Hello. I was sent here via another link in the forum, so I will comply and attempt to introduce myself.
Gaeila is my real middle name. I live in Nashville, TN, United States. I have degrees from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, (a BBA, which is essentially an MBA. Same teachers and texts as the MBA program) Tennessee State University (Top honors in Biochemistry and record GRE scores. Head-hunted all over the country for advanced degree programs) Was in the Ph.D./M.D. Molecular Pharmacology program at Vanderbilt University (full scholarship plus stipend plus bonunes to lure me from San Francisco).
And then I got hit by a truck. Completely disabled, and physically unable to perform lab work any more. It is a shame, because if that had not happened, we MIGHT now have much better treatments for serious burns (one of my research interests) and pain relief (another research interest.) It is lucky for me that childhood conditioning has made me a bit OCD about wearing seatbelts, because if I hadn't been wearing one, I definitely would have died.
I have expertise in quite a few disparate areas. Here are some of them:
1. Medical areas, both research and practical
2. Cooking. I was the food writer for The Knoxville Journal; a real job with a real newspaper for which I was paid real money.
3. Feline breeding and health care. I bred Siamese, then Tonkinese kittens on a very small scale for many years.
http://www.tonkinesekitten.com/ (no ads, cute kitten pictures, NO kittens for sale at this time.)
4. Music and song-writing. Years of piano lessons, self-taught on guitar, both classical and steel string. I was good enough to receive many invitations to join the Bluebird's Writer's Night; to perform at fund-raisers, and two pages in a book called "Looking for #1--Portraits and Passions of Nashville Songwriters".
I've lived in New York City; New York suburbs; small-town Michigan; Westport, Connecticut; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Paducah, Kentucky; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Nashville, Tennessee.
I'm married to an Electrical Engineer Product Developer, who has patents (though not the $$ stream from them--bad deal company) on well-known Mac products. He is also a PC developer.
My ethnic background is pretty mixed: Irish, Italian, Colonial era-Brit, Canadian, Scots, Polish, German, and probably some other nationalities I'm forgetting. My husband Don is 95% pure Norwegian and has in fact eaten lutefisk; though he doesn't recommend it.
I was one of the very first people on the Internet (aka ARPA) because of one of my sibling's jobs at NASA. Minna's comment community reminds me of those very early days--pre spam, most users both civil and intelligent; etc. etc.
Humans are complex beings and any intro. is necessarily a surface skim; however most other humans prefer succinct information packets. If this is TMI, let me know and I shall edit.
Native: :usa:
Tourist level: :germany: