I got an award!

And no, it's not that of "Queen of Lamest Blog Titles Ever". I only came in second for that.


The ever fabulous Raisa nominated me for a Blogger Award, which is very cool of her. There's a rule attached: tell my readers 7 non-operatic things they may not know about me. So here goes:

1. I'm fascinated by psychology. I adore it. Learning why humans react the way they do to situations is one of my favorite things, and I devour novels that deal with such topics. I also write them.

2. I had a deep and abiding yearning to be a Scholar of Some Importance as a teenager. Unfortunately, I'm really not made of scholarly stuff: I love to learn and research and write, but mostly in the realm of fiction. Dealing solely in fact irritates me, whereas the "what is" of writing is oh so enticing.

3. At one point in time I wanted to be a costume designer. I made loads of costumes, particularly for my home town's Renaissance Faire, and particularly outfits based on The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. I even spent a semester as an intern at the Utah Opera Company. Alas, that was when I realized that I'm really just not very good at things that aren't, you know, fiction, so I eventually gave it up. And I don't miss it.

4. I am incurable Romantic who has a hard time believing in the concept of True Love. And when I say "Incurable Romantic", I mean the head-in-the-clouds poet/writer/artist type who spends their days wandering in the woods and falling down holes, starving genteelly in Paris or Florence, and eventually dying horribly of TB. The ones who churned out poems and novels and music on such things as Death and Life and Life and Death. You know, that kind of Romantic.

5. I have always had a Thing for stories of Unjustly Imprisoned Men. I fully blame The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask for this. What did they do? How do they deal with it? What if they escaped? What if they were broken out? When I discovered Fidelio, it wasn't so much a surprise as a long time in coming.

6. I grew up with a deep and abiding hatred of Germany. Between my Jewish grandmother and her stories of the Holocaust and my immigrant father with his stories of escaping Cold War East Berlin, my judgement of the country in which I now live was one of deep disgust and shame for my ancestry and heritage. It took me years to get over it.

7. I love to cook and have been doing so for as long as I can remember. However, I have a hard time getting excited about actually eating. It's the joy of the act of creation that I like. I've been known to make food and then not eat a bite of it, but give it to other people with an "Oh, no, I don't eat X; I just wanted to try the recipe" attitude. This drove my mother bonkers growing up.

Now I'm supposed to tag a bunch of other people, but I'm not really comfortable doing that, so I'm gonna only pick one. And that is Lucy, from the fabulous, educational and informative Opera Obsession. Have at it, Lucy!