of those assessments. I can't figure out where the hell they got "less socially free", though, especially since I'm pretty sure they used to call me "less conservative" and on their own freakin' politics test I landed quite solidly in the Liberal corner. (To further clarify, I'm a registered Green and identify pretty definitely as Neutral Good.)

Edit: I see they're no longer calling me socially hidebound--instead they're calling me sloppy and ill-mannered. I guess I can't argue with that either; I've been known to rant at length about how much more niceness matters than politeness, and y'know, it's amazing how many things you can manage to eat with your fingers.

But the one other thing I can't figure out is how on earth I got tagged as "less dorky." Any of my partners can tell you how ridiculous that is.

Yes, partners. I have several, and no, that isn't changing any time soon. And even if it did change, I still wouldn't wanna date anyone who wouldn't have dated me anyway. Just so we're clear on that.

Also, for the sake of my sanity, I've instituted a new policy; I hope it'll cut down, if not on the annoying messages, at least on my tendency to get bent out of shape about them.

This policy is as follows: if I don't know you in real life, and if we've never messaged each other before, I will only reply to your initial message if you can quote or at least mention two or more things that are written in my profile. This ain't hard; copy and paste if you want, just prove to me that you read the damn thing so I actually know you're interested in me and not my tits. Of course, reading the "message me if" field will tell you that I still might not reply (especially if you just copied and pasted instead of actually saying something interesting), but at least that'll be because I'm lazy and not because you suck. F'rexample, if you wrote the sort of message that doesn't seem to expect a reply, then I'm just less likely to try and muster the brain cells to compose one.

And please don't get on my case about this--I know it's kinda bullshit, but it's to protect you-all, not me. The jackholes who don't bloody read (and who probably aren't reading this paragraph either, for that matter) will proposition me anyway just like they would've before; the only difference is that instead of verbally eviscerating their lame asses, I will take several deep breaths and say to myself "I promised I would ignore dipwads like this. That means no flaming. I will not flame. I will not flame." And then I won't. And then all of us will be happier. Right? Right.

(Seriously, it's been working great so far. I've already lost track of how many people I've successfully avoided insulting.)

Trying to figure out how I'm going to get into grad school with an academic record that doesn't come near reflecting my abilities--especially since my bachelor's is in math and I'd rather get my doctorate in philosophy (or possibly logic). For that matter, trying to figure out if grad school is even something I ought to try to do any time in the next decade--maybe I should wait until my study skills improve, or at least till my (multiple, treatment-resistant) sleep problems are fixed and I magically gain the energy of a normal person.

Meanwhile, after a couple years of teaching math long-distance to gifted kids, I'm working on a tech writing certificate in hopes of becoming more widely employable. It's kind of weird to be studying practical skills instead of esoteric knowledge for once in my life, but it's surprisingly gratifying to feel that I'm learning something useful and producing concrete results that I'm actually rather proud of. I still don't think I want this sort of thing to become my life's work, but I can at least see myself spending a good few years at it, and a lot of the skills will carry over into academia if and when I ever do go back.

...writing, but mostly only academic-type writing. Though I am working on that (see above), I still don't imagine I'll ever be any good at writing fiction.

...punning. Starting a pun war with me can be a dangerous thing--especially if you were planning to go anywhere any time soon.

...spelling. I can correctly spell just about any word I've ever seen written and many that I haven't, with the only exceptions being highly technical terms, words with multiple double letters, and certain exceptions to the i-before-e rules. Though I'm rather glad of the auto-spellcheck feature on most of the programs I use, simply because I'd never bother to use spellcheck otherwise, and then I'd miss a lot more typos.

...mental arithmetic. Interestingly, this trait seems to be independent of math geekery in general, so I guess I'm lucky to have both.

...being feline, in a way that tends to make people go "awwwww" a lot. But I try to save that for people I've had time to get to know a bit, so I don't lose all chance of being taken seriously from the get-go.

...speed-reading. Also, reading upside down, backwards, and sideways. During my most recent move I discovered, through much leaning over to label the far sides of boxes, that I'm not bad at writing upside down and sideways either.

...manipulating things with my toes. This is especially handy for picking up pieces of clothing that have fallen behind the couch...but unfastening people's trousers (belts too) with my toes is a much better party trick.

...deflecting compliments. Though this is a skill I'm trying to quit using, really I am.

...low-drama breakups. I'm still friends or at least friendly with most of the people I've dated, and I like to date people who can say the same.

...deadpan delivery. Enough that it gets me into trouble sometimes. These days I try to be aware of who's likely to take me seriously when I don't mean them to, but I learned the necessity for that the hard way. At least it made for some amusing stories.

...debating ideas. I like playing devil's advocate, but I'm not one of those folks who does it just to piss people off. Admittedly, I used to piss people off inadvertently by poking too hard at their sacred cows, but I've learned a modicum of tact since then.

...crafting and then picking apart metaphors and analogies. Metaphor is pretty much how we understand the world, but that makes it vital to be able to tell how far you can stretch your metaphors before they snap. I find almost anything is a lot easier to understand once I can say "it's a lot like this other thing, except for x and y and z and maybe also q oh and dear gods don't forget p."

...procrastinating. Oh, the all-nighters I've pulled, and the last-minute feats I've accomplished. Ask me (once we've been chatting a little) about the time I drafted a biology paper while performing in a concert, or the time I put together a presentation during the ten minutes between classes, or the time I frantically dashed off part of a speech and managed to give the impression I'd written a whole one weeks in advance.

...word puzzles and cryptic crosswords (composing as well as solving). I play with letters like I play with numbers; both are addictive.

...Set, and apparently Zendo. I rock the pattern recognition. But then again, I like deductive games like Mastermind just as much as inductive games like Zendo. I'm also all about the logic puzzles.

...singing, by most people's standards (though not by the standards of people who actually have any training). I'm good enough for amateur choral but not solo work; maybe someday I'll actually be able to afford voice lessons. Meanwhile, I love me some karaoke.

...memorizing music. Really helps with the above. I'm a lousy sight-singer, but let me listen to a short piece once or twice--three or four times if it's real tricky--and I've got it.

...learning new dance steps. I've gotten pretty good at Irish ceili and Victorian-style ballroom over the years, and picked up the rudiments of a few other styles as well. Now what I really need is to get more confidence as a lead.

...finding innuendo in everything. Really, this is a subset of the wordplay skill, combined with the fact that my sense of humor runs the gamut from wry sophistication to twelve-year-old sniggering.

...and finally, adding characters to my profile in the hopeless quest for more "completeness" mfnalivhn3eohfsdjnkjghkzad...

Usually the unholy masses of hair, unless I'm wearing a particularly nifty t-shirt (of which, I'll grant, I have quite a few).

I'm told I have a unique style, which surprises me somewhat, as I don't think of t-shirts and business-casual-type trousers as being all that creative a fashion choice. Apparently it's the pairing of them that's unusual er somethin. Or maybe it's the fact that they're mostly black (is there such a thing as an "apathetic goth"?) Or maybe it's the non-girliness of them.

I also get mistaken a lot for people I've never met, by people I've never met. I can only conclude that I have an awful lot of doppelgangers running around, and that we all have some sort of mutually repelling property to ensure that we never meet each other--'cause personally, I've never met anyone who I think looks the slightest bit like me, 'cept maybe my parents.

Really, though, I suppose I should open up this section for input from people who actually know me. If we've met IRL, feel free to click the Edit button and lemme know what you first noticed about me.

Rather than list stuff, I'll just say this:

I mostly read fantasy and SF (real shocker, I know) and particularly dig the kind of fiction that makes me Think Deep Thoughts about Life 'n' Stuff; Greg Egan is one really brain-pokey author I adore. However, I also have my fluffy guilty-pleasure sorts of reading; I've spent way too much time over the last few years geeking out about Harry Potter, and can rant about the last two books at more length than you could probably stand. My nonfiction reading is mostly on linguistics-, pyschology-, and cog-sci-related topics (though admittedly that's a rather broad category). If I can't be the next Bertrand Russell, I at least wanna be the next Douglas Hofstadter.

I dig movies that make me think Deep Thoughts as well, but prefer them to be more comedic than tragic. Come to think of it, the comedy usually wins out; most of my favorite movies are simply funny, with perhaps a dash of charming thrown in. I ♥ Huckabees, though, did an awesome job of conveying some seriously deep truth amidst the madcap silliness.

I've done a fair bit of classical choral singing, but am also a fan of 80's New Wave and 90's alt-rock; I also have a weakness for covers, mashups, and anything that involves a wild juxtaposition of musical styles; and finally, Celtic music (including Celtic fusion) will always, always get me dancing.

I am an erstwhile percussionist who never practiced enough to get all that good at it. My favorite instrument to listen to (although I've never had the chance to play it) is probably the steel drum, but that might change if I were forced to listen to it incessantly. I am also enamored of the kettledrums, and am quite likely to break into air tympani when someone throws on a piece like Beethoven's Ninth. (Though Bohemian Rhapsody arguably elicits even more entertaining choreography, as I slide from air guitar to air drums to air piano.) Currently I own a set of bongos, a kobassa, a pennywhistle or two, and a low-end Yamaha keyboard, and if you put just about any other instrument in my hands I will probably figure out how to play a few bars of some non-trivial song on it in five to ten minutes--but there's no predicting which song. (Also, I define "instrument" quite loosely. When I was a kid, we had a wire egg-slicer on which I discovered I could pick out several tunes.)

My food tastes are both broad and narrow; I'm somewhat picky about what I eat, but can usually find something I like at almost any kind of restaurant (and after nine years in the Bay Area, I've been to an awful lot of kinds of restaurants). Only thing is, I have a wheat allergy that can really be a problem sometimes.

Given that the only things I could literally never do without are the boring things like food and air, I shall focus instead on the things I could theoretically do without but really really wouldn't want to. Like....

...books. I'd go spare if I didn't have anything to read. Reading is how I wind down at the end of the day, how I spend lazy afternoons--hell, it's even a date activity. And hand in hand with reading comes learning; I never ever want to run out of new ideas to ponder.

...music. I've come to realize lately that music is somewhat of a religion for me; really good music produces feelings that are the closest I've ever come to a spiritual trance, and I can't imagine not having a background track of music running through my head at nearly any time. More and more these days I'm regretting that I haven't studied music theory in more depth, and hoping it's not too late to change that once I get the rest of my life stabilized.

...cats. Granted, I generate a fair amount of feline energy myself and so do some of the people I'm closest to, but that's not a complete substitute for having actual four-footed purr-balls around the house. Right now I don't, but I consider that to be a temporary state and I will be much happier when it has been rectified.

...cuddling and other forms of affectionate touch. I didn't use to realize how much I needed these, because I was so used to going without them that it didn't occur to me that anything was missing. I've learned better now. It's amazing how comforting just holding hands can be.

...intellectual companionship. Books are great, but they're no substitute for having real live people to bounce ideas off of. My thoughts fall into place so much quicker when I try to explain them to someone else who turns out to have just the right words for that part I couldn't quite get at yet.

...sensory experience. A lot of people say they're addicted to sensation, but I have the opposite problem; as you might guess from the above paragraphs, I'm too apt to spend all my time thinking and ignore the outside world, and that really isn't healthy for me. That's where activities like dancing come in; they give me the much-needed opportunity to get outside my head and focus on my body for once.

What the hell I'm doing with my life, and how I operate in general. And what I'm doing with various other people, and how they operate, and all the things I'd like to do with them that I haven't yet. *ahem*

And my past, in detail, and my future, in somewhat fuzzier detail.

And just why it was I liked that one book but didn't like that other one, and what I would say (at length) to either the characters or the author if I met them.

And that interesting little tidbit of combinatorics or number theory that I've just got to prove to myself even though I'm sure I could find half a dozen proofs online in a moment.

And that bit in that one piece of music that goes like this and then like that and holy fuck it's so gorgeous I could cry. And dammit why can't I have like ten voices so I could hear that piece whenever I want without having to dig up a recording.

Gaming, some weeks--specifically, the kind of gaming that involves character sheets and lots of dice. (And yes, if sufficiently encouraged I will blather about my character....) Other weeks, relaxing at home, or out waltzing, or occasionally at a party surrounded by friends, preferably in a cuddle pile with several of them.

My gender identity is...complicated. At the very least I'm strongly genderqueer, though I doubt I'd qualify as trans by most people's standards. Basically, I'm growing steadily less content with being perceived as female all the time, but am still trying to figure out just how I do want to be perceived and what the best way is to make that happen, given that I don't want to be perceived as male all the time either. While I work this out, though, anyone who successfully avoids tagging me with female pronouns at least some of the time will have my gratitude.

However, I'm not currently interested in trying to explain more about this in online conversation with people I don't know well--it's just not the ideal medium for conveying things about myself I'm not even sure I understand yet. If you want to know more, I'm afraid you'll have to wait till we get to know each other a little better.

A recent conversation has made me realize that two cases need to be considered here, for very different reasons:

1) If I've messaged you, at any time in the past

...then I am probably still interested in chatting with you, unless I have indicated otherwise. Most importantly, there's no statute of limitations on when you can write back. If it's been a month, or even a year, since I last wrote and you're worried it would seem ridiculous to reply now, worry not. I am not a limited-time offer, and my interest in hearing from you is unlikely to have declined...although if it's been long enough I may need to remind myself who you are.

2) If I've never messaged you, and you're considering starting a conversation with me

...you probably shouldn't be too invested in the outcome.

First of all, IMing me is right out. I refuse to use this site's IM system because I hate the interface, and although for some reason you can't just turn it off, I have configured my preferences so that no messages actually get through to me. Try mail instead--there's at least a slight chance I'll answer that.

However, when it comes to mail, there are further caveats. For one thing, long-distance correspondence is pretty much out; I only manage to keep in touch with people there's a good chance I'm gonna be able to meet in real life, because pen pals just aren't "real" to me in the same way. This means if you're not either somewhere in the bay area, or planning to relocate there in the near future, or in the habit of spending time there on a semi-regular basis, it ain't gonna work.

For another thing, even if you are local, although my dance card isn't full at the moment, it's far enough from empty that I'm getting picky about adding people to it. That means that I'll probably only reply to your message if we have mutual friends in real life, or if something about you really grabs me (and if we match at less than 80% as both partners and friends, I'm going to assume there's no point, because experience has shown me there really isn't.)

And finally, just in case you missed this earlier: I have several romantic partners at the moment, and that doesn't look like changing any time soon. Please don't message me in hopes of becoming romantically involved if you want that involvement to be monogamous.