A note on formatting: the pipe, '|', is used to denote multiple instances of the same person. The slash, '/', is used to denote pairings.


Family:

Immediate: I have mother/father, and sister. Mama and Dad live in Alaska (where I grew up); Tay-Tay has moved to Seattle, where she lives with her consort. She is younger. She plays violin in several bands. (She plays other instruments too.)

Guide Dog Aunt is local to me, a few minutes away by car, and is my aunt by way of being the youngest sister of Dad. She is a bit of a mother hen, tiny, hilarious, loves (and trains) dogs (her current dogs are the four-year-old "blue" (smoke-grey) Standard Poodle, Dazzle ("the poodle", or "Poodle! stop humping!"), and the 11-going-on-12-year-old Black (turning white around the edges) Lab, Deacon, who is not allowed to hump/be humped anymore because his joints are starting to go), tangoes, gardens, and is generally excellent. She is married with two boys, both now with their bachelor's degrees. The older one (and the 5th-youngest of all my cousins, also the family member closest to me in age aside from my sister) is my Infamous Cousin raranax, who is best known for The Chocolate Penis Saga, but also makes a habit of supplying me with every hilarious and needs-titanium-eyespork thing he can find on the internet.

I also have a small passel more aunts and uncles, and a couple more cousins via my late Aunt Joan and also a couple from Uncle Davy (SoCal); Uncle Davy's oldest has kids. Grandma, my last grandparent, Dad's mother, died in 2009. Aunt-Fayoumis (San Diego) comes up from time to time.

Virtual Family:

I claim that I ordered a little brother off the internet, although actually I met jd|gameboyguy13|JDC through LJ volunteering: we met up for Thanksgiving '06, he stayed with my then-roommate and me for Spring Break '07, and by the end of a week (including the weekend at both ends) spent with 3 people who didn't share sleeping arrangements sharing a studio apartment, we were all sisters. Brothers. Whichever. He proceeded to spend Summer '07 in Phoenix, and will actively avoid call centers in the future. He and his partner ryan|teshiron|^Darkwind^|Teshipants|Pantsface (to go with Drewface, Katface, and Azzface, you see) live right over thattaway, so I'm over to their place all the time.

I have a couple other non-local virtual siblings: Dawn and ralmathon and "Sis"; Sis is the mother of The Little Fayoumis, my virtual nephew, who's almost 14 now. o_O The LF loves the MythBusters about as much as I do.


A Class of His Own:

My dear Best Friend in all applicable universes, occasionally dubbed Darkside, or Shuttleslayer, a college buddy since winter '00. My head-over-heels fall for him in early spring '01 was both inevitable and surrounded with hilarious circumstance (my failing engagement, my soon-to-be-roommate Sis falling for him at the same time, the meddling interference of amazingly obnoxious classmate Shrimpy); our continued steadfast friendship coming up on 10 years later is an occasional surprise to us both, although in retrospect when I pledged to be the friend who never disappeared on him, we should have both taken this seriously. He's broken me more than once, and then he puts me back together. I know how to make him talk about his feelings.

I adore him; over the years we've had a number of talks about this; he doesn't reciprocate, although we are still very close. My other unrequited crushes over the years have all dissipated safely after a while; this has not. If I try to dismantle it manually (and I've tried more than once), Bad Things Happen. Since we're both aware of it, have painstakingly negotiated boundaries, and it no longer causes me angst, it's safe to leave it in place. I'm poly in any case, so this does not interfere with my scoping out other, actually possibly mutually interested parties.

We're no longer in the same state, so we can't meet up weekly for Mythbusters, anime, and pizza anymore, but we talk regularly by phone, send bizarre silly e-mails back and forth, and giggle a lot. I have other close friends, and he has other local friends too, but he holds the official Best Friend title.


Braintwin:

zarhooie|zarhooie|MissKat|Katface and I started babbling to each other just about a year ago. We quickly discovered that we were in fact braintwins. There are some things that one of us knows that the other does not, but those are mostly either things we have not talked about yet, or secrets belonging to other people.

We do disagree on some things, but then we don't agree with our own selves on some points, so that's all fair. We tend to speak in capslock, generate jargon, and wind up on the phone more than our fair share of the time.

As of this point, she is seeing stonebridge, which is a relatively new development but one that makes us both cheerful for her sake, though sad that this cuts into our phone time.


People and Social Groups!

sithjawa|sithjawa and I will say weird things back and forth to each other, and at least we understand each other, most of the time.

dreamatdrew and I chatter at each other a reasonable lot. I <3 my Drewface.

cleverthylacine and I are very happy to finally be local, and have a lot of shared social/errands. This often enough also includes fairlight|@fairlight777 via phone, txt, DM, and Twitter.

amberfox|@amberfoxfire and I chatter on the phone a lot. So do norabombay|norabombay and I. iroshi is my Priestess-Confessor.

There is a cluster of local people who meet up at jd/ryan's for (sometimes dinner and) Glee on Tuesday nights, which has included jld|xlerb, ase|ase, cleverthylacine, and ... is that everyone?

There is a cluster of local people who meet up at cleverthylacine's on Thursday night for TV, including jamoche|jamoche, jd/ryan, ase, and occasionally assorted others including any passing temporarily-in-town non-locals like ladyofthelog and fairlight. seanan_mcguire is part of Tif's crowd too, though is slightly less-local and therefore not present Thursdays, and has local events from time to time. Hilarity generally abounds.

Many of the above are also #dreamwidth types, and will wind up at zorkian/janinedog's Dreamwidth-related meetups. Local Dreamwidth people yay!

There are a lot of non-local people in irc.freenode.net #dreamwidth (sometimes called #dw for short, as it was called on the old server), and it is yay. There are too many to list, really, but if I mention a person in conjunction with there, it's probably safe to assume that they were, at least at one point, in there, which explains a lot. (Do you like Free/Libre Open Source Software, and blogging? Does the thought of social media designed accessibility-first make you happy in the happy places? Does the idea of a strongly collaborative development environment where volunteer developers help each other level up, with staff and senior developer oversight, code reviews, and coaching, fill you with glee? Do you only have the barest idea what all that means, but like to watch technical and creative people at work and cheer them on? Are you a writer, visual artist, digital artist, Sims player, comics fan, fiber arts person, cook, or aspiring to be any of the above? Take a gander at http://www.dreamwidth.org/ and hit up dw_codesharing or a friend if you need a code; I generally have a few to spare.) Mentions of D are of course Denise; Mark without qualification is mark. There's random slang from there that pops into my vocabulary; there's a wiki page for that. I work on the anti-spam team and have an esteemed co-lead.

I have been a long-term volunteer for LiveJournal, starting since one of the big data center power events when I popped into IRC wanting to know WTF was going on, and thus a number of my online colleagues-and-social-crowd can be found in #lj_support and associated channels on LJ's private staff-and-volunteer IRC server. Again, too many to list, but they tend to show up in company with notes involving #lj_support (or #lj_s for short). (Are you the go-to person in your social crowd about LJ stuff, because you watch status and lj_maintenance? Would you like to start hearing about things a little earlier, sometimes slightly before they go in the Big Blue Box? Do you have a bit of unclaimed spare time? Do you feel like sharpening your tech support skills? Do you like hanging out with a close-knit crowd of generally geeky types who also know how to party? You too can become a volunteer! Head over to http://www.livejournal.com/support/help.bml and start poking around to help other users and level up your own skills.) When I mention Carrie, it's generally coffeechica; the Support (and suggestions) volunteers report to her. I am with suggestions; boredinsomniac is as well, and triadruid is our new minion. MissKat and trixieleitz hang out with the Docs crowd too.

In June of 2009, sarahtales's first book, The Demon's Lexicon came out, and to celebrate, she kindly hosted a chat involving a live group readthrough of the book. Some of us didn't leave the chat when the group readthrough was over. It came to be known as "The Endless Chat" by some of the denizens of marmalade_fish (SRB's fanclub), and the chatfish bonded over shared experiences, omnishipping, chocolate, coffee, tea, and screaming each other's names when entering chat. The Endless Chat will be one year old on June 06, 2010. One of the chatfish is eternal_vows, a.k.a. EV, a.k.a. Eveandriss. She is the baby chatfish! She is being RAISED BY THE INTERNET. Sometimes the internet tries to shelter her, to hilarious effect. mathsnerd|mathnerd|@Mathsie is a marmfish too, as well as a #dreamwidth denizen.

I live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Other people that are also in the Bay Area: the MythBusters. *manic fangirling* Occasionally, the MythBusters put out a call for local volunteers for various myths that need more help than just regular cast and crew can provide. Sometimes I fit that description.
On May 06, 2010, the MythBusters (build team) called a bunch of volunteers to stand around all day at an offsite location, testing a myth that called for a large crowd. During the many hours of standing, filming, cheering, gossiping on Twitter, and having tacos, friendships were formed, along with a pact to start creating plausible-sounding new urban legends that might someday make it into bustable/confirmable myth status. With well over 30 years of combined internet experience, @JulianaMarie, @Back2Bethel, @MrsGneissGirl, and @azurelunatic are the #MythBuilders.

I attended some sessions of the Center for Talented Youth summer academic camps, and came back knowing pyrogenic, brooklynmili, and by extension boojum -- among others, but more of them are Facebook than real journaling sites.

Fictional and Otherwise Unconventional-Reality People:

Mike is the male romantic lead of the main het ship of my first-draft-is-finished-now-yay unpublished novel Circle of Fire. Sometimes he gets chatty. His girlfriend is Connie. I have a lot of projects in progress, but they're the main two who actually talk to me.

Because Twilight is popular, I will, from time to time, address Bella, because she reminds me a lot of myself at age 14. I do not entirely blame Stephenie Meyer for the trainwreck aspects of her series: I feel that she was issued characters far too strong for her writing skill at the time, and it's not entirely 100% her fault that the characters then trompled all over the plot structure and didn't let her go "Wait, it'll be MORE AWESOME if you just SIT DOWN SHUT UP AND LET ME WRITE THIS." I am one of those writers whose characters will sometimes talk to her. OTHER PEOPLE'S CHARACTERS ALSO, SOMETIMES.

See cleverthylacine's profile for a couple notes on some people in our mutual acquaintance.

I talk to my electronics. My new smartphone is Manic Pixi Dream Girl officially, but when the satnav does something stupid, it's Bitch, like "Bitch doesn't know about parking lots." Which is sort of appallingly antifeminist, but I do it anyway. :-\

The laptop from 2004 is Thalia, the broken-ass desktop is Madman, and the broken-ass netbook is Disaster Area. The old-ass netbook running Windows '98, which may even be from '98, is Allegra.


High School, oi, and before.

Back in high school, there was this guy named Shawn, also dubbed That Idiot Shawn (after exposure to the Bujoldians). Like That Idiot Ivan, Shawn would have tested reasonably high on an intelligence test he was actually motivated to pass. Like That Idiot Ivan, Shawn often thought with his pants before thinking with his brain. Like some of the more cracked-out schemes of Miles, Shawn thought ahead to the result he wanted and how to get there, but didn't bother to think about the other possible results of the actions he was going to take. Like knocking over the barn with the hovertank. Like blowing up the can of beans, setting the eternal flame sculpture on more fire than it was meant to be, the phone in the microwave, and the entire air taser incident.

I didn't "lose" my virginity to him. I gave it to him. It's not my fault that he lost it. He was always losing things I gave him.

That Idiot Shawn was my best friend in high school, but he's not the same guy as my Best Friend in the Universe. My dear best friend is smarter, saner, doesn't stick his dick in crazy even a twentieth as much, and much much better for the general health and well-being of everyone around him.


I had a little clique in elementary school: Ginger, Gaia, Galadriel, and me.

I have a birthday-twin from elementary school, and we may have even been born in the same room at the hospital. Small town. She's older by a couple hours, and has never let me forget it.


Exes

I have a number of these. These are the most-mentioned ones.

E, my well-respected ex-fiancée. Long-distance relationships are hell, being fifteen and sixteen is hell, being in the closet as far as parents and such are concerned is hell, and That Idiot Shawn is a whole lot of hell. Especially in 1995-1996.

That Idiot Shawn and I were never technically dating, but, well, we were sort of together, and we're not now.

The Evil-Ex, BJ was my fiancé in my ill-fated second engagement. He had a crush on me starting our sophomore year of high school. He was that guy I couldn't stand but talked to anyway in the social crowd. We thought of ourselves as married for most of the duration of our engagement. The engagement started maybe an hour or so after the relationship: about thirty seconds after we came up for air from the first epic makeout session. The relationship lasted from March 15, 2000 until its messy breakdown starting in November 2000 and entirely dissolving before the first year of the engagement was up. Sis and my best friend played starring roles in making me realize that I didn't trust this guy, and perhaps there was something wrong with this picture.

sithjawa and I were seeing each other, mostly via the internet, for a while, and we've never stopped being friends.

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I know many more people than that, but those are the top-of-my-head ones who may cause amazing amounts of confusion because I assume you know them too.