We spent part of the time living in a big old farm house on Bridge Street with my mom's next youngest sister, Marie, who was and is totally awesome, and a million other random college folks. When I was two or so, I accidentally wandered into a downstairs neighbor's apartment. The occupant, Kathy Blum, and my mom (and I!) ended up becoming best buddies. (I started drawing cats on Kathy's organic chemistry notes - little did they know that I would turn out to major in chemistry!) They both majored in zoology, and went on to nursing school together.

When I was 4, I went to kindergarten at a place I forgot ("WildWood", I think). I had Ms. Currant for a teacher. Her name always made me think of raisins, for obvious reasons. My mother said that Bill Cosby's daughter also went there, but I don't remember very much from kindergarten, other than that we did a lot of cutting and pasting, and there were never enough lefty scissors for us all. I decided to learn to cut with my right hand (righty scissors are better anyway), and still do, although I'm left handed.

I went to first and second grade at Mark's Meadow Elementary, and had a really good time. My teacher, Mrs. Edwards, I loved dearly. Some of my favorite memories from that school were doing math in/on the jungle gym in the classroom, dancing, playing slow motion tag, making marble machines with blocks, and building things out of household junk (our way of recycling). I also remember liking math because we got to sit outside in the dark, cool hallway and play math games, sitting in a circle. I guess I have always associated math as a cultish ritual-rich activity. One of my less favorite memories is when the classroom next to ours tried to raise a baby bird, but it died. Also, I got a splinter in my bum from the wooden seats on the merry-go-round, and was very embarassed when I had to go to the doctor's to get it removed. Ow!

My favorite animal was the bison. I identified with repressed, abused things from a very young age, and almost always sided against the prevailing powers that were.. I remember being horrified at stories about native americans and early settlers.. about how bison used to be common, but we drove them away... I took the whole thing very seriously, and often wondered what this place was like, before "we" came. I felt a tremendous amount of guilt, sadness and remorse.. in fact, I still haven't shaken it. But back to the story..

We moved every semester or year, throughout these years, to several apartments in towns around UMass. I liked it there. After I finished the second grade, we moved to Maryland, with my mom's partner, Paul Guidera. He turned out to become my definition of evil.

I lived in Towson, Maryland for a year, and went to Lutherville Elementary School. I hated it. Everyone collected stickers and I didn't have any. All the girls were prissy and didn't like to get dirty. They were even afraid of daddy long legs! We had to ask to go to the "lavoratory", instead of just going to the bathroom. The first day I asked to go to the bathroom, and the teacher said "no". From then on, I was pretty much mad all the time, and got in trouble for dumb, innocent things like throwing spiders at girls, or taking my shirt of in gym class if it was really hot. Being a girl at this school was really tough and really boring.

I spent a lot of time walking along the brick exterior of the school during recess. I remember seeing lots of little red bugs all over the bricks, as well as daddy long legs. I remember our class having some sort of pet, gerbils or something. I never got to hold them. I always wanted to, but I just wasn't assertive. I stood in the back and was patient and good, but instead of getting my turn, I got forgotten. That trend set the stage for the rest of my life, which has been filled with similar experiences. Becoming assertive has been a lifelong battle for me.

There were a few good points about this awful school, though. I had a friend Emily, who sat to my left. She was taller than me, and thinner. I remember having fun with her.. We had a fight once where we tossed crumpled up papers into each others' desks and made each other mad. I liked her.

Once, I got a whole box of pencils with the name "Jessica" painted on them. I brought them to school and sharpened them so slowly (on purpose), that it took me an entire period to finish, and I didn't have to participate at all. I thought I was cool, at the time, but it seems pretty dumb in retrospect.

There was also a kid in the class, Matthew, who sat on the opposite corner of the classroom (maybe for good reason). I looked at him as the kind of troublemaker whom I always wanted to be.. but I could never quite shed my conscience as well as he could. There was also a girl in our class, with thick dark braids and almond shaped glasses. She was from New Zealand, which was an island I had never heard of. I tried to ask her questions to figure out where it was on a map, but neither of us really knew. She drew me a picture, but it just looked like an elongated blob. I thought maybe it was England based on her accent (the only other country that I knew of that was a blobby island). She was nice though, and had an interesting accent. She also had a cool ball point pen with a hundred colors (I had only seen one with four different ink cartridges before this), and I wanted that pen so badly.. I thought about it all the time. I don't even think she let me use it once, but I don't remember holding it against her, either. Anyway.

Three weeks before the end of third grade, we moved to Columbia, Maryland. It was very much a Plasticine Community, built 20 years earlier on top of a virgin forest. Everything was so well planned, in that town, it was creepy. The kids were all from the same socioeconomic class (smack in the middle), and a lot of them were very snotty and mean. It was as if, since they didn't have any innate hardship in their lives, they went and created some.. Ugh!! Some of them, though, were exceptionally cool (of course I would say that, since I was one of them). Middle school is almost impossible no matter who you are, so it's hard to say what's the result of what.

When we first moved there, my mom started working as a waitress, and then got a job working as a nurse's aid, or something like that, at the University of Maryland. After a year or so of doing that (she really liked it, but it didn't pay very well), she got a job working in the anatomy Department with Dr. Ito and Dr. Markelonis. They were fun. She liked the job. Dr. Markelonis let us babysit his cat, Mikey, for three weeks once. Mikey was a big black and white male cat. He also gave me a cactus plant, which I don't *quite* have the heart to kill, even though it has given me countless splinters over the years and is kind of ugly. My mom is currently taking care of it, which is fine with me. One time the cactus was out on our deck and a piece broke off. My mom noticed some time later that it had established a large colony under our deck! We were impressed.

I went to Steven's Forest elementary school through 5th grade. Then I went to Oakland Mills Middle School. They had machines there, one where you got 2 pencils for $0.25 and another where you got a pen for $0.25 - I still have one of the pens. They wrote horribly, but they said Oakland Mills Middle School on them, so I bought them anyway. Some wrote in blue ink, and some in black. The blue was an ugly greyish color most of the time. I used to trade the blue ones for black ones, becuse I always preferred black ink to blue. Now I like both colors, although I usually use felt-tip pens or the kind that roll wet ink smoothly. I have a rather large collection of pens, actually - maybe as a backlash from that New Zealand girl's pen that I always longed for (are you scared yet? :-).

When I was in 7th grade, Paul felt a mysterious need to make my life more miserable, and decided to send me to catholic school. I attended Our Lady [in need] of Perpetual Help for three months, during which time, I studied nothing, did about 30% of my homework, and became more rebellious than I ever knew I could be. My only "friend" there was a talkative, boisterous outgoing 1st grader who sat next to me on the bus and chattered non-stop. I wasn't very thankful at the time, but I actually thought she was pretty cool (for a 1st grader :-). Joyously, I was kicked out in early December, and went back to OMMS. Paul moved out that year, and it was the happiest time of our lives.

It was weird to come back to school, though. Many of the kids weren't happy to see me, which was a real crushing blow. Some of them were openly mean about it, and some acted as if I had disappeared for mysterious reasons (was I pregnant? was I abused? most kids who disappear do so because really serious things like that happen to them... so we thought). Some people were vaguely polite, but overall, it wasn't a very warm welcome. Even my teachers were kind of blase about it (so much for adults being wise and sensitive). It's hard to work hard for something and then achieve it, only to have it appear to be an undesirable outcome for everyone else. Nonetheless, I persevered, and it was quickly forgotten that I ever left, which was better than the negative attention I had at first.

During my years in Maryland, I did make a number of really good friends, including Cheri Ashbaugh, Heather Sivert and Natalie Semego (in order of appearance). They all went to college in MD, and I'm barely in touch with them now (if one of you are reading this, write to me!). I also made friends with Lori Fenton, barely, when I was in middle school, and just found her web page out of the blue a while ago, while doing a web search for "flight schedule". Go figure.

I've always been a curious person, happiest when exploring the natural world, but middle school was when I first realized what science was, and that I was interested in it (also, I finally figured out how to spell it). Starting with Mr. Clifford in the 6th grade, I had nothing but excellent science teachers for the rest of my public school life. Mrs. Hix got me balancing chemical equations, and hooked me on chemistry forever. My mom and I got a roommate, Carol Walmesly (I know I spelled that wrong), who never ate anything and was studying to be some kind of lawyer or paralegal or something. We also got a REALLY COOL blue soft topped two seater Jeep. We were cool, my mom and I.

When I was in 8th grade, we sort of decided to move back to Massachusetts to be closer to family. I unconsciously wanted to move back to 2nd grade, to my early childhood, to Amherst... but instead, we landed in Foxboro, a conservative horrible boring town roughly half way between Providence, RI and Boston. Home of the Patriots, a football team. I hated life and tried to make no friends and was an intellectual hard to reach nerdy kid for a while, but then accidentally ended up making lots of friends and being kind of normal and loving life. This was largely due to my best-ever guidance counselor, and (dare I say) good friend Mr. Roy Immonen, known by us as Dr. I - he convinced me to join the Outdoor Club in our high school, which seemed to be where a few of the remaining sincere students from FHS chose to hang out.

While living in Foxboro, I also met my father for the first (sentient) time. One afternoon when I was riding on the highway with him to a picnic, we picked up two flea ridden kittens from a box on the side of the highway, and I talked my mom into letting me keep them. They became MooseMoose and Hilary.

Later, my mom dated a cool guy named Bob, but he didn't want any more kids and she did. He was the first adult who was able to actually help my with my chemistry and physics homework. I liked him. Then she met a guy, Jay Monahan, who we both knew from UMass. They fell in love for some reason, got married, and we ended up moving to Vermont, at the end of my sophmore year in high school.

I decided on the ride up that I was sick of acting like a recluse, and that I could probably count on not moving again before the end of high school.. So, I joined the computer club at Champlain Valley Union High School, and tried to hang out with the theatre/band clan. I've always been drawn to the overachieving band-types and the dark, mystical drama types, but I never broke through their shell.. I used to hang out after school at FHS waiting for the late bus, and peering into the band area.. wondering what was beyond the soda machine... kids came out with instruments, called their parents... but I never dared to walk through those doors. I guess I just wasn't intense enough for the band/theatre group at CVU either, because I once again never really got through the front door...

Fortunately, I had taken a telecommunications class my sophmore year at FHS, and knew what a BBS (bulletin board system) was. Because of a random tip given by a friend, I knew CVU had a BBS, and I walked into the computer lab before school one day to ask about it. I asked the "computer guy", Craig Lyndes, and he escorted me over to a BIG computer (A 386? :-). A goofy looking kid named Jim then came over, talked to me about computers, and helped me make an account. I liked him. In fact, we ended up falling in love and dated for 2 years or so. Life was good. Anyway, I also accidentally befriended a bunch of people in the computer club, and ended up being voted in as a SysOp (one of six) of the school BBS, which was really cool at the time. I started wearing a lot of black, hating my mom like every good 16 year old (this sentiment wore off when I graduated, luckily), and hanging out with people who stayed up all night... but they were mostly harmless. *grin* I also fell in love with Biology. And my mother fell out of love with Jay.. we moved in with this other guy, George Wellman, who I hated completely at the time, but have since grown to respect.

I took an art class in Pottery with Ruth Furman, and loved it. This paved the way to my involvement with the Pottery Studio at UVM. I also took AP Bio with David Ely, which was totally awesome. It rekindled my love for science. Every day, I'd walk out of there with my mind whirring, dizzy with questions, answers, thoughts, maps, puzzles, new words, new ideas... it was amazing. I've never learned at that pace before or since. I also had a fun Economics class with Mr. Lord, and I really liked the ropes course I took (outdoor ed). I love ropes courses and "new games". I'm actually a sucker for interactive team building "cheese" games. :-) Anyway.. I also took creative writing with Mrs. London, who is a completely amazing woman. One of my final projects was a children's story, called The Electric Train Surprise.

I just barely graduated, thanks to Mr. Greenwald, a great but scary english teacher I had (I'm sure he'd say it was my fault). He has a daughter named Jessica, but he never talked about her. I think she had some serious disabilities, but I still didn't understand why he never talked about her. No pictures or anything. I got accepted to UVM, and came in majoring in biochemistry. I almost majored in Computer Science, Genetics, Biology or Philosophy, but I thought biochemistry was a good compromise.. Lots of things happened, much too recently to sum up intelligently. My mom got married to George, and had a baby, Rachel (my best, favorite sister! I have an some pictures if you're curious). I lived in L/L for 2 years and was part of the Pottery and Clay Sculpture program. I decided the biochemistry program was outdated and unchallenging, changed my major to chemistry in my sophmore year, and never regretted it (although I often wonder if I should have majored in Molecular Biology/Genetics/Computer Science/Education). I got an REU fellowship, and the summer after my junior year, I went to Fayetteville, Arkansas for 10 weeks to perform 2-D NMR experiments on Gramacidin A, a small membrane channel, with Dr. Hinton. I had a fantastic time, grew a lot as a person, went into great caves, and met an awesome friend, Ed Allgair. Then I moved back home. Argh.

I quit my job as a dishwasher/Igor/Slave in the Pharmacology Dept. at UVM, and got a job at CIT, working as a consultant in the computer labs on campus. I finished my senior year, started working on the helpline too, and so on. At some point in the of summer 1995, I looked somewhat like this (this was taken with an old mac camera, which is why it's so poor in quality):

While working for CIT, I met Mike Austin, another helpline/computer lab consultant. We just hit it off perfectly and fell madly in love. In summer of 1996, we moved in together (with some other friends), and are still happily together now. In fact, we got married in October, 1998! Yipee!!

In the fall of 1995, my mom, George and Rachel went to England, because George got a post-doc position over there. They were in Leicester for 2 years. Those were two long and difficult years.

I stopped working at CIT in the fall of 1995, and started a full-time job as a Tech II in the Biochemistry Department at UVM, in the NMR facility. I love my job ferociously, some of the time, think it's pretty good most of the time, and really can't stand it every once in a while. I went to the ENC in March of '96 (a conference) in/near Monterey, California. This is my favorite photo from that trip (I was THERE! Can you believe it?).

Mike got a job in spring of 1996 working for CIT as a systems programmer, and finished his Computer Science degree part time. He's still there, and enjoying it immensely, except when he doesn't. :-)

I lived in Burlington for several years (well, from 1991 to 1996 or so). The last apartment in Burlington that I lived in was on a busy street corner. After a particularly soggy, wet spring snow storm, I felt inspired, and went outside and made some snow fish in the dark. They only lasted a day or two, but it was loads of fun.

In spring of 1998, we decided to buy a house. After extensive searching and searching, infinite drive-bys, lots of unsuccessful walk-throughs, and countless meetings with real-estate agents, lawyers, mortgage people, and other strange souls, we bought a house in Jericho that we really like.

Now the I sort of transitions into the "we". Since we bought the house, the latent gardener in me has been unleashed, and both of us have started reading ravenously about perennials and gardening and things.. we managed to make 8 cubic yards of compost disappear this year, between our vegetable garden and several other flower gardens that we've re-vamped or created. Our moms have been very generous in donating advice and extra perennials and bulbs. I wandered around in the summer of 1998 snapping digital pictures of some of the plants that we inherited with the house, and since then, we've added tons more. It seems like every spare moment we have is spent out mucking around. I'm not sure what's posessing us to do this.. we hardly seem to have any free time.. there's something magical and appealing about perennials and bulbs.. you have to invest time in planting them, and then just when you really need a boost, they grow up and flower for you, and look stunning... it's a wonderful gift. I guess it's sort of like sending yourself flowers all year. Or maybe we're just nuts. :-)

I can't bear to quite finish this. A lot of my recent autobiographical information can be found on my personal page, or other pages off of my home page. Try looking at my bookmarks file, which I update and keep pretty well organized, to get a random glimpse of.. what I find worth bookmarking. :-) I am still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Given that I am grown up, this a somewhat pressing issue.. Currently, the finalists are... going to going to graduate school in something life sciences-related (genetics! Microbiology! Wildlife Biology! Zoology!), becoming a high schoool science teacher, doing something computer related (I like UNIX, databases, image manipulation, being perfectionistic, etc), continuing to do what I do in the NMR facility, or doing something drastic, like becoming a potter or a glass blower. I became a vegetarian in my freshman year for reasons that I won't mention unless provoked... I got rid of my computer, and I hate finishing things.