Biographies

Debby, with all her great and magical powers, accidentally deleted my bio while replying, so here it is again... Maybe all the Finnish stuff will make more sense now. I was mentioning to Niina (in Finnish) that my mother is from Finland (translation: Minun aiti on Suomilainen), she was born and raised in Inkeroinen and Myllykoski.

I'm 30 and from Ottawa, the capital of Canada. I went to university to study chemistry and worked in labs for a while, but now I'm a personal chef - I go to people's homes and cook for them while they are at work, do their grocery shopping and leave them with one or two weeks' worth of meals.

I've been married for 6 years to my wonderful husband - we decided to get married on the same day as we met (we actually married a year later). I love to read, especially mystery and British Isles fiction. Maeve Binchy, Rosamunde Pilcher, Stephen King, Pat Conroy and Stuart Woods are some of my favourite authors. We are in the process of mostly renovating our house - taking out carpeting and laying laminate flooring throughout, removing one of the kitchen walls and installing all new cabinetry, finishing the basement into a rec room.

I have 4 cats (kiisa in Finnish) - Silly Goose (6), Clementine (5), Winnie (4) and Elsa (2 months). Elsa was taken from a feral colony at the age of 1 week when her mother was trapped as part of a catch and release spaying program for ferals. We've had her since she was 3 weeks old, weighed less than a pound and only ate formula through a syringe. Now she weighs a little over 3 pounds and eats kibble like all her sisters.

This thread is so much fun! And are you "boring" people all crazy? Maybe your lives aren't as hectic as some, but not having lots of stuff going on SURE does NOT mean boring!!!! My life is pretty "boring" these days, but I had to write such a long thread to explain why I live in a bus, and that I'm so lucky because I have such a great hubby!

BTW I LOVE to read, too. I've just done all the Legal-type thrillers - Robert Tannenbaum, Lisa Scottoline, Patricia Cromwell. I really enjoyed Tannenbaum. Nathalie - I'm a Harry Potter nut too. I've also read Tolkein millions of times (I'm almost 40 so I can say that). I'm going to have to look into some of JulieB's favorite authors - I enjoy most of Stephen King, too.

I'm glad everyone jumped in and introduced themselves! Its great getting to know a lot of you newer members!! And some fun facts about the older ones too! We all are so different, but have so many things to talk about! And of course, who could forget the furbabies???

The best part! Thanks for starting the thread Daniela!

You are welcome. Just one of those spur of the moment kind of things!! Glad everyone had a chance to get to know others! Keep on posting, there are more of you out there, I just know it!

Like everyone else, I am really enjoying reading this thread. It's amazing how much we all have in common besides our obvious love of cats.

Hey Vickie, I am a total true crime buff too! I love to learn about the psychology of those people, and how they solve the crimes. I especially love anything John Douglas has written - even his fiction novel Broken Wings. I would love to be a forensic psychologist, but there's too much schooling involved to do and make ends meet at the same time.

Hey Heidi - are you a fan of fiction crime, too? Although physical forensics and not psychology, Patricia Cromwell does a pretty good job....

I'm 42 and have been married 7 years. I dropped out of college after my sophomore year. I worked as a waitress and as an office clerk for about 5 years before returning to college. After earning my bachelors degree I went on to earn my Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I spent several years doing therapy and research at a medical university on the east coast and then moved to the university where I now work. Currently, I am the chairperson of the Department of Psychology. I teach undergraduate and graduate students. I absolutely love teaching and love my students. I don't much like the administrative part of the job, but being able to work with students more than makes up for it. I do research on the impact of violence (including school violence and child abuse) and also conduct workshops around the US on the link between animal maltreatment and family violence.

My husband and I have 6 indoor cats and care for a very small feral colony. My husband is an archaeologist who also teaches at the university and runs a small museum on a Mississipian Indian village site.

For those of you who like Harry Potter books... you'll like the Golden Compass series even better.

My name is Lizza (pronounced Lisa). I'm 26 years old. I live in Orange County, California. My fiancÃ[emoji]169[/emoji] Nick and I just bought our first home together in April.

We have one kitten Cooper she is 16 weeks old on Thursday.
We have one cockatiel name Skooter, he will be 6 years old.
No children (yet)

Nick and I plan on getting married sometime in 2003. Weddings in California are EXPENSIVE!

I work for a publisher in South County. I'm the production manager for our children's book division. (I get to read stories and color all day long!) I really love my job!

I graduated from CSULB in 2000 with a BA in Business Management.

I worked at Disneyland for 5 years then had to get a job that paid the bills! Nick and I still go to The Park at least twice a month - PEOPLE WATCHING!

We love going to the movies, EBAY shopping, eating out (sushi), making home improvements, like going to the beach, hate the sand (ha!) Love cheese pizza, hate ice tea and bell peppers. I LOVE SHOE SHOPPING!, drive a rusty blue Honda (263,000 miles!) We call my car Wobbles (she had a tire problem!). I'm waiting for Wobbles to completely die~

Nick and I met in a chat room on AOL. We "talked" on-line for over 2 years before I had the nerve to finally meet him in person. We met at the mall (VERY public!!). We've been "together" for 5 years. Nick proposed on October 2002 - Happy Halloween!

I'm am the oldest of 5 children - Lizza 26, Jeremiah 18, Sarah 17, Esther 16, Joseph 13 As you can see, all my siblings have Bible names.... (I'm the heathen child!)

My father is a Baptist pastor and my mother stays at home (full time job).

My brother Jeremiah is a computer hacker - he hacked into a MAJOR web site and found a HUGE glitch... all their customers credit card #'s were exposed. Jeremiah notified the website and low and behold.... THEY OFFERED HIM A JOB! My 18 yr old brother is chief of security for a MAJOR on-line company..... funny story had to share!

Enough about me......

I just wanted to add that this is a GREAT thread and I love hearing about everyone!

Well, my name is Sarah and I'm 19 yrs. old. I've been married for a little over a year. (July 27th was our anniversary) My husband's name is Mika (pronounced Meekah)-all of you Finnish people recognize that name. His mom grew up in Finland and moved to the states when she was 17.

I work as a receptionist and just like Rhea, Heidi, and Sabra it doesn't pay enough, but I hardly have to do anything, so I'm not complaining. :laughing: My husband works for IBM and we just bought a condo last December. We are very excited to own our own home! I am going to school to major in real estate, so hopefully after a few years, I'll be able to find us a really nice house so we can move into something bigger.

We don't have any kids, but we do plan on having 2 or 3 kids starting in about 5-10 years. We want to be financially stable first and we also have a TON of stuff that we want to do before kids come.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot about my kitties! We have 2 babies named Socks and Boo. They are brother and sister. We adopted them from the Humane Society last December right after we moved into our new house. We love them to death and spoil them rotten because they are our kids for now.

Sorry this is so long, but I just can't help myself.

Laurie - I haven't read too many crime novels. I've been too obsessive with the true crime books. I will have to check her out, though. I'm running out of serial killers to read about! I always have the problem with most fiction that it isn't "real" enough. That's why I can't watch CSI on TV. I watched the first episode and spent the entire time pointing out what was wrong. Hubby forbade me from watching it again.

LotsOcats - will have to try Golden Compass books, thanks!

Heidi - my hubby is just like that. Makes it difficult to watch a lot of stuff. You'll probably have a problem with fiction crime!

Lizza - we're close to topping 250,000 on our Saab. (Hubby earned a lot of money once). It's a 1988 and we just can't give her up. New models suck. I don't think Saabi will ever die - we keep managing to resurrect her.

Sarah - love your log on name! Have fun doing all your stuff before you have kids! Hubby and I did the same thing (although we got married at 30) - but then decided not to have kids, just to have cats.

valanhb I am also a huge fan of John Douglas! I also like Douglas Wynn and Paul B. Kidd. I'm not so much into crime fiction as I too really enjoy the psychology side of things and what makes people tick. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction! I would love to be a forensic psychologist but the sight of blood makes me faint so I realise that is probably not the career for me LOL.

Unfortunately due to us moving house I had to sell a lot of my true crime books on ebay. I couldn't believe how many people wanted to buy my old and well-read books! I was pretty sad to see them go

My hubby enjoys watching CSI so I sit through it with him, though quietly I am mumbling to myself how it isn't done that way, or this way etc. So I know what you are talking about!

It's great to read this thread and get to know everyone.
Vickie

Hello, I'm Paula and have just hit "mid to late thirties". I live in a small town at the foot of the Pennines in West Yorkshire - I moved here from London about 16 years ago, to attend university. I live with my partner of 13 years, who builds roads for a living (he is currently building a new motorway in Birmingham). We have no plans of marriage or children, but are always fighting the urge to add to the cat family.

We have two cats, Alf aged 6 tuxedo domestic short-hair, and Veronica (Ronnie) aged 2 domestic short-haired tabby.

I am currently "resting" between jobs. I took redundancy from my last job as a manager within a call-centre, a job which I loathed and detested, and am seeking employment within a non-profit making organisation (I don't want to be a corporate wh@re any more!). I do some voluntary work with a UK "befriending" charity, which does make me feel I'm giving a little back to the community.

I love reading, into crime fiction at the moment, cats, wine and foreign travel. In my younger more carefree days me and the chap spent a year travelling around India and Pakistan - where we challenged ourselves to find alcohol in the most unusual places. Drinking rough red wine with non-Islamic people in the Hindu Kush, Pakistan (with Afghanistan about 5 miles away) was probably the most bizarre......

So here goes:-

37 years old, married to Ken (50). 2nd marriage for both of us. Love him to bits. He has 2 kids from first marriage, Simon, 19 and Katy, 13. We don't have kids. Fibroids and an ectopic pregnancy put paid to that. Would love some, so we're looking at adoption from Poland (where both my parents come from). Ken's family is Irish - so with his Gallic temperament and my Slavic one, we have sone great rows. Good thing is they all blow over really quickly.

First husband was a nutter. Violent. That lasted just over 2 years. I trained as a Graphic Designer, and now work in Marketing. Marketing is fun, but I hate the Sales aspect of my current job - my employer moved the goalposts (well, they uprooted them and transported them to another country rather than simply moving them), so I'm madly looking for another job as I hate what I'm doing.

We live a a 200 year old Georgian town house which is our passion, and almost all our money goes into refurbishing the house (5.5 years so far and still not finished . . .) I was born in London (Wembley), and where we live now is about 30 miles west of central London.

Apart from my cats (2 persians: Fifi and Balie and Ferdy, my black shorthaired ex-stray), I love old films and photography. I like the idea of travel, but find when I go away I just pine to get home to the cats and the house. I also HATE flying. I've recently begun getting into gardening.

I'm allergic to dogs, so although I like them, there's no chance of having one (I mean BADLY allergic - serious breating difficulties etc).

Umm. Ken's passion is his Porsche. It's old and smelly, but BOY is it quick. I drive a Saab also - although it's quite new and soft top. I treated myself last year when I got a job with a car allowance - and promptly got made redundant.

I have to say - Laurie's change of lifestyle appeals. We've recently been looking at 'escaping' the rat race to either Yorkshire or to the Welsh/English border villages. Being in the heart of UK's silicon valley means you have to run to just keep up - and I reckon I'm getting a little to old for that.

I am busy doing voluntary marketing work for Reading Cats Protection - and on Saturday I will be doing a live local radio interview to promote our Open Day. Gulp.

I must say, it's great getting to know everyone and finding out a little about all the personalities behind the signatures.

Julie, 2 little corrections.... suomilainen is actually written suomalainen, and kiisa is not a cat in Finnish, but kissa is. You almost got it right! So great that you know a bit of Finnish! Way to go! It's one difficult language!

My name is Jen, and I'm 26 years old. I got married one year, four months ago on Maui, which was beyond awesome. My husband was raised with cats and rabbits; I was raised with dogs and birds. We were able to agree on birds and have two (a cinnamon whiteface cockatiel named Joey and a gorgeous Maximilian Pionus named Holly Moon).

I recently got it into my head that we need a furry animal to love. (My husband asked me, "Aren't I fuzzy enough? LOL!) We've concluded that a Ragdoll kitty is the best fit for us. We'll be getting our blue bicolor boy at the end of October. I can't wait to go shopping for his stash of goodies. I just know we'll spoil him (in a positive way) just as much as we do our birds. (We can spoil our fids-furred and feathered kids-because we don't have human kids and don't plan to.)

I work as an Adm. Assistant-just to pay the bills. I earned my degree in English Lit. and plan to work in publishing someday. (We live in West MI, which has no publishing field. We're trying to move to the Chicagoland area, where I'm originally from.

I'm a big-time reader; I especially adore the Harry Potter series. I work on various ideas for eventual publication (both magazine articles and children's literature). I'm also an artist and love to draw. And when I don't need to be cooped up inside, I love outdoor activities, especially horseback riding.

I am so psyched about our future kitty!

Jenk

Hi Jenk!

Ragdolls are absolutely gorgeous! Can't wait to hear all about your new kitty when he arrives!

Lisa

I'm Kristina, 25 years old, just moved to North Carolina to begin graduate work in English. I'll probably focus on some combination of American Studies, Southern Lit and African American Lit. Previously worked in environmental law at a big firm in DC, after graduating college. One belligerent kitty-brat (who is currently hindering my typing), Miss Arizona, who I got from one of the attorneys I worked for--they had her as a foster kitty. Would kind of like another, but I don't think she'd let me divide my attentions. Oh well.

Let's see--fun facts about me:
My favorite musical group is OutKast.
I've been reading since I was two years old.
I like the idea of onions more than I like actually eating them.
I like spinach, and mushrooms, too.
I cannot hold a pencil correctly.
I like to talk in general, but HATE making small talk.

Anything I forgot?

Krissie,

You and I have something in common: we both hold our pencil "incorrectly." I even snap my fingers incorrectly (I use my thumb and ring finger, rather than my middle finger). Oh, well. Life goes on. LOL!

Jen