Cello, piano, pen-and-ink, watercolor, rubiks, hiking, swimming, languages, writing, ballroom dance, books, books, books (both reading and writing)...

6 years old. Solid, confident, and comfortable, but not compulsive or stuffy about it.

The guilt is gone. That doesn't mean that I never do anything worth feeling guilty about; it does mean that I know that nothing I do can separate me from the love of God and that He willingly forgives when I ask for forgiveness.

Thanks to some miserable personal experience, I'm writing a book (in the research and organization phase) about verbal abuse from a Biblical perspective. The topic is sorely under-addressed even though Scripture is loaded with material. Also, I'm continuing my usual memorization--Revelation is a fun one to work on.

Jael and Ehud--they got the job done and refused to tolerate tyranny.

I'm content with almost anything.

Practicality. Excellent listening skills. Motivation. Intelligence. Potentially bad things (to be fair and thorough), in alphabetical order: acerbic, compulsive, intimidating, neurotic, peculiar, pedantic, prickly, prosaic, vitriolic. (I'm going to be pedantic and point out that some of these are needlessly redundant.)

Based on a preliminary analysis of what 'passionate' has come to mean, I've decided that it's essentially another part of speech for favorite, and that disappoints me. I'm passionate about semantic precision.

A warm house in the winter. Time for both work and fun. Being born in a first-world country.

Honesty. Kindness. Consistency/reliability. Intelligence. Sense of humor. Mine are listed under the section about what my friends think of me--they're probably right.

My younger brother thinks I'm fantastic, even when I think I'm failing. And Gordon Clark did wonders for my knowledge of theology and philosophy.

I have had two longish-term relationships. The first ended because of bad timing: he was thinking about marriage and family, and I was thinking about graduate school. The second I can well describe as an interpersonal disaster. For three years I dated (and I use that term very loosely) someone who thought fit to ignore me. I know I make that easy to do, being independent and busy myself, but my major fault here was in being stupid enough to let it drag on for three years.

I was married for 4.5 years (divorce in the works). My husband, and I use the term loosely, was unfaithful and verbally abusive. I've learned a lot about how people can use and manipulate one another, which was interesting to me as a linguist, but my radar is now permanently up. This cannot happen again, and if I saw it happening to someone else, I would likely intervene.

"But I am off to a lookout point to learn the truth." Nestor, from the _Iliad_, by Homer. This isn't really my favorite quote, but apparently, my favorite quote is offensive--from William Faulkner's "The Bear". Those who like to be offended should read it because it's EVIL and great literature. Those who don't like to be offended should read it anyway--it's great literature. For those who think censorship is a good thing, I recommend Milton's Areopagitica--it's short, and it's available online: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/areopagitica.html. My favorite hymn is "A Mighty Fortress is our God", and my favorite verse changes at least as often as my favorite color, but at the moment it's Prov. 18:15--it comes in handy when people try to tell me that acquiring knowledge is bad/evil/wrong.

I love my research. I love teaching. Life is good. I'm also a licensed massage therapist, editor, technical writer, logician, and lightning-quick typist (80 wpm at 94% accuracy, last time I was tested), each of which I use for fun and/or profit on occasion.

I want to develop the kind of calm quiddity that animals have.

See the hobbies list.

Born in Ithaca, NY, and have traveled to all continents except Australia and Antarctica.

Sandwiched between two brothers, divorced parents. I am not opposed to relocating, but I'm also not nomadic. I do, however, have a wide-ranging curiosity, which should work in favor of anyone who would like to talk me into relocating.

Note that no form of cooking was checked. I do cook occasionally, but for the most part dislike cooking and prefer to each from cans/bags/boxes. What might be shocking to those who think I'm hiding something by saying that my weight is relative to the gravitational field of whatever planet I happen to be on (which is a fact) is that I'm trim, fit, and athletic. There's no reason one can't eat healthily without doing much cooking, and I'd rather spend my time improving my mind and spirit than improving my body. The Sermon on the Mount says that we can't add an hour to our lives by trying harder physically. There are gazillions of commands to know, understand, discern, and acquire knowledge, however.

What irritates the snot out of me:

1. Anti-intellectualism: the idea that it's in any/some way spiritual to be/play stupid, ignorant, or uneducated (there are hundreds of commands in Scripture to know, understand, consider, reason, etc., and Word in John 1 can be well-translated as Logic).

2. The idea that domestic slavery is the highest/only calling for women (Christ himself praised Mary-the-thinker above Martha-the-hausfrau).

3. The bizarre emphasis on authoritarianism these days. The passage in Ephesians 5 starts with telling people, regardless of gender, to be submissive to one another, and it ends in Ephesians 6 by telling masters to do the same thing (obey) to their slaves. This would stop both slavery and sexism immediately if anyone actually read the passage, but unfortunately, I have yet to hear a pastor preach the equality that God teaches (no male/female, slave/free, Jew/Greek). The only distinction God recognizes is between elect/damned.

Now that I've had my tantrum, let's get on to some other information. I have a Ph.D. in linguistics, focused on spatial information and deixis in fiction (broadly, discourse analysis/pragmatics/semantics). I enjoy solo-backpacking: need time alone. I have a chronic illness that I'm always learning to work around--the illness is largely why I don't want children: having them might kill me, or permanently incapacitate me (or give the problem to the children, which, if any kind of maternal instinct kicked in, would kill me), but maybe taking in other people's children would be an option.

Yes, in case there were any doubt, I do realize that I violate a lot the expectations of a lot of people a lot of the time, and that some people would like to call that 'offensive'. That's a lousy definition of offensive and a lousy reason to be in any way upset, and I'll stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made me free.

Also, we should be forewarned that if we do a Google search for me, there is something out there by a person with my same first/last name on a porn site. That person is not me. She wrote a wonderful piece, though (yes, I visited a porn site--but only to check up on someone who shares 2/3 of my name), on how we can't derive morality from nature; I entirely agree with that (hmm: I'll be a praying mantis today: find myself a mate, rip off his head and eat it, mate, and then finish eating him). The other Marla's conclusion is that, because it's not derivable from nature, morality does not and cannot exist, and that's where she distinguishes herself from me. Just so we know. :)