Yarn Everywhere!

I am never satisfied with little write-ups I do about myself, but I hate it when I visit blogs and there’s no place to get basic “person behind the pixels” info. So here are (or, will be) 50 facts about me (I couldn’t think of 100).

1. I am a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
2. When not at school, I live in a suburb of Boston.
3. My town does not have any yarn stores.
4. I am majoring in biology (the ecological, evolutionary kind) with a minor in environmental studies.
5. Right now I don’t have a plan for after college. This is the first time in my life that that’s the case. I’m sort of thinking of becoming a midwife at some point, but I’m not sure how serious I am about that.
6. I have a mild but slowly escalating caffeine addiction. It’s gone from nothing to 1/3 a cup of coffee before class to a large cup of tea before class to a large cup of tea before class and a cup of coffee before my afternoon classes.
7. Every job I’ve had, save one, has been secreterial. I have an inborn love of organization, so the work appeals to me.
8. The other job was as a personal care attendant. This also suited me pretty well, as I am hard to gross out when it comes to bodily functions.
9. I very, very rarely drink soda.
10. I have a theoretical love of locally and sustainably grown organic health food but in reality often choose french fries.
11. I have trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. Three examples:
12. When I used to play The Sims, I couldn’t deal with families larger than one character.
13. At any given point I probably have one pair of jeans I wear about half the time and (depending on the time of year) a variety of skirts and other pairs of pants I wear the rest of the time.
14. Because I’m way into knitting right now, whenever I think about the future, I see it through knitting. Example: my friends and I took a trip to Austin recently, after which we were talking about how nice it would be to move there. My first thought was of all the mittens and hats and scarves and warm socks that I wouldn’t be able to knit.
15. I love skirts. I used to be into long flowy skirts, but lately I’ve been more about the knee-length floofy skirts.
16. I’ve been a vegetarian since freshman year of high school.
17. I don’t usually buy leather products or anything that an animal had to die to produce, but once I wasn’t thinking clearly and bought two skeins of TOFUtsies. It seems so counterintuitive that something called TOFUtsies wouldn’t be vegetarian (it contains an ingredient made from crab shells).
18. Being vegetarian makes shoe shopping very difficult for me, as nearly all the shoes I like are made of leather. It’s especially bad with sandals.
19. I don’t shave my legs. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a silly thing to do, so I just stopped.
20. I’m a sucker for packaging. One of the things I like about yarn is that the packaging is the product. So “It’s soft and pretty!” is a completely valid reason to buy something.
21. I like cats much more than dogs.
22. My hair is very large and often unwieldy.
23. In high school, web design was a hobby of mine. This is the first website I’ve had that I haven’t designed myself, and I feel a little bad about it. But I’m out of practice, and this template is probably more like what I’d like to have than anything I could actually do.
24. During the time I was into web design, I was obsessed with web standards and CSS-based design and all that. I found it difficult to respect people who used Internet Explorer.
25. The primary incarnation of Past Janet on the Internet is Lodenocity.com. It’s not updated anymore, but it still exists because it bothers me when things disappear from the internet.
26. I used to read a lot, but I don’t much anymore. I wish I did, but the internet stole a lot of my attention span and, more recently, knitting stole my actual attention (see #12).
27. My favorite colors are earth tones. I like greens and browns and golds and dark oranges and reds. I’m not so much a fan of pastels.
28. I had an okay time in high school, but not a great one. I didn’t think it was bad while I was there, but I would never want to go back.
29. Politically, I am what you would expect of a student at a New England liberal arts school. That is, I generally agree with Jon Stewart.
30. After college I’d like I live in a large urban center and not own a car for a while. I would love to live in Cambridge, but I think it wil be a little above my price range.
31. I enjoy driving.
32. I grew up using a PC, but I own a Mac now and will continue to do so in the future. In my experience, when PC users don’t like Macs, it’s often because they don’t know how to use them as they’re meant to be used. They want the Dock to be a task bar. It’s not. You have to be like me and get so excited about your Mac that you go online and read everything about how to use it.
33. I love carbs. Mmmm bread.
34. When left to my own devices, I generally live off fresh bread, hummus, and fruit.
35. I always procrastinate just the right amount. I have a lot of trouble getting things done if I don’t feel pressured to do them right away, but I’ve never failed to finish something by the deadline.
36. I like the idea of walking places, and like the reality of it most of the time.
37. I am relatively shy, though I think I sometimes come off as just uninterested. It’s hard for me to be on offense socially. This doesn’t go away on the internet.
38. In fact, it’s hard for me to be on offense in nearly every part of my life
39. The lowest grade I’ve ever gotten on a report card was for handwriting. Does it count if it was in first grade?
40. I love babies. How could you not?
41. I use too many parentheses.
42. I love getting places early. Early is on time and on time is late! Plus, if you show up early you get a good seat. This is very important. Few of my friends understand this basic idea.
43. I was raised Unitarian Universalist, which means that my religious education involved a) a sex ed class that was actually very informative and nonjudgmental, and b) praise for well-articulated atheism.
44. I was a very crafty child. The closet in my bedroom at home is filled with at least five unfinished cross-stitch projects, lots of elaborate friendship bracelets, felt and stuffing from making little dolls, and the very, very beginnings of two quilts. I’ve always been bad at finishing things.
45. I love skim milk. The taste of fat in milk is very noticable (and unpleasant) to me. This is not the case with other dairy products.
46. I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people (sorry, all of my high school friends).
47. Buddhist philosophy resonates strongly with me, but I don’t think I would ever practice the religion and identify as a Buddhist. I am however, all for meditation.
48. I am very often hungry.
49. I often enjoy tedious tasks (see winding yarn).
50. My “happy place” is a small, sunlit yellow kitchen in an apartment in a city. I am 25-30 years old and sitting at a table by the window, drinking tea and reading the newspaper.