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lea_hazelLadies & gentlemen, we have entered knee pain weather.
Well, since I said I would do an "about me" post, explaining the above statement is the perfect excuse.
"Knee pain weather" means the weather is turning cold and damp enough that, even though my body doesn't feel cold, my knees or other joints are becoming painfully inflamed. I have rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation of the joints. I've had it for about three years now, and for the last two years, I've been using a medication that reduces my day-to-day symptoms to almost nonexistent. Now and then one of my knees will act up, and I still can't straighten my right arm all the way, but I don't limp and I don't wake up in the morning in pain.
I also have asthma, which is another chronic illness (possibly autoimmune?) that causes me to lose my breath when climbing stairs or walking too quickly. I have only recently learned to acknowledge that I run out of breath because I have a chronic illness, not because I am lazy or unfit. After a year and a half of living on the third floor and climbing the same impossibly steep steps every day, my wind has not improved. This is because it can't.
I live in Jerusalem and have lived here almost all of my life. As a child I lived for a year in Ohio, which is when I learned to speak English. Although my mother is bilingual, she spoke almost exclusively Hebrew to us children when I was very small. Later, she started speaking more and more English. As a teenager, I lived for a year in Oxford and went to school there. My writing and reading reached their current level of fluency during that year. Learning to read English was hard.
I served in the IDF for three years, a decision that I was and still am ambivalent about. My army years rank as the worst in my memory and I don't like to talk about them (but I do). That's also where I learned to become a computer programmer. I worked in hi-tech as a Java developer for a little over two years, and quit this past September. Three weeks ago I started a bachelor's degree in psychobiology, that is, a combination of psychology and biology. Before that I only had a high school education, albeit a pretty damn good one. I intend to become a geneticist.
I'm a writer. No shocker there, right? I mainly write fantasy. I wrote and scrapped many an unfinished fantasy novel, I wrote a huge bunch of fantasy fanfic before I gradually dropped out of active fannish participation, I wrote some fantasy short stories which were not very good, and every now and then I drop a poem or three. Those are usually not fantasy, actually. Right now I'm working on a NaNovel that I'm not planning to win with, which is a maudlin love story about belonging and community and what constitutes normal. Or a vampire/mermaid romance novel, depending on how you look at it.
I read just about everything. Politically-themed adult fantasy trilogies are my favorite, but I read sci-fi, classic literature, modern classic, crime, detective, whodunit, superhero comics, love stories, family dramas, a little non-fiction here and there. A bunch of webcomics. Right now I'm trying to branch out as much as possible, so I am looking for a writer of paranormal romance to fall in love with. Marjorie Liu comes highly recommended, and will probably show up in my next big book purchase. It might be a while, though, because I have a ginormous stack of books I haven't read yet, and they stare at me and make me feel guilty.
I am bisexual and really, really queer. I hardly ever date because of complicated personal issues, but I'm really queer.
I ramble. Lots. *Points up*
I have six best friends, two of whom I met over the internet when I was sixteen. \o/
Also, I just had the bestest omelet ever. I put mushrooms and dutch cheese on it, and used two eggs, and my stomach is really happy now.
Well, since I said I would do an "about me" post, explaining the above statement is the perfect excuse.
"Knee pain weather" means the weather is turning cold and damp enough that, even though my body doesn't feel cold, my knees or other joints are becoming painfully inflamed. I have rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation of the joints. I've had it for about three years now, and for the last two years, I've been using a medication that reduces my day-to-day symptoms to almost nonexistent. Now and then one of my knees will act up, and I still can't straighten my right arm all the way, but I don't limp and I don't wake up in the morning in pain.
I also have asthma, which is another chronic illness (possibly autoimmune?) that causes me to lose my breath when climbing stairs or walking too quickly. I have only recently learned to acknowledge that I run out of breath because I have a chronic illness, not because I am lazy or unfit. After a year and a half of living on the third floor and climbing the same impossibly steep steps every day, my wind has not improved. This is because it can't.
I live in Jerusalem and have lived here almost all of my life. As a child I lived for a year in Ohio, which is when I learned to speak English. Although my mother is bilingual, she spoke almost exclusively Hebrew to us children when I was very small. Later, she started speaking more and more English. As a teenager, I lived for a year in Oxford and went to school there. My writing and reading reached their current level of fluency during that year. Learning to read English was hard.
I served in the IDF for three years, a decision that I was and still am ambivalent about. My army years rank as the worst in my memory and I don't like to talk about them (but I do). That's also where I learned to become a computer programmer. I worked in hi-tech as a Java developer for a little over two years, and quit this past September. Three weeks ago I started a bachelor's degree in psychobiology, that is, a combination of psychology and biology. Before that I only had a high school education, albeit a pretty damn good one. I intend to become a geneticist.
I'm a writer. No shocker there, right? I mainly write fantasy. I wrote and scrapped many an unfinished fantasy novel, I wrote a huge bunch of fantasy fanfic before I gradually dropped out of active fannish participation, I wrote some fantasy short stories which were not very good, and every now and then I drop a poem or three. Those are usually not fantasy, actually. Right now I'm working on a NaNovel that I'm not planning to win with, which is a maudlin love story about belonging and community and what constitutes normal. Or a vampire/mermaid romance novel, depending on how you look at it.
I read just about everything. Politically-themed adult fantasy trilogies are my favorite, but I read sci-fi, classic literature, modern classic, crime, detective, whodunit, superhero comics, love stories, family dramas, a little non-fiction here and there. A bunch of webcomics. Right now I'm trying to branch out as much as possible, so I am looking for a writer of paranormal romance to fall in love with. Marjorie Liu comes highly recommended, and will probably show up in my next big book purchase. It might be a while, though, because I have a ginormous stack of books I haven't read yet, and they stare at me and make me feel guilty.
I am bisexual and really, really queer. I hardly ever date because of complicated personal issues, but I'm really queer.
I ramble. Lots. *Points up*
I have six best friends, two of whom I met over the internet when I was sixteen. \o/
Also, I just had the bestest omelet ever. I put mushrooms and dutch cheese on it, and used two eggs, and my stomach is really happy now.
