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Last Updated: Thursday, May 13, 2004

General Info

• I live in Traverse City, Michigan. Click here for map.
• I'm a 26 year old female, born November 2nd, 1977. That makes me a Scorpio, if you're into that kinda stuff.
• I'm about 6'.
• I have hazel eyes and brownish-red hair with strawberry blonde highlights.
• I attended high school at Traverse City Senior High, before it became "Central," and graduated *near* the top of my class, with a 3.916 GPA (cumulative, out of 4.0) in June of 1996.
• Click here for my resume.

Jobs I've had

I used to work at a movie theatre in Traverse. I started there in late May 1998, and I really enjoyed it. It was fun to be able to see movies all the time for free, and the people there were pretty fun to work with. After being a regular employee for several months I was moved up into an Assistant Manager position, which I didn't like so much because it meant having to boss my friends around. I didn't really feel my training for that job was very adequate, on top of just not being mature enough at the time to handle all the responsibility of being a manager.

Then I worked at Traverse Bay Woolen Co, through Manpower, from September through the end of November 1999, in the warehouse tagging and distributing items to the various stores. I ended up going back to TBWC in March 2000 after being laid off at the end of November. After a couple months of doing the same things I did when I worked there the previous year, I got promoted to Warehouse Assistant. I did the receiving, made price tags for the merchandise, and ordered supplies. Unfortunately there were some problems with my boss and some of the other administration there, and after having my workload doubled, and my raise denied, I decided it was time to move on, and left in July of 2001.

From September of 2001 through the end of November, I worked for Qualex, a division of Kodak, at a photolab in the Traverse City Target store. After several faux-pas with the Target management (not training me on registers properly, no AP training until AFTER there was a problem), and not getting good feedback from the new Qualex manager, I decided to leave.

After the photolab, I worked at Tractor Supply Co for a month, setting up the store for its grand opening in May 2002. That job was rough. I was pretty much in charge of setting up the entire plumbing section, and I had to re-set it twice, which was annoying. I also had to re-set a bunch of other areas because the other people working there didn't bother to look at their plan-o-gram layout sheets. I quit before the store opened; they were only going to keep a handful of people, they were only going to give those people about 20 hours per week, at the same pay we got for setting up the store (6.50/hr).

Before I was done at Tractor Supply, I talked to my sister Mary about working in the uniform store she manages. She was in a bit of a spot when her only full-time employee decided to quit, so I went to work for her. I ended up working there from May 2002 until Jan 2004; I had started college in Sept of 2002, and by Jan 2004, my class load was too high to continue to work and go to school at the same time.

Things I enjoy

Some of my fave TV shows are: Due South, Forever Knight, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, ST: Voyager, Enterprise, Farscape, The Invisible Man, Stargate: SG1, Law & Order, Smallville, The Gilmore Girls . I also watch animated shows like ThunderCats, ReBoot, Transformers, Beast Wars, Gundam Wing, and South Park, and anime like Cowboy Bebop, Gundam, and Initial D.

I love to watch movies. Usually, the older, the better. One of my all-time favorites has to be "Johnny Got His Gun" (1971) written and directed by Dalton Trumbo. I was turned on to this film through Metallica and their song, "One," because they based the song on the film and book, and used clips from the film in their video.

Another favorite movie of mine is "Rose-Marie" the "original" 1936 version starring Jeannette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, and a very young and handsome Jimmy Stewart. I have seen the 1954 color version, but the plot is totally different, and not nearly as moving or well acted/sung as the "original." Also, whenever "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" comes on tv, I have to watch it! I don't know why I like it so much, but I do!

When I was working at the movie theatre, I watched A LOT of movies (just about every movie that was released from June '98 to June '99) and I picked up some posters and mylars (the plastic title things that go in the light boxes above the doorways to the theatres). Working at the movie theatre has also pretty much spoiled me for watching movies on video or TV. If I missed it at the movie theatre, chances of me seeing it are pretty slim.

Recently however, I've become addicted to collecting DVDs. I blame Columbia House. :p

Musical Interests

My music interests are pretty varied. I used to be a real metal-head, but in the last few years artists like Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, The Cranberries, Paula Cole, and many many others have caught my attention. I also like artists that have a good techno-ish beat to them, like Republica, Garbage, and Crystal Waters.

A listing of some of my favorite bands: Metallica, Bush, The Cranberries, Republica, Perfume Tree, SemiSonic, Savage Garden, Garbage, U2, Cake, Stabbing Westward, Fastball, Days of the New, Barenaked Ladies, Collective Soul, and TooL. I also like classic rock / metal bands like: The Eagles, Queen, Diamond Head, and many others.
I also have an affinity for female singers, particularly: Sarah McLachlan, Meredith Brooks, Paula Cole, Fiona Apple, Jann Arden, Sheryl Crow, Madonna, Sinead Lohan, and Tori Amos.

I listen to pretty much anything on the radio (especially on The Zone-Northern Michigan's Modern rock!) Sometimes I go out on a limb and buy a cd on recommendation alone, or I heard one song off it, so I buy it, but not usually. I'm a member of Columbia House, so I can usually get cds at pretty good prices when they have "buy one get 2 free" or other discount specials going on, but it sucks that they don't get new releases right away, so I usually end up downloading songs.

If I had to pick all-time faves
Metallica has been a favourite of mine since I was about 14 years old. I have all their albums: Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, a *copy* (read: NOT original) of Garage Days, And Justice for All, Metallica, Load, ReLoad, and Garage Inc. I also have the videos Cliff 'Em All, 2 of One, A Year and 1/2 in the Life Of, and "Live Sh*t, Binge & Purge." Basically, I've got it all!

All of my Metallica albums are on tape (except Garage Inc.), but I have a few imported CD singles, all from the UK: "Sad But True", and parts I and II of the "Hero of the Day" set. I enjoy all my Metallica stuff immensely!

Don't ask me to pick my favourite Metallica song, cause it changes daily! My fave album by them too. I used to like Jason more than the other guys, but now I like them all pretty equally.

Note - Since Metallica was one of the groups who started the whole "taking down Napster" bullshit.. I've decided to sort of boycott them. Plus I came to a realization that their music is not all that great, especially after hearing St. Anger. I guess I just kind of grew out of them, which is a good thing, because its allowed me to experience other genres and learn that there is much more to "music" than fast riffs, drums, and squealing guitar solos.

Sarah McLachlan - I love her music. I have Touch, Solace, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and Surfacing. I saw her on August 15th '97, at the Lilith Fair in Toronto, at the Molson Ampitheatre. She rocked! I was "introduced" to her music through the great TV show, Due South. Her song "Possession" is on the Due South soundtrack CD, which I have. I then "borrowed" (pretty much indefinately!) my nephew Dave's FTE CD.

Do I like Surfacing? Yes, I do! Though, I could do without the "enhanced" software on the CD, because it automatically runs the enhanced track when you put the cd in the comp, and then to play the cd you have to use Windows Media Player (which I hate). I really love the guitar in "Sweet Surrender" and of course, her piano parts are excellent as always.

Perfume Tree is a group Dave introduced me to. I kinda indefinately borrowed his feeler cd, and I bought a lifetime away. Their music is really hard to describe. Its kind of ambient techno-y stuff. Go get feeler, I'm pretty sure you'll like it :)

Lately I've been downloading anime music and Japanese pop music MP3s, and I bought a bunch of Gundam Wing soundtrack cds. So what if I can't understand what they're singing.. they're still good! Some of my fave songs include the themes from the Gundam soundtracks, and artists like Aikawa Nanase.

I recently put all the cds I own into a Microsoft Access database, so I can better keep track of what I have, and at some point I hope to make a listing of all the songs on each cd, so I can run queries to find certain songs. Sounds a little sill, but with a collection of almost 200 cds and growing, its getting a bit difficult to find things sometimes.

World Travels

When I was about 3 or 4 years old, my mom took me to Florida to visit her mom and my brother Scott. I don't really remember much about going except that we got to go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, and I was scared of sharks :-D

When I was 8 or 9, my parents took me and my nephew Dave (see, I told you we were joined at the hip! :-D) on a 1-2 week road trip. We visited my dad's family in Ohio, and stopped to see my sister Patty in Pennsylvania. Then we went to Buffalo, NY, and stayed at a kind of run-down hotel where I got locked in the bathroom on accident. The next day we went to Niagara Falls, and then drove through Canada (Southern Ontario) to get back to Michigan.

When I was 10 or 11, we did a similar road trip, except we took my nephew Jesse, and only went to Ohio.

I've been to several places in Michigan, including Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Fort Michilimackinac (um, sp - sounds: mish`il`i`mack`i`naw), and the Upper Peninsula.

When I was in 8th grade (about 14 years old), I went on a "class trip" to Washington, DC. It was only a 2½ day trip, and we saw nearly everything there is to see in DC. Since it was quite awhile ago, I don't remember much about it other than I took like 8 rolls of film, but my camera was so crappy that less than ½ of those turned out. :-( I'd like to go back someday, but really take time to see everything.

In '96, about a month and a half after I graduated, I went to Europe. It was a 2 week trip, and we (I went with a travel group of about 25 people) spent 5 days in London, 3 days in the French countryside (Loire Valley) and 3 days in Paris. (I know what you're thinking, that's only 11 days. We spent 2 days travelling to and from Europe, and 1 day from England to France) I got some pretty good video, and if I get a video capture device, I might put up a page with some screen captures from that trip.

Then there are the Canada trips with good ol' Dave. The first one was a mere 3 weeks after I got home from Europe, and we drove to Ottawa. We went the *LONG* way, TC to Port Huron, then Toronto, then Ottawa, about 17 hours :-P We came back the smart way though, Ottawa to the Soo (Sault Ste. Marie) and through the UP to Mackinaw City, then to TC, about 14 hours.

The second one was to Toronto, back in mid-August '97. I was there for the Due South convention "RCW 139: Due It Again" and Dave was there for...uhh...well, he was just there. ;-D

In August of '98, I went back to Toronto for yet another Due South convention. But this time I went by myself! And I didn't get into a car accident!

In July of 2000, I was going to be going back to Europe, specifically the British Isles, but due to financial circumstances I cancelled the trip and went to Botcon instead. I also went to Botcon in 2001, when it was in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina.

In October 2002, my mom moved to Florida, and I went to visit her over spring break 2003 and 2004.