thoughtful
armaina associates Blue, Chocolate-covered espresso beans, Trout, LJ, and California with me. Blue
I covered Blue previously. In addition to what I said there, I will also note that if one applies color seasons to me, I am a Winter, and thus have more of an affinity with the blue side of the spectrum, as opposed to the orange side. I like the color. It's soothing. It now has M&Ms! It is easy for me to find variants of other colors that I do not like. There are many reds and oranges I loathe, and even purple can be done badly. (I like most pinks, though.) Brown does not look good on me. Yellow is scary, and for submarines. Green is easy to do wrong. Blue is practically perfect.
Chocolate-covered espresso beans
I have this thing for caffeine. I like having it as a recreational drug. I also like chocolate. The intersection of this led to me bringing chocolate-covered espresso beans to work. I discovered chocolate-covered espresso beans in my late teens/early 20s, when I was still in Fairbanks, and I thought they were the best thing ever. I would keep them on hand, and give them out as treats and pick-me-ups to those around me. I have a difficult time putting into words exactly the role they played. They were more than just an accessory. They were an embodiment of adulthood and glamour and pampering and decadence as well as work ethic.
I don't think I have any on hand at the moment. I should fix that.
Trout
I had a perfectly normal relationship with trout (well, for an IRC person) up until 2007, when
beckyzoole and I decided that we were going to treat 
news comments like 
efw and set up a flamewar about something that very completely did not exist. That kicked off a mild obsession with trout, which has resulted in me being very silly with it, above and beyond the occasional trout-slapping. The prior fish-involved constructed flamewar with my best friend on a comics message board is firmly denied. :D
LJ
Ah, LJ. I have been on LJ since 2001, and have really enjoyed my time here. Since I volunteer and spend so much of my free time here, and socialize with other LJ people, this made me somewhat of the local expert on LJ at my former workplace, just as I was the expert on my former workplace with the LJ volunteer crowd. (I would occasionally wind up holding forth on DNS to a variously enthralled IRC crowd, and point out finer points of LJ stuff at work.) It's been a long strange trip. Things I learned at the workplace and LJ affected each other; I had quite a bit of experience doing text-based tech support prior to that job, and I learned a lot about saying 'no' to customers (mostly when they were trying to do things that they just could not do with what they had or with our service at all) and that carried over to LJ.
California
This is a relatively recent development. I was born in Alaska. My dad was from California, and his branch of the family is there. When I went to visit my aunt in ... was it 2005? ... I realized that I was coming home. I started making little mental plans to return. Not immediately, but there, on the back-burner. While I had discussed my plans to leave quietly with my supervisor, it came as a bit of a surprise to my team. And here I am. I already had friends here before I moved. For a natural introvert, I'm awfully gregarious, and tend to collect people wherever I go, and span otherwise-incompatible social networks. Being on the internet only makes that easier.
I'm not quite sure why San Francisco told me that it was home. Part of it is the wind. I am a child of the water and wind, with my feet in the mud. Phoenix is not much on the mud. The hills hit a certain part of my heart.
I am probably a suburban creature, although I love the convenience and smallness of the city. I love the sight of the ocean. I love the moon, huge above the hills. I love the vitality and so many people doing their own thing. I love the warm warm weather that's so rarely below freezing. I love the rain and the pearl-grey skies. I'm still trying to articulate to myself what exactly it was that called me here. But here I am.
As always with these, if I know you, you've just to ask and I'll come up with five things I associate with you. If I don't know you, I may amuse myself by picking five arbitrary things (or not).
