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	Miscellaneous ...About me
	Well, here's the short story version of my life... I was born and raised in Palo Alto, CA. I went to Green Gables elementary school, renamed Duveneck the year after I graduated, because it merged with another nearby school. My best friend throughout all of elementary school was Jessica Jerome, whose family lived right around the corner from there.
	From there, I attended Jordan Middle School, which was closed right after I left, merging with the other local middle school to form JLS (Jane Lathrop Stanford) for a few years. Then when the kid population went back up, the city had to reopen Jordan. During those years I spent a lot of time at the Peninsula Ballet Theater in San Mateo, where I took classes just about every day with my good friends Kimberly Krechmer, Sara Wells, Naoko Amemiya, Carey McIntosh, and Cindy Fogel. We all had danced together since we were 5 years old, with Grace Butler at the local YWCA. I also played second violin in the school orchestra.
	During high school at Palo Alto High School, I continued to do modern dance. My dance friends and I -- who included Shannon Whaley and Natasha Carlitz, as well as those I already mentioned -- started the Saturday Morning Dance Company -- fondly known as SMDC -- in order to choreograph a show for our old teacher. Later, in conjunction with Grace, we choreographed another show for the Stanford Symphony's annual children's show at Dinkelspiel. We also travelled to the International Children's Dance Conference in England the summer after my senior year. SMDC was a great thing. We ran it democratically -- or tried to -- and learned a lot about leadership, creativity, and just getting stuff done. We were a diverse group, in terms of our high school social strata, and I think that was valuable for all concerned.
	After high school, I moved across the street to Stanford University, where I majored in Symbolic Systems. My pat answer to your next question is: "It's a combination of computer science, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics." I made several wonderful friends at Stanford: my freshman roommate, Sarah Long, is now an opera singer in New York. Junior year I met my other close friends, Ann Ishimaru, Zack Semke, Mandy Blake, and Michi Barall. We all lived together the next two years, though I also spent one fun quarter living in Casa Zapata with Elise Langlois, now Luna. My major extra-curricular activity during those years was dancing with El Ballet Folklorico de Stanford.
	After college, I started playing taiko in San Francisco. I moved there to live with my sister and Sarah. After Sarah moved to New York, we lived with Erika's then-boyfriend Sean Bennett for a while. Then we moved back down to Palo Alto, to be nearer to my job at Intuit. We started living with Julie Norton, an amazing and wonderful friend I'd made while working on Quicken for Mac. I jumped around at Intuit a bit, doing documentation for Quicken for Windows, multimedia stuff for Quicken Mac, engineering on Quicken.com, and finally, engineering on QuickBooks. Intuit has been a great company to work for, and I've gradually gotten many of my other friends there as well -- Erika, Natasha, even Mandy.
	Now, after living my whole entire life in the Bay Area, I moved to Portland. I'm still working for Intuit, and still playing taiko, but now with Portland Taiko. My then-boyfriend Jeff joined me up here August 2001, and since then we've gotten married, bought a house, and had a baby. Then we had another baby.
	And that's pretty much it! I have some other hobbies -- guitar, piano, knitting, gardening, cooking, and soaking in hot water. At least, those were my hobbies before the kids. Now I enjoy reading kid books, frequenting the iVillage breastfeeding support board, and waxing estatic over those who poop in the potty.