Hot Buttons!

Just think, if you don't tell me you've read this page, you'll be able to impress me with how intuitive you are or annoy the living daylights out of me, your choice!!

Personal Ground Rules:

Religion: I don't get along with rabidly evangelistic types; the idea that you have the only correct path and everyone else (poor things) need to be enlightened drives me crazy. I don't follow any of the monotheistic religions. I don't have conclusions yet on any of the major issues such as an afterlife, reincarnation, etc.
Sexual orientation: Personally, I am heterosexual. What others do is their own business. I don't think there is anything wrong with homosexuality and a number of my close friends are gay. Homophobics really annoy me.
Equality of the sexes: Social pleasantries have nothing to do with women being equal to men. What does that mean? I still like to have a car door opened for me. Keep in mind that if I'm driving, I open the passenger door for my passengers too.
Abortion: I don't believe life starts at conception. Abortion needs to stay legal. I don't like the idea but I understand the reality.

---

Life Philosophies:

• Learning should never stop.
• Change is not a bad thing. Personally, I get bored without change!
• That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
• Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours.
• An unexamined philosophy is not worth holding!
• Lighten up!
• Life itself can't give you joy unless you really will it; life just gives you time and space. It's up to you to fill it.
• "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well." - Mary Cholmondeley
• "Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved." - Ayn Rand. (In other words, you have the right to work towards being happy!)

---

Personal Likes:

Singers: Diana Krall, Annie Lennox, George Michael, Barbra Streisand, Prince (The Artist), Dan Fogelberg, Nat King Cole, Loreena McKinnett, Michael Franks, Fiona Apple, Marc Cohn, Lyle Lovett
Other music: Just about everything except country and rap. Mozart and Beethoven are my favorite classical, and I love jazz. Celtic such as Enya and Loreena McKinnett. Prince. Billy Joel and David Bowie.
Food: A variety of new tastes and plenty of them makes me happy. Japanese. Spicy hot is good: Pakistani, Indian, Thai, Nepalese, Chinese, etc. And of course it goes without saying: CHOCOLATE!
Books: Well researched, factually based historical fiction. I have an extensive personal library of hardcover books and expect it will only continue to grow.
Authors: David Eddings, Shakespeare, Mary Renault, Colleen McCollough, Richard Bach, Stephen Covey, Morgan Llewelyn, C.J. Cherryh
TV: I don't watch much these days besides XFiles reruns, Nip/Tuck & The West Wing because I'm just too busy. When I did watch, I liked Babylon 5, Star Trek DS9, Northern Exposure and I loved Twin Peaks. BBC comedies. The Red Green Show on PBS is damn funny and will give you new ideas on what can be done with duct tape. Well, assuming you haven't already figured out that duct tape can be used for everything.
Movies: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. James Bond movies just because they are so FANTASY and because Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan are so damn sexy. Princess Bride. Any ones where Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly dance. Any with Audrey or Katherine Hepburn in them, most science fiction, Amadeus.
Travel: I've been to Cancun in Mexico, Bremen in Germany, Rome, and Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan. I've lived in Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Connecticut and Colorado. I dearly want to travel quite a bit more in my life. Some of the places on my wish list are Athens, Istanbul, Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.
Dance: almost any kind, watching and doing. I love dancing from clubs to Big Band in formal dress. The dancing in 'Riverdance' is spectacular, and so is classical ballet. Tap!
Color: Color in general is significant to me as I'm aesthetically oriented. Personal favorites: teal, cobalt blue, periwinkle, black.
Alcohol: White wine, champagne, Bailey's Irish Cream, Framboise, Fuzzy Navels, Mimosas. Japanese plum wine!
Massage. Touch is healing. Even newborn babies respond to massage.
Cartoons: Dilbert, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, Sally Forth
Pets: Cats! It's not that I dislike dogs, it's just that dogs tend to dislike my cats. Love me, love my puds. Hey, I purr too!

---

Personal Dislikes & Pet Peeves:

People: Bigoted, narrow minded, selfish or judgemental.
Movies: Horror. Bloody gory ones.
Colors: yellow, orange, and 70s avocado green. Remember that shade of green????
Alcohol: Beer. I just never developed a taste for it. (Update: okay, in June '98 I found one beer that I liked at the opening of a new microbrewery. Live and learn.)
Music: Anything sung by Kate Bush; yech! That woman gives sopranos a bad name. Rap, country. Umm, except there is plenty of Bonnie Raitt and Lyle Lovett that I don't think should be classified as country.
Smoking It's nasty, it smells bad, I really and truly dislike it, I'm genuinely allergic to it, and rooms full of it set off my asthma. Admittedly, my asthma is mild, but breathing is highly underappreciated.

---

The Company I Keep:

Not too many of my friends have personal Web sites, but those that do are listed here. If I've been told, I've also listed the respective Meyers-Briggs personality type. You learn a lot about a person by the company they keep... Oh, these sites are in no particular order, certainly not anything as organized as say, alphabetical.

• Drew and Laurie have a lot up about what they went through to adopt their daughter Anjali from India. Oh, and if you have speakers, you can hear Anjali say hello and it really does sound just like her!
• Mariam Ispahani happens to be a co-moderator on the moderated Pakistani Usenet newsgroup, even though she lives in Minnesota. That's how we met. At the time I posted I was living in Minnesota, we started talking... Turns out we had a mutual interest in adoption and since then she even got a job at Crossroads Adoption Services. I happened to have created their Web site! Mariam is now one of the people that updates that site. Besides that, she's from Pakistan, her grand aunt runs an orphanage in Pakistan, and she is just basically a very cool, classy lady. Some of my relatives in Karachi actually know her grand aunt by reputation. Small world.
• Chris Wetherill's Home Universe covers all sorts of stuff because Chris (an iNFj/iNTp) has all sorts of interests: astronomy (which he teaches), the stock market, Navajo weaving, and mountaineering in Colorado. There's also an extensive section on bachelorhood.
• Global Nomads belongs to Prahlad Gupta. It's not a personal homepage, but he runs the site on this subject dear to his heart; people who consider themselves a citizen of the world more than of any one nationality. Lots of these folks did a lot of globe hopping with their parents as they were growing up. Prahlad is a professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. Update: Prahlad thinks this is a homepage, but I think it's a professional listing: http://magnum.beckman.uiuc.edu/prahlad/. Come on Prahlad, jazz this page up!
• ICHILD or India Child is the personal labor of love by Beth Peterson Krueger for anyone interested in adoption from the Indian subcontinent. Before this site, there was no such information on the Web on this subject. Kudos to Beth for the huge amount of careful work she has put into this site.
• Eric Cline is one of those rare people that is truly nice and I don't say that about many people. He writes great prose and poetry and is majoring in English and Theater at Coe College. He's the kind of guy that will gladly schlep you out to where your car stalled out, and than wait with you for AAA to show up to tow your car to the shop.
• Ashlea Betzen is yet another friend brought to you courtesty of Coe College.
• Alitza Rueber is my frequently perky, incredibly patient, there-for-you-when-you-need-a-friend roommate at Coe. Interestingly enough, she and I are both eNFp. Her email is arrueber@coe.edu. Drop her a line and tell her add stuff to her Web site! (I can say that now that I've added a few hours worth of stuff to mine; hee hee.)

---

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open - with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build your roads on today, because tomorrow's ground is too unstable for plans, and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while, you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much, so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure... that you really are strong... and you really do have worth.
-- "Comes The Dream"