CURRENT MISSION

Make the world a better place, and enjoy myself in the process!

ABOUT ME

I'm the luckiest girl alive, and profoundly thankful for it.

!!!

I LOVE LIFE, I love my life, and I love LIVING life as robustly and delightedly as I can, which means I've done a lot of really dumb things, but it also means I have very few regrets... seldom do I have to look back and regret not having done something

PHILOSOPHY

Try everything at least once, pretend life is fair (but don't get too upset when it's not), make it so you don't regret anything, and trust that things will work out, usually in ways that are better than you could possibly have planned.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I WILL NEVER AGAIN TRAVEL WITHOUT CS.

I am a CS missionary. No, seriously: I spread the word with such zeal that I feel like a religious nutbag. But come on, IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Interests

life (and the borders of it: birth and death), travelling, singing, ceramics, sailing, Ducatis, metalworking/jewelry-making, photography, physics, my fantabulous sister, stained glass, mangoes, reading, movie nonsense, Firefly, language, languages, Crazy, cephalopods, SCUBA, snorkelling, Ventana Canyon, surgery, ropa, fire, dance, girl crap, Battlestar Galactica, Waterhouse, swimming, color, yoga.... This list is endless.

Goals: figure out my research part of the Star Trek Medical Tricorder, start a healing center that will help obligated social classes and halt recidivism, sail between at least 2 different continents, live in the Inner Hebrides (Skye in particular), blow glass, kiss a dolphin underwater, become conversant in Arabic and Irish, save lives... being a Nobel laureate would be pretty demmed good, but we'll have to see about that one...

• arts
• books
• singing
• photography
• dancing
• cooking
• wine
• yoga
• working out
• reading
• traveling
• pottery
• painting
• woodworking
• metalworking
• magic
• survival
• scuba diving
• sailing
• rock climbing
• swimming
• languages
• physics

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
Dandelion Wine, Sapiens, Good Omens, Thinking Fast and Slow, World's End, The Alchemist, Snow Crash, Red Tent, Robert Jordan's caca (don't ask -- I'm just trying to be honest here), Gone with the Wind (really, give it a try -- even reading the Princess Bride didn't make me laugh this much)

Movies:
About Time, Terminator 2; 1, Fifth Element, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Goonies, Bladerunner, The Usual Suspects, Willow, the real Star Wars movies, Time Bandits, Everything is Illuminated, True Romance, Memento, Amelie, Princess Mononoke, Crash, November, Stardust, Mulholland Drive, Wristcutters, Inception... I'm putting Firefly in here, even though it's TV (there is a movie, but I reject parts of it).

Music:
Tori Amos, Niyaz, Sarah McLachlan, Beethoven, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Mozart, Beatles, Damien Rice, The Clash, Keane, old U2, old Counting Crows, Jan Arden, Puccini, Gogol Bordello, Aria, Habanot Nechana, Namoli Brennet... PERCUSSION! Really, anything that works out my vocal cords (hence the Puccini; the words may be stupid, but DAMN are his babes fun to sing with!) or makes me move... so I guess that even includes the tuba at the Mexican restaurant.

??? This list is endless, too.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Last week I had some guy's lung in my hand, and could feel it expanding and... not contracting, but un-expanding; that was pretty amazing. A few weeks before that I had photons that had shot past me from the sun and bounced off Uranus's rings HIT MY RETINA; that was pretty amazing. A week before that I was floating in the ocean chatting with a wise sea turtle... it made me cry, but I was underwater, so he couldn't see (he knew anyway).

Teach, Learn, Share

Electroconvulsive therapy is more effective than meds for depression for more people, driving shoeless is totally legal, NAFTA is an acronym and FBI is not, Cook's Illustrated is an AMAZING resource, and this site http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776825453418327083 (sadly disappeared; similar here: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-fold-a-t-shirt-in-2-seconds-explained ) actually has impacted my life at least on a weekly basis. Heh.

Learn:
*I* want to learn to freedive, to snow board, to pilot a private plane, and to hang glide. The teensy bit of capoiera I've tried seems like a BLAST, but parkour is really what I wish I had the cajones to try... multiple knee surgeries from being CRAZY have made me more cautious, but if you can teach someone with EDS safe parkour...!

Share:
I can teach throwing (clay on a potter's wheel), mealworking, welding, woodworking, painting, sewing, forging, casting, stained glass -- all sorts of art nonsense;

machete jungle survival;

classical dance;

SCUBA;

sailing;

What I Can Share with Hosts

Delight in every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every strand of hair, photon, page of a book, glance, step, piece of sky! I'm part time Hawaii and part time back near my hometown (close enough: it's all one big conurbation now), so I can share all the secret Dandelion Wine childhood joys (best spot to smash pennies on the railroad tracks, glorious climbing trees, secret fountains for dipping of the toes [or torso], magic courtyards in which to court stars and sleep... on and on and on!). Or let's cook Chinese foooooooooood! Italian? Moroccan? Thai? Indian? OMG, RIBS. Let's share dancing and singing and back yard fire! LIFE is what I can share!

Countries I’ve Visited

Belize, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Montenegro, Morocco, Nicaragua, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Mexico, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United States

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