I was born a poor black child. (Click on the link if you're not a Steve Martin fan. If you don't have a sense of humor, get off this website, please.) No, I was born in the wagon of a traveling show, my mama had to...no, I wasn't. I was born a relatively middle-class Anglo-Irish child in Alliance, Ohio, in September 1965. We lived there for four years, during which time I learned to read and got my first kitten, a calico named Pretzel. Right before I started kindergarten in 1970, we moved to DeKalb, Illinois. I started school at Lincoln Elementary, noted at the time for an extremely innovative and fun-loving group of student teachers from Northern Illinois University. One year, they staged a rock concert, and the teachers tried to get me to go up and dance on the stage. I refused, but made up for it later on in life. After spending a year in the Chicago suburbs, we moved to the Strangest Place On Earth in 1974 and spent the next ten years there.

Imagine a town that was part Hickory in the movie "Hoosiers" and part OWEN MEANY'S GRAVESEND, NEW HAMPSHIRE (BY JOHN IRVING) crossed with Camp Mohawk in the movie "Meatballs" and Welton Academy from the movie "Dead Poets Society." That's Culver, Indiana, where I spent my adolescence. Half of Culver was the quintessential Midwestern small town; the other half was a college prep boarding school which became a very upscale (and snooty) summer camp in the off-season. I had the all-American experience during my junior high school years there: band, Girl Scouts, basketball games - very anachronistic for the '70s, I know. I went to high school at Culver Girls Academy from which I graduated in the early '80s, and was very active in the arts. Later, I would earn my bachelor's degree in Journalism and Political Science and master's degree in information science from a Big Ten university.

I moved back to the Chicago area in 1990, living in the city for six years before moving to the western suburbs, where I work as a development grant writer. I live with my cat Douglas, who's unfortunately the only man in my life right now. I haven't had much luck in love -  I guess I've been lucky in everything else. I have great friends, a smart brain, a good family, a lot of interests, as you can see on this site...but so far that one special guy hasn't found me yet. "Cuando me toca a mí?" (When is it my turn?) I prefer tall, dark hair, white or Hispanic (or white Hispanic), and he MUST be into music and like pets.

Fun-wise, I love music, cats, reading, traveling, traveling to hear music, putting this website together, and trying to learn Spanish. That's the way this country is going, and I plan to go right with it.