About Beth...

Random facts, in the form of a reverse chronology of my life. It is long, forgive me.

2004: The year of the belly.

2003: The year of many changes. Matt and I get married!! And then buy a house!! Feeling forced into maturity (learning about mortgages and escrows and ridge and soffit vents has a tendency to do that to you) but still feeling very immature, hopefully in a young-at-heart kind of way and not a you're-such-a-loser kind of way. Things are great, and we're anxious for our lives to get boring again.

2002: Matt and I moved into our dream apartment - a loft in downtown Ann Arbor. Our parents, of course, didn't understand the attraction. "But mom, it's a loft. And it's downtown." It was quite cool, but in many ways very inconvenient. Carrying 20 pounds of pottery paraphernalia down three flights of stairs to the parking garage and then back from the garage and up three flights of stairs for class once a week got old fast. But we loved it. For nine months. And then we moved.

2001: Finished grad school, moved to Ann Arbor, and met my main squeeze, Matt - all in the span of a month. Matt was cute, and funny, but not at all my type. Anyway, he put a lot of effort into trying to charm me, and I guess it worked cuz we's a be married now. My nephew Andrew was born, looking every bit as cute as his big sister. Oh, and I suppose I should mention 9/11. Our office gathered around the television to watch the news (after the staff meeting ended, of course) and my colleague, Steve Thorp said, "The world will never be the same again." An eerily accurate prediction.

2000: Having stupid amounts of fun in grad school.

1999: Started graduate school with great intentions and soon realized that I thought it was all kind of a joke (as in the higher-ed-ivory-tower-research-freak-show). Became a little jaded and a lot disenchanted, but decided in the end it was best to just play the game so I could get a good job. Plus, I was getting paid to go to school and take cool classes and meet cool people and life was very good. How could I complain?

1998: Spent a few months in Salt Lake City, which I found to be, all-in-all, a very boring locale. Then moved back to Columbus to start grad school. Saved up money working as a "fabricator" at a hospital. I actually worked in a shop! With a lathe! And a 10 foot tall drill press!. It sucked. My beautiful niece Leah was born, a definate "lifetime" highlight. I made some extra cash bartending at this neighborhood bar called "Ledo's." It was kind of a seedy little joint, but I hear it's quite the hot spot in town these days. I'd like to think I had something to do with that. Or not.

1997: Moved to Cleveland to live with my stepsister while I figured my life out. Got a great job at Newman Outfitters and discovered the gear-tech geek lurking inside me. I found myself regularly comparing the volume per second pump-speed ratio of various water filters and contrasting the benefits of internal and external frame packs. It didn't help that we had mandatory training sessions every Saturday morning on such topics as "Two ply or not Two ply: The many layers of Gortex."

1996: Went to Ecuador, deep into the Amazon for three weeks as part of a program through the Natural Resources and Anthropology departments. The trip was a graduation gift from my dad (thanks dad!). We took a plane, a motor boat, and then a canoe to reach our destination, and were completely surrounded by jungle for hundreds of miles. Awesome. I was the most at-peace there than I've ever been in my life. Abandoned plans to study medical anthro in grad school and decided to go into the environmental field.

1995: Marathon wedding year. Went to 13 weddings in the span of 8 months.

1994: My brief foray into phlebotomy. I was doing genetic epidimiology research for my honor's thesis, which involved extracting DNA from blood samples taken from various ethnic groups. Dr. Crews, my advisor thought it would be a good thing for me to learn how to draw blood. After some initial training on a plastic dummy, Dr. Crews volunteered to be my very first victim patient. Fortunately, my brain has successfully suppressed a good deal of what happened next, but I can still remember the screaming. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but it didn't really matter because I knew I would never be phlebotimizing again.

1993: Grew up a lot this year. Met Kyle. Spent a semester in Mexico, an incredible, life-changing, experience. Worked as a waitress for the summer in Yellowstone. Broke up with Kyle. And got back together with Kyle (a pattern that continued for the next seven years when we finally called it splitsville for good). All in all, a fabulous year.

1992: Tore my anterior cruciate ligament playing soccer, which meant no more sports for a year. I had reconstructive surgery and was on crutches for two months! It was winter. Which means ice and snow and slush. I couldn't put any pressure on my leg at all so when my crutches would slip out from under me I had no choice but to just spin and fall on my back. Lovely. Started college in the fall and discovered my love for good coffee and bad beer.

1991: Elected class president. I had a very strong platform - a new salad bar for the cafeteria. It was no fun at all; I hated every minute of it. I ran against this girl named Gretchen Reger, who I didn't know very well. We ended up living together through college and became buddies. She is still one of my best friends to this day. I wish she would have won instead of me.

1990: Flunked my driver's test three times. Fourth time's a charm. Went on my first archeological dig with the local University. It was a "salvage dig" - a new condo was going up so we were salvaging what we could before it was destroyed forever. We found a few burial sites, which I helped to excavate. It was unsettling to disturb these graves that were 10,000 years old, but the thought of them being cemented over by a condo helped ease my worries. I got to keep anything I found that was not in the clay substrate because we couldn't document where these items came from. I still have part of a jawbone. Eeyoo.

1989: Started high school. My sister left for college at the end of this year. It was wonderful; we fought constantly since the day I was born. Then I realized I missed her a lot. Somewhere soon after we became very close and still are to this day - talking on the phone at least three times a week. Me: "Hey. What are you doing?" Her: "Making dinner. What are you doing?" Me: "Nothing. What are you making?" Her: "Pork chops. I got this great new recipe. Too bad you don't eat meat." And so the stimulating conservation goes for the next hour or so.

1988: Transferred to a new school - Gesu - where my best friend Jenny Driscoll went. It was much bigger than my old school - there were two eighth grade classes! I'm still thankful to this day that I did not get placed in Sr. Mary Itch-a-Crotch's class who had a very bad habit of, er, nevermind.

1987: The year my dad says I went from Legos to lipstick overnight. Not exactly, but definitely a dramatic transformation from the "very awkward" years to the "still-awkward-but-not-nearly-as-awkward" years.

1986: Watched the Challenger explode. We were one of the few classes in my school that actually got to watch this live on television. It was devastating. I think it was particularly disturbing for me because ever since I could remember I wanted to be an astronaut when I "grew up." I had this huge poster of the inside of the space shuttle hanging up in my closet. Okay, perhaps that is too much information. Soon after I did a report on human evolution and decided that I'd rather be an anthropologist.

1985: I got really into Origami and would fold everything I could get my hands on. My fifth grade teacher asked me to teach the class how to fold something. I picked an iris, something I thought was fairly easy. So I prepared some instructions and gave a short presentation to cover the basics. Needless to say, the exercise was a complete disaster. Why don't these people get it? What's wrong with this people?! In some weird way, it really bothered me - deep down I'm sure I considered myself a failure. Who needs this kind of pressure when they're eleven? Speaking of inappropriately-placed pressure, I highly recommend the movie Spellbound.

1984: I got my basketball stolen right out of my hands while waiting for the TARTA bus. My sister was home sick, so I was waiting for the bus by myself in front of the Sound Asylum/illicit drug lab. All of a sudden, there were two very tall, very intimidating, guys standing on either side of me. I was standing in between them holding onto my basketball with a death grip. Next thing I knew, the ball was gone, and the two guys were halfway down the block. Standing there in shock, I screamed at the top of my lungs "JERRRRKS!" Surprisingly, that did not inspire any guilt or remorse and I never saw my ball again.

1983: Developed my first real crush. Trevor Riechman. Trevor moved to New Jersey in the fourth grade and I was devastated. I remember getting really depressed listening to the Kenny Rogers song, "Through the Years" on the radio in my mom's Nova on the way to school, thinking about how I'd never see him again. Pathetic.

1982: The year of cursive! Also the year of vigilante justice. My bike got stolen by some neighborhood punk. Weeks after the crime, my cousin Missy spotted someone riding my bike down our block. The perpetrator made some modifications to the bike, but the "Country Girl" chain guard was unmistakable. My Aunt Toni called the police and then got in her Coupe de Ville to chase him down. Inspired by my Aunt's zest to reclaim my bike, everyone joined in on the chase. We eventually corned the poor soul on Floyd Street: a cop car, the Coupe de Ville, and about 15 kids from the neighborhood. It was great.

1981: My parents divorced (although strangely I have no memory of this). Also, I had my first existential crisis. I was taking a bath and all of a sudden I had this overwhelming feeling that - what if when we die there is absolutely nothing? I couldn't contemplate "nothingness" or my life ending and then - that's it for all eternity. At the age of seven, it was quite scary. My parents took me to a psychiatrist (I didn't want to go, but my mom said she would take me to McDonalds if I went so naturally I gave in) who said I was just trying to cope with my parents divorce. I disagreed and tried to explain that I was just neurotically-advanced for my age. At least I wish I would have said that. Matt thinks all of this is very funny, in a Woody Allen/Annie Hall kinda way - one of the many reasons why I love him dearly.

1980: My parents transferred me to St. Francis in Sylvania, Ohio. My sister and all my friends were all enrolled at the neighborhood school, and my dad was drove me to Sylvania 15 miles away to go to another school. I was angry. My parents say that transferred me because I was the only kid in class who knew the alphabet and I deserved to be with other alphabet-knowing kids. I think it had to do with the fact that I was the ONLY white kid in my class. My parents are not racist, but they probably thought I would feel out of place. All I knew is that I wanted to be with my friends. But I adjusted and the next year all the kids from my hood transferred to St. Francis. Yeehaa! The Old West End Posse represents.

1979: Expelled from Preschool for biting Baye Perry. No excuses - that was an awful thing to do. Although I don't have any memory of it at all. But this story has a happy ending. Four years later, Baye Perry developed a little crush for yours truly, and gave me a watch to prove it. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty amazing as I was SUCH a geek in third grade, and I have the pictures to prove it.

1975: When I was two, my parents moved into a new house one block over from our old house. At some point during the move, my parents realized that I was missing (!). Eventually they found me sitting on the porch steps of our old house. Which is amazing because I have a HORRIBLE sense of direction. I think my sense of direction must have peaked at the age of two.

1973: I was born December 6 at 6:00 a.m. My parents thought something was wrong with me because I slept the first three days of my life. "What's wrong with this child?" Things haven't changed much, I still love to sleep. Especially in.

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