Some interesting facts about me, in no particular order:
- I'm a lawyer. I do Social Security disability appeals. The best thing about my job is that I get paid by the government to sue the government. My current biggest claim to fame is having done the oral arguments for a published case in the Ninth Circuit. You can look it up: Lamear v. Berryhill, 865 F.3d 1201 (9th Cir. 2017). Yes, really. (I've argued two other cases - one that was affirmed in an unpublished memorandum and I'm still bitter, and one that is still pending as of this writing.)
- I'm happily married. I presently live with my wife, my niece, my nephew, and a somewhat insane number of cats. I technically also live with my best friend, but she works as a live-in caregiver so she is hardly ever home and that sucks.
- I live in the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, and it's pretty awesome. But I'm from California, and frankly I miss seeing people who aren't white on a regular basis. My extended family covers pretty much all the colors that humans come in. Bonus, though, I have thirteen majestic redwood trees in my backyard.
- My first gaming console was a Magnavox Odyssey. My favorite, if measured dispassionately by hours played, is still probably the Intellivision II. But I'm mostly a PC gamer.
- Actually I'm mostly a tabletop gamer. I started with D&D Basic (where "Elf" is a class) in approximately 1980. I don't think I've ever gone 12 whole months without rolling some polyhedral dice. Name a pen & paper RPG system that's come out in the last 40 years and there's a better than 50/50 chance I'm familiar with it.
- Long before I became a lawyer, I worked at Microprose for about five years. If you want to see some of my work, dig up a copy of Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, or Star Trek:Generations. I did 100% of the dialog and in-game text for the former, and somewhere around 65% of the latter. I also, in one of the later scenes in ST:G, voiced a random Klingon who tries to kill Captain Kirk - which puts me three degrees from Kevin Bacon.
- I transitioned to a female identity about sixteen years ago and it was the single best decision I ever made. Marrying my wife, who stuck with me, gets an honorable mention but wasn't so much my decision as a decision we made together. (So if you go looking in the credits on those games, you will find my deadname. I don't care, just don't spam it.)
- I must have lived in some kind of weird sheltered bubble because I never discovered RLC until the coming-out series was linked in some trans groups I'm in. But like a proper fangirl I immediately binged the entire comic in about a week.
- I'm an old-school liberal who believes the first amendment is the best amendment. I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I vote.
- This ain't my first forum. I met my wife in a dial-up BBS, back before the internet was widely used. I've been active on one board or another almost continuously for the last 30 years.