So here's the deal. Either this is your first time here, or you've read this disclaimer before, right? A lot of sites have something that says "Click this if it's your first time here" or something along the lines... well, I decided that a better option would be to just make the disclaimer the first thing you see.
First of all, I want you to know that this is not a site for children. I'm not saying "don't visit this page if you're under 18" or anything, but parents, please look at the site and decide if it's something you want your children to see. I do say bad words, and there is the occasional glimpse of nudity in the webcam. I talk about such hot topics as sexuality, politics, spirituality, and individualism. If you're the kind of person who doesn't want to deal with people who may have opposing viewpoints, this is not the place for you. And the bottom line is if you don't like what you see here... go someplace else. I'm not tying you down and forcing you to browse this page.
This page sets a little cookie in your browser that says you've seen it, so when you come back, it shouldn't be here. If you don't accept cookies as a general rule, you'll want to read the bit about the cookies a little farther down.
Don't click here until you've read the above.
Now... with the icky bits out of the way, I'll tell you a bit more about this site and why it's here if you want to read it.
Cookies: I do have a couple of cookies in this site. The first one is simply about whether you've read this disclaimer. If you have, it goes directly into the site. If you haven't, you see this page. So if you delete your cookies, or use a different computer or a different browser, you'll see this page again. There are a couple of others for storing the menu's settings. You don't need to change them if you don't want to, of course, but they're there just in case you want to see something different from the defaults when you come back. None of these cookies send any info back to me whatsoever, and can be safely accepted without you worrying about me tracking your actions online or anything like that. I frankly don't care what else you're doing on the web. But if you don't believe me, you can deny the cookies, and enter the main site here instead. Feel free to bookmark that page instead of this one if that's the case, but I ask that if you link to the site from your own, please link to this page and not the frames page. Besides, that page may eventually go away. This one won't.
Sexuality: I'm a fairly androgynous, sometimes polyamorous, bisexual woman. I've talked about each of those things at some point or another, and while my life doesn't center around those (or any other) labels, they do come into play now & again. The only reason why I mention them at all here is because I want you to realize that I'm not necessarily what you might expect if you've never dealt with someone who deviates so far from "normal" before. I'll use words such as "freak" and "sexual deviant" to describe myself, and I'm proud to have those titles.
Spirituality: I generally consider myself to be agnostic with pagan sympathies. The bottom line is that my spiritual path is my own, and I try not to discourage people from following paths that differ from mine. You need to do what feels right for yourself, and One Size does not fit All. I don't have a general "hate" for any one spiritual or religious path, and feel that as long as we don't try to make everyone in the planet fit the same mold, we can all get along peacefully. I frequently use the term $DEITY to specify whatever it is you believe in. If you're here to tell me that I live a life of sin and I'm going to burn in hell unless I accept the word of $DEITY, then please go somewhere else. Believe me, I've heard it before. At worst I find it annoying; at best I find it amusing.
Politics: Actually, I really dislike politics. But being a freak in the US seems not so safe right now, and so I've become more and more vocal in my opinions. If you think George W. Bush is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then I can guarantee you're not going to like my point of view.
History: I've been keeping my web site since April of 1996, and this is only the second address it's ever had. It's grown from the small personal site that had my poetry and not much else to the overgrown behemoth you see before you. I have pages buried here that I've forgotten I've ever written, and other pages that seem to have a mind of their own. Because of this, you're going to see the occasional bit that looks like it was designed by a different person... and that's because it was, in the sense that I'm a totally different person from who I was in 1996. These days I like to make as much use of dynamic and modular content as I possibly can, so you have something a little bit different to look at each time you're here. Of course, this means that the best way to minimize the headache when I want to make a layout change is to keep the content in frames, so the main content pages themselves can have minimal (or no) changes done when I do move things around. You can view the site without frames (I take care to make sure it's as compatible with older systems as possible), but it's really much easier if they're there.
Journal: I've been keeping a paper journal since 1990, and a web journal for almost as long as I've had this site. I've yet to figure out why I feel compelled to keep my journal online, but I do. However, the content of the journal that is shared with the World At Large has changed drastically in this time, and most of what you see as the casual browser is essentially fluff. Don't let this form your entire opinion of me, and please keep in mind as you read that what you're seeing is essentially a group of snapshots; you really don't know what's going on behind the scenes. If you're so curious about me that you absolutely must know more, the best way to do this is to get a LiveJournal account and then email me to let me know that you're interested in reading my protected entries. If I don't have a compelling reason not to, I'll probably let you in... though in that case you don't want to read from this page, as only the public entries appear here. Of course, that still won't give you a complete picture, but at least then you'll actually get to read a lot of the stuff that is far less fluffy.
WebCam: Yes, I have a webcam. However, it does not run my life, and the vast majority of the time I spend at home I'm asleep. So I'll be the first to tell you that it's not horribly exciting. But it's there, and it has a set of features all its own, and if you're really that nosy you're welcome to watch it as much as you want. Much like the journal, I've yet to figure out why I have the webcam, especially since I spend so little time in front of it, but it has proved to be useful in that I'm a notoriously late sleeper on my days off and my friends have been known to use it to find out when I'm awake. ;)
I may add more to this page as it occurs to me, but that's all I have the brainpower to write about at the moment. If you've got this far, I'm quite impressed. And to save you the trouble of scrolling back up, here's another link to continue on: