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I actually meant to do this meme the first time I saw it on Julie's LJ a few months back, but oh well, round two works too!
first name—
Ruth - I'm actually pretty happy with it, because it is uncommon without being totally weird. Online I usually go by Cocoa - the very long story is that this is actually a nickname my parents gave me when I was little and could really be Coco, because apparently I would always headbutt stuff like I was trying to split a coconut or something? Anyway, when I was a kid I didn't realize how it was supposed to be spelled and just went with the cooking ingredient, and used it a long, long time ago as part of my first AOL screenname, and it's kind of stuck around.
age—
Twenty-one, with a birthday of March 12th. Yeah, crazy Pisces here. Interestingly, my mom was born a day before me, on the 11th, and my little brother, a week after me, on the 19th. Dad throws it all off by being a September kid, though.
location—
I was born in Cambridge, MA, and until I graduated high school, I pretty much lived in central Massachusetts for all of my life. My hometown is shitty, but I love Boston even though I hate the weather, and I really miss it sometimes. After graduation, I moved across the continent to another country, and now live in Vancouver, BC. Even though the cost of living is absurdly high and the city government does stupid things sometimes, I really love this city, and am aiming to hopefully live here permanently after I graduate from university. Which means applying for residency and eventually citizenship which will be kind of stressful, but I love Canada :<
occupation—
Full-time student, mostly. During the summers I work as a produce clerk in a local independent natural/organic grocery store, which is about as miserable as it sounds. My co-workers are cool people but our new managers are neurotic hardasses, and we get the super-high maintence customers at our location because we're in the middle of Kitsilano, so it's really stressful. Buuuuut it pays $12/hr and my department manager likes me because I am not flakey, so until I have a degree I'm sticking it out.
Speaking of degree! I'm in my fourth (and hopefully last) year at UBC - I'm a Biology major, English Lit minor, and my area of interest is genetics/bioinformatics/disease pathology. I've realized in the last year and a half that I really totally cannot handle grad school, so I am aiming to work as a lab tech somewhere cool after I graduate.
partner—
Jon and I have been dating for about two and a half years now. And by 'dating' I mean we exist in a weird gray area of BFFs with some romantic feelings attached. It's kind of complicated because I'm asexual (yeah guys, no drive to have sex, really, although when I do I enjoy it), and have hang-ups about being in het relationships (thanks, western society). But he's one of the few people I'd trust with anything, and we can sit around and play video games or debate RPG shit or watch tv or talk about how we love Alton Brown, so it works out for us. It's not really a traditional sort of relationship, which I think weird some of his friends out, but we've talked it over and we're comfortable with things are, and don't want to force the relationship to be something where one of us isn't happy any more. And yeah, I do love my boyfriend ♥ (even I think his taste in music sucks - yeah I went there, I know you're reading this :P)
kids—
Aaaaaaaah no. I am a horribly impatient person, which means I get really frustrated with trying to deal with people who's outlook on life and learning is significantly more immature than mine, so I really cannot handle anyone below high school, and even then it depends on the high schooler. Also I think babies are really ugly :<
siblings—
Haha, the only one I've seen answer this who has no elements of only-child upbringing. I have one brother, two years younger than me, named Ben. When we were younger, we'd fight a lot. And I mean like...physically fight ontop shouting and everything. Groceries stores, car rides, church - we were the stereotypical siblings who keep poking each other to get a rise and then whining 'mooooom, make him stop touching me!'. Once we both got into high school, we mellowed out a lot, and started to hang out and watch tv and play video games together a lot. We sort of lost touch after I moved out, and haven't really gotten back into touch, but we're both okay with that. He's a second year at McGill, in Montreal because he too loves Canada and can actually stand the freakishly cold winters there. Looking into going in Psych, but I'm not sure how that's working out for him. He is really into music (of all varies, but mostly indie everything), and smokes a lot of weed.
pets—
I don't actually really have any pets right now - I'd really like a cat, but as my future living space for the next few years is indeterminite, I can't justify one when I'm not sure if I'm going to have to move back to the States. I had a cat growing up, Mimi, who died when I was in middle school - got hit by a car. She was mottled black and white, kind of bitchy, but totally loveable. My aunt found her in a box in the parking lot where which worked, so the cat is named after the aunt. In high we had two cats - a totally neurotic spazzy grey tabby, Scratchy, and a very shy all-grey cat named Smokey. I heard from my Dad that Scratchy is unfortunately deceased - the found him curled up in the yard, no sign of a fight or anything. Smokey is still doing okay, though.
3-5 biggest things going on in your life—
1) School and my attempts to survive it. Tangent to that, chilling withe the UBC Wargamers Club, which I don't have as much mental energy for lately. Magic players are loud :<
2) Roleplay! As a bunch of you already know, I play Tseng/Cid/Braska/Yelena/Clow/Delirum at City of Desai, and I've just picked up Rufus at The Sky Tides. I also do tabletop gaming one night a week, currently. On one week, it's our epically long-running Earthdawn (best epic fantasy setting ever omg I will send you pdfs of the books it is amazing) campaign, which Evil GM runs and will be hitting three years come January. On the next week, It's my constant misadventures in campaign-running - we've tried Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and now we're trying Geist: The Sin-Eaters, and hoping my social anxiety doesn't make my brain explode.
3) Cosplay! Most notably, attempts to make the Most Epic Shinra Cosplay Group Ever. Seriously oh my god I am so excited about this I love my group.
4) Continued attempts to deal with my psychological problems - I have mild depression, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. The first and the last are kind of under control with a few minor problems; the social anxiety not, quite so much - as evidenced by my flipping out over aaaaaah new games and generally not talking to people a whole lot. I am also exhausted all the time for pretty much no known reason thus far - the anxiety or a sleep disorder are pretty much what /hasn't/ been ruled out so far. I don't actually talk about this much because whining helps no one, but it's sort of there in the background of things.
parents—
My parents are like seriously the most amazing people ever. And I know a lot of kids say they have the greatest parents ever, but I really mean it. I have friends who will back me on this (hey Skuld!).
So, first off, my dad. He's an Anglican priest, used to work at investment company, currently drives a farm truck for an independent organic farm in Western MA and substitute teaches middle school classes. He grew up in a very traditional upper-middle class New Englander family, and was expected to go into law or be a doctor or something. Instead, he ended up working for Greenpeace in the 70s (he talked to the press, because he had short hair and dressed nicely), worked as a cooking at a logging camp in Nova Scotia, and hitchhiked across Europe playing his guitar on street corners for change. He loves to travel, and is a bit of a loner - out of my two parents, I get along with him the most, because we are really the thirst-for-knowledge/loner/traveller types. This is also the reason that I've visited a lot more countries than most Americans have, and got attacked by a monkey and got to pet a komodo dragon and shit. He's always pushed me to be really independent and to strive to reach my goals, I think in part because he felt stifled in his family and wanted me and my brother to have the choice to do what we want for our lives.
My mom is a doctor - Internist, which mostly means she's a primary care physician for adults. She grew up in a always-moving Southern military family, with two younger brothers, and was quite the tomboy. She taught me two sew, and has encouraged and assisted on a lot of my cosplay projects, and also refinished furniture and renovates the house as a hobby, and has taught me how to do so as well. She's very DIY, and has passed that along to me. She also is cool telling stories about how she got trashed on SoCo in college and threw up all over her best friend's reproduction Civil War rifles. She's also a bit radical - she took a year off college to get herself back on track, and worked for the Brown Lung Association in NC. The house she lived in actually got firebombed, and to this day she's still not sure if it was because they objected to the activist work, or because they couldn't stand the thought of a white woman living with a black woman (my mom's roommate). She's very outgoing, and very smart, although sometimes she can be a bit head-in-the-clouds. My little bro is her favorite, which means he gets away with more shit than I did, but oh well.
Between the two of them, they've always been extremely accepting of my and all my weirdness, and were not at all fazed when I came out, and have never said anything other than 'you look great!' when I wear a suit to prom and grad and formal family events. They never really pushed me and my brother to really 'boy' or 'girl' things - we both used the awesome toy trucks in the sandbox, and while I have a lovely doll house my grandfather built me, it was mostly inhabited by plastic bugs and lizards. They also gave me a lot of freedom about stuff - like flying out to an anime con where there are only two people I've met in person before, only one of whom has met one of my parents. I always got annoyed at them when I was a kid because of lot of my friends had huge allowance, and my parents made us actually work for our money by helping paint walls or doing chores, but honestly, I'm glad they did because it means I can actually handle money. Growing up in our two-story house in the suburbs, I thought we had the stereoptyical white middle American family, but now that I've gotten older, I've realized that my parents brought me and my brother up to be incredibly liberal by US standards. And when my brother and I were both really little, my mom inherited some land in NC, which they then sold to the Nature Conservency, and they took that money and put it into mutal fund accounts for me and my brother, which has been growing ever since, so that both of us could do whatever we want with our lives. They are also paying for both our college tuitions pretty much entirely, with no loans, which I know is pretty much amazing.
They've been seperated for about seven years now, and are currently getting officially divorced (which my mom, like...randomly threw into a conversation about some other stuff last time I called home), which is going to make Christmas this year a bit awkward. And even though I love them dearly, having moved out on my own I don't think I could ever move back in with them. I am too used to being totally independent and in control of how things go for me, and both my parents are really passive-aggressive and augh, I just want to run my house the way I want to.
closest friends—
Haha kind of a wierd question for me because I am a bit hermitlike, but! I will try. People who get mentioned the most here are probably my IRL buddies for all of the epic lulz they bring, and they are:
-Jon, who as previously mentioned is kind of my BFF
-Shinra Cosplay group! Consisting of Justin (Reno), Rosie (Elena), Ced (Papa Shinra), and John (Rude). And Jon as Tseng but I already mentioned him. They are all incredibly nerdy and full of whacky ideas and when we all go out for dinner together is pretty much guaranteed that there will be laughter and people knocking glasses over accidentally. Rosie is also my Evil Twin (I am the Eviler Twin, neither of us are good), because in first and second year people repeatedly couldn't tell us apart, to the point of having whole conversations with me thinking I was Rosie.
-Tuesday night gaming group! Both mine, and the one run by Evil GM. I pretty much don't hang out with these guys outside of game, but gaming nights are always great and we have all of these ridiculous in-jokes and stories.
-Assorted other Vancouver nerds - Julie, Alex, my insane roommate Augustine.
And then the more internet-types, who I don't see all the time and thus I have less crazy stories to tell about, but who still deserve a mention:
-Mara-cookie, who I have known since like what, 2003? Who was my partner in cosplay hijinks until I moved out here, and who I still regularly text being like 'OH MY GOD THIS VELVET IS SO BEAUTIFUL'. She is lovely and neo-Victorian and inspires me to be an elegant person like she is.
-Winter, who I've known since the beginning of middle school, and who I have an on-again/off-again sort of friendship with (I think we are just alike enough to drive each other crazy sometimes). But! She is one of the people I feel like I can trust with pretty much anything, and who always has good advice to give.
-Lauren, who I have not known very long, but who is seriously like my brain-twin or something. We have a ridiculous number of 'ME TOO!' moments, it's great.
-Megan, who I have also not known for very long, but who is a total sweetheart and who somehow always manages to make me feel like things are going to be alright.
photographic evidence—
If you have been here long enough that you actually bothered to read through that, I can't imagine you haven't seen photos of me because I take photos of goddamn everything and post them all the time, but here!
You know how sometimes people on your friendslist post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.
Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out. (:
first name—
Ruth - I'm actually pretty happy with it, because it is uncommon without being totally weird. Online I usually go by Cocoa - the very long story is that this is actually a nickname my parents gave me when I was little and could really be Coco, because apparently I would always headbutt stuff like I was trying to split a coconut or something? Anyway, when I was a kid I didn't realize how it was supposed to be spelled and just went with the cooking ingredient, and used it a long, long time ago as part of my first AOL screenname, and it's kind of stuck around.
age—
Twenty-one, with a birthday of March 12th. Yeah, crazy Pisces here. Interestingly, my mom was born a day before me, on the 11th, and my little brother, a week after me, on the 19th. Dad throws it all off by being a September kid, though.
location—
I was born in Cambridge, MA, and until I graduated high school, I pretty much lived in central Massachusetts for all of my life. My hometown is shitty, but I love Boston even though I hate the weather, and I really miss it sometimes. After graduation, I moved across the continent to another country, and now live in Vancouver, BC. Even though the cost of living is absurdly high and the city government does stupid things sometimes, I really love this city, and am aiming to hopefully live here permanently after I graduate from university. Which means applying for residency and eventually citizenship which will be kind of stressful, but I love Canada :<
occupation—
Full-time student, mostly. During the summers I work as a produce clerk in a local independent natural/organic grocery store, which is about as miserable as it sounds. My co-workers are cool people but our new managers are neurotic hardasses, and we get the super-high maintence customers at our location because we're in the middle of Kitsilano, so it's really stressful. Buuuuut it pays $12/hr and my department manager likes me because I am not flakey, so until I have a degree I'm sticking it out.
Speaking of degree! I'm in my fourth (and hopefully last) year at UBC - I'm a Biology major, English Lit minor, and my area of interest is genetics/bioinformatics/disease pathology. I've realized in the last year and a half that I really totally cannot handle grad school, so I am aiming to work as a lab tech somewhere cool after I graduate.
partner—
Jon and I have been dating for about two and a half years now. And by 'dating' I mean we exist in a weird gray area of BFFs with some romantic feelings attached. It's kind of complicated because I'm asexual (yeah guys, no drive to have sex, really, although when I do I enjoy it), and have hang-ups about being in het relationships (thanks, western society). But he's one of the few people I'd trust with anything, and we can sit around and play video games or debate RPG shit or watch tv or talk about how we love Alton Brown, so it works out for us. It's not really a traditional sort of relationship, which I think weird some of his friends out, but we've talked it over and we're comfortable with things are, and don't want to force the relationship to be something where one of us isn't happy any more. And yeah, I do love my boyfriend ♥ (even I think his taste in music sucks - yeah I went there, I know you're reading this :P)
kids—
Aaaaaaaah no. I am a horribly impatient person, which means I get really frustrated with trying to deal with people who's outlook on life and learning is significantly more immature than mine, so I really cannot handle anyone below high school, and even then it depends on the high schooler. Also I think babies are really ugly :<
siblings—
Haha, the only one I've seen answer this who has no elements of only-child upbringing. I have one brother, two years younger than me, named Ben. When we were younger, we'd fight a lot. And I mean like...physically fight ontop shouting and everything. Groceries stores, car rides, church - we were the stereotypical siblings who keep poking each other to get a rise and then whining 'mooooom, make him stop touching me!'. Once we both got into high school, we mellowed out a lot, and started to hang out and watch tv and play video games together a lot. We sort of lost touch after I moved out, and haven't really gotten back into touch, but we're both okay with that. He's a second year at McGill, in Montreal because he too loves Canada and can actually stand the freakishly cold winters there. Looking into going in Psych, but I'm not sure how that's working out for him. He is really into music (of all varies, but mostly indie everything), and smokes a lot of weed.
pets—
I don't actually really have any pets right now - I'd really like a cat, but as my future living space for the next few years is indeterminite, I can't justify one when I'm not sure if I'm going to have to move back to the States. I had a cat growing up, Mimi, who died when I was in middle school - got hit by a car. She was mottled black and white, kind of bitchy, but totally loveable. My aunt found her in a box in the parking lot where which worked, so the cat is named after the aunt. In high we had two cats - a totally neurotic spazzy grey tabby, Scratchy, and a very shy all-grey cat named Smokey. I heard from my Dad that Scratchy is unfortunately deceased - the found him curled up in the yard, no sign of a fight or anything. Smokey is still doing okay, though.
3-5 biggest things going on in your life—
1) School and my attempts to survive it. Tangent to that, chilling withe the UBC Wargamers Club, which I don't have as much mental energy for lately. Magic players are loud :<
2) Roleplay! As a bunch of you already know, I play Tseng/Cid/Braska/Yelena/Clow/Delirum at City of Desai, and I've just picked up Rufus at The Sky Tides. I also do tabletop gaming one night a week, currently. On one week, it's our epically long-running Earthdawn (best epic fantasy setting ever omg I will send you pdfs of the books it is amazing) campaign, which Evil GM runs and will be hitting three years come January. On the next week, It's my constant misadventures in campaign-running - we've tried Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and now we're trying Geist: The Sin-Eaters, and hoping my social anxiety doesn't make my brain explode.
3) Cosplay! Most notably, attempts to make the Most Epic Shinra Cosplay Group Ever. Seriously oh my god I am so excited about this I love my group.
4) Continued attempts to deal with my psychological problems - I have mild depression, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. The first and the last are kind of under control with a few minor problems; the social anxiety not, quite so much - as evidenced by my flipping out over aaaaaah new games and generally not talking to people a whole lot. I am also exhausted all the time for pretty much no known reason thus far - the anxiety or a sleep disorder are pretty much what /hasn't/ been ruled out so far. I don't actually talk about this much because whining helps no one, but it's sort of there in the background of things.
parents—
My parents are like seriously the most amazing people ever. And I know a lot of kids say they have the greatest parents ever, but I really mean it. I have friends who will back me on this (hey Skuld!).
So, first off, my dad. He's an Anglican priest, used to work at investment company, currently drives a farm truck for an independent organic farm in Western MA and substitute teaches middle school classes. He grew up in a very traditional upper-middle class New Englander family, and was expected to go into law or be a doctor or something. Instead, he ended up working for Greenpeace in the 70s (he talked to the press, because he had short hair and dressed nicely), worked as a cooking at a logging camp in Nova Scotia, and hitchhiked across Europe playing his guitar on street corners for change. He loves to travel, and is a bit of a loner - out of my two parents, I get along with him the most, because we are really the thirst-for-knowledge/loner/traveller types. This is also the reason that I've visited a lot more countries than most Americans have, and got attacked by a monkey and got to pet a komodo dragon and shit. He's always pushed me to be really independent and to strive to reach my goals, I think in part because he felt stifled in his family and wanted me and my brother to have the choice to do what we want for our lives.
My mom is a doctor - Internist, which mostly means she's a primary care physician for adults. She grew up in a always-moving Southern military family, with two younger brothers, and was quite the tomboy. She taught me two sew, and has encouraged and assisted on a lot of my cosplay projects, and also refinished furniture and renovates the house as a hobby, and has taught me how to do so as well. She's very DIY, and has passed that along to me. She also is cool telling stories about how she got trashed on SoCo in college and threw up all over her best friend's reproduction Civil War rifles. She's also a bit radical - she took a year off college to get herself back on track, and worked for the Brown Lung Association in NC. The house she lived in actually got firebombed, and to this day she's still not sure if it was because they objected to the activist work, or because they couldn't stand the thought of a white woman living with a black woman (my mom's roommate). She's very outgoing, and very smart, although sometimes she can be a bit head-in-the-clouds. My little bro is her favorite, which means he gets away with more shit than I did, but oh well.
Between the two of them, they've always been extremely accepting of my and all my weirdness, and were not at all fazed when I came out, and have never said anything other than 'you look great!' when I wear a suit to prom and grad and formal family events. They never really pushed me and my brother to really 'boy' or 'girl' things - we both used the awesome toy trucks in the sandbox, and while I have a lovely doll house my grandfather built me, it was mostly inhabited by plastic bugs and lizards. They also gave me a lot of freedom about stuff - like flying out to an anime con where there are only two people I've met in person before, only one of whom has met one of my parents. I always got annoyed at them when I was a kid because of lot of my friends had huge allowance, and my parents made us actually work for our money by helping paint walls or doing chores, but honestly, I'm glad they did because it means I can actually handle money. Growing up in our two-story house in the suburbs, I thought we had the stereoptyical white middle American family, but now that I've gotten older, I've realized that my parents brought me and my brother up to be incredibly liberal by US standards. And when my brother and I were both really little, my mom inherited some land in NC, which they then sold to the Nature Conservency, and they took that money and put it into mutal fund accounts for me and my brother, which has been growing ever since, so that both of us could do whatever we want with our lives. They are also paying for both our college tuitions pretty much entirely, with no loans, which I know is pretty much amazing.
They've been seperated for about seven years now, and are currently getting officially divorced (which my mom, like...randomly threw into a conversation about some other stuff last time I called home), which is going to make Christmas this year a bit awkward. And even though I love them dearly, having moved out on my own I don't think I could ever move back in with them. I am too used to being totally independent and in control of how things go for me, and both my parents are really passive-aggressive and augh, I just want to run my house the way I want to.
closest friends—
Haha kind of a wierd question for me because I am a bit hermitlike, but! I will try. People who get mentioned the most here are probably my IRL buddies for all of the epic lulz they bring, and they are:
-Jon, who as previously mentioned is kind of my BFF
-Shinra Cosplay group! Consisting of Justin (Reno), Rosie (Elena), Ced (Papa Shinra), and John (Rude). And Jon as Tseng but I already mentioned him. They are all incredibly nerdy and full of whacky ideas and when we all go out for dinner together is pretty much guaranteed that there will be laughter and people knocking glasses over accidentally. Rosie is also my Evil Twin (I am the Eviler Twin, neither of us are good), because in first and second year people repeatedly couldn't tell us apart, to the point of having whole conversations with me thinking I was Rosie.
-Tuesday night gaming group! Both mine, and the one run by Evil GM. I pretty much don't hang out with these guys outside of game, but gaming nights are always great and we have all of these ridiculous in-jokes and stories.
-Assorted other Vancouver nerds - Julie, Alex, my insane roommate Augustine.
And then the more internet-types, who I don't see all the time and thus I have less crazy stories to tell about, but who still deserve a mention:
-Mara-cookie, who I have known since like what, 2003? Who was my partner in cosplay hijinks until I moved out here, and who I still regularly text being like 'OH MY GOD THIS VELVET IS SO BEAUTIFUL'. She is lovely and neo-Victorian and inspires me to be an elegant person like she is.
-Winter, who I've known since the beginning of middle school, and who I have an on-again/off-again sort of friendship with (I think we are just alike enough to drive each other crazy sometimes). But! She is one of the people I feel like I can trust with pretty much anything, and who always has good advice to give.
-Lauren, who I have not known very long, but who is seriously like my brain-twin or something. We have a ridiculous number of 'ME TOO!' moments, it's great.
-Megan, who I have also not known for very long, but who is a total sweetheart and who somehow always manages to make me feel like things are going to be alright.
photographic evidence—
If you have been here long enough that you actually bothered to read through that, I can't imagine you haven't seen photos of me because I take photos of goddamn everything and post them all the time, but here!
