User Profile

Hi, I'm Karen (aka Kate, my grandfather's nickname for me)! I live just outside of Boston, Mass, but I'm originally from Shelton, Connecticut (home of the Wiffle Ball!). I have a cat named Trillian who is the sweetest cat ever, except when she's walking on my face at 5am.

I'm awfully fond of this guy right here, who occasionally comments on my posts as mister_bland but doesn't like eljay:


I went to RPI. The major activity I did there was Pep Band, where I made some of the best friends of my life. I still get back there at least once a year, especially for Freakout (Go Red!). :)

I work at a company in Cambridge, Mass that sells antibodies, I'm in the tech support department... I help people with their Western blot, ELISA, IHC, IF, ChIP, and IP experiments. Fun! And I get to use my brain, which is always a quality I look for in a job.

I like to watch cheesy movies (especially on MST3k). Also, I am a sucker for bad disaster flicks (The Core? The Day After Tomorrow? The new War of the Worlds? Yes please, with a side order of hysterical laughter). I don't watch much tv, but South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC), Law & Order, Iron Chef, and Good Eats are some of my favorites. My absolute favorite movies of all time are A Clockwork Orange and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And yes, I do get shit about having such disparate movies as my two all-time favorites. Hey, I'm a Libra, would you expect anything less?!?

My favorite band is the Saw Doctors, from Tuam, Ireland. I've seen them 4 times, and they play great rock and roll. :) I also love R.E.M., TMBG, The Killers, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, Death Cab for Cutie, Audioslave, and Rusted Root, along with classic rock, 80s pop, 90s grunge, classical, and Celtic music. I can't stand country, but love bluegrass. I hate rap. I don't like techno. I'm very picky about my music, but have been told I have eclectic tastes. ;) I also play lots of instruments, but only own an acoustic guitar (a Fender that's seen better days), electric guitar (a beautiful green sunburst Burns), and a tenor sax. At various points in my life, I have also played the bassoon, clarinet, bass clarinet, and contrabass bugle (the tuba-like thing in drum corps), and more. But I can't play a freakin' harmonica to save my life. :) I also like to sing, sometimes it can be damn near impossible to get me to stop singing. Hehe. ♫

I spend way too much time on the internet, and absolutely love computers. The one I have at home I built myself, it's a 2.4gHz P4 with a gig of RAM. It runs SuSE Linux 10.0 (GNOME). It used to be named Pippin, but I renamed it The Cheat after I installed Linux when Windoze shit the bed (as in The Cheat is Not Dead!). It's perty:

My laptop is a 2.8gHz P4 with 768mb RAM running Windoze XP.

I like to crochet and knit (mostly knit). Not so much any more, since my commute has shrunk from about 4 hours a day to 3 T stops each way and two short walks. I also like to read (Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, Fiona McIntosh, etc.).

When I'm with friends, I enjoy playing board games (like Settlers of Catan and, most recently, Puerto Rico), card games (like Munchkin and Apples to Apples), drinking cold ones (Guinness! or Yuengling, if it's a Yueng-a-ling dragon), playing xbox (Halo and/or Soul Caliber II), quoting homestarrunner.com and Zero Wing (what happen?), and just plain being silly. Of course, I do have to endure my friends tickling me and trying to get me to laugh until I can't breathe *cough Sebastian cough*. But I can think of worse things. ;)



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