For some reason I decided it was time to write an introduction and tell you nice people a little about me. I'll try to keep it short (note I said "try" :) )
Any story of me has to start with the story of my parents, who lived all over the world before I was born, having adventures. My dad was with Life magazine, and Mom went along for the ride. They were in Chicago, then Paris, then the Soviet Union in the early '60s. Along the way Mom had several miscarriages (including one in a scary Moscow hospital), and they assumed they would never have children. Finally they came home to New York and set about adopting a baby girl.
That baby girl was not me. 14 months after they found my sister and brought her home, they had me. I was so early and so small, Mom assumed I was another miscarriage and couldn't possibly be alive. Early and tiny, I also had hydrocephalus ("water on the brain"). Luckily, we lived close to a really good hospital with doctors who knew what to do. The technology for correcting hydro was pretty new then, and it hasn't changed much since. The contraption in my head that keeps me going has done it's thing pretty much nonstop for almost 40 years, with just 2 repairs, which I understand is not how these things usually go. Mom calls me her miracle.
A miracle, maybe, but a very clumsy miracle who spent years being teased for "running funny", and who couldn't wait to get away from her hometown. We moved to a small town in Maine when I was 3, and I didn't go very far for college (to a women's college in MA), but after that it was "how far away can I get without falling in the ocean?" I ended up in Seattle.
<More to follow, unless I've managed to bore everyone to death>
