Second (and last!) 'about me' meme

[thrihyrne]

mrsquizzical asked about 3 interests and icons, so behind my friend the lj-cut, here they are.

‡ my australian experience

This could take forever, but I went to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, arriving on January 20, 1986. I was 16 years old and 5 days at the time. It remains one of the singularly most formative times of my life and affected nearly every aspect of who I have become; I'm not sure how else to put it. I've spent a lot of time as an adult wondering if it was where I was that affected me so profoundly, or if it was the time in my life, ie: had I gone to Wales, or New Zealand, or some other country where we had a contact insane enough to want to have an independent American 16-year-old for a year, would I feel that kind of connection there? I don't have an answer, obviously, though my marrow-deep connection with Scotland makes me think that I'm driven equally by people (my beloved friends and family in Australia) and geography (Scotland). At any rate, I go back every 3 or 4 years and plan to go in September for my 20th reunion from the school I attended, which was where I met fungus_files so many years ago. Love you, matey. ;) And meet Mrs. Q in real life!!! :D

‡ menage a trois

I added this after looking at brumeux77's post. I'm not even sure if that terminology is correct; I, myself, wish to be a part of a group of three, rather than a pair, should I be involved with anyone(s) again in the future in a manner that goes beyond friendship. With three it seems that there's less likelihood of someone feeling left out, because if one person is in a bad mood or extended funk or whatever, there's someone else there to provide comfort or whatever else. In other words, you can spread out the joy and the sorrows among two additional people, rather than taking the brunt of anything from just one person. I recognize that I may well never experience this in real life, but it's what resonates deeply to me as 'right' for me.

‡ psalm chanting

I learned how to sing and really enjoy both Anglican chant and Gregorian chant in high school and then on at university. I love chanting the psalm in either setting, whether quite old or 20th century settings of psalms. There was a period of about a year when I lived in Nashville when I chanted the psalm every week from the back of the small chapel where I was the music director for the early service, and I grew to really love the rhythm of the different plainsong chant refrains and chants themselves, having memorized the starting tone from my piano at home. I sang a psalm for the Easter Vigil service this year and had several choir buddies and other congregants tell me how much they enjoyed hearing me; I sometimes forget that other people get quite nervous singing things like that in front of people, but I've done it so much that it's comfortable more than nerve-wracking.

Icons!



This I made as my nod to the Lómelindi, the Tolkien Smial branch that I co-founded with eldritchhobbit back in Nashville. Lómelindi means nightingale or dusk-singer in Sindarin (I believe! Don't think it's Quenya) Elvish. So the icon is of a nightingale and has the name of our group in the Tengwar font, the written alphabet (one version) for Elvish. It's gorgeous, if I do say so. I'd thought of getting my pseudonym (Thevina Finduilas) tattooed on me in Elvish, but it doesn't look as pretty to me as Lómelindi does. If you go here to the front page of my website, you'll see my full pseudonym in Elvish. It's attractive, but Thevina by itself just isn't as aesthetically pleasing!! I'm proud of this icon as I made it early on in my Photoshop learnings and I think the colors turned out really well. I like the mood of it, all 100 X 100 pixels.



Ah, 'understated hero' Ron. This icon is a sentimental favorite of mine because I made it while sitting side by side with our laptops next to elicia8, having met her in real life for the first time. She's a genius with Photoshop, and I was clumsy and slow, to be kind. With this she showed me how to layer elements, how to adjust colors, and I came up with something I was reasonably proud of. She was so fast— short-cut city on her computer, and I fumbled along, and learned a tremendous amount. Plus meeting her was the coolest thing, ever.



'trees in mist'
It's from a pic I found and I just modified the coloring on it a small amount, fading from purple to green from one edge to the other, but quite subtlely. I loved the ambiance of the picture, as I'd often like to disappear off into a misty scene like this icon. Sewanee, where I went to college, is known for its fog, an element that I absolutely adored about the campus. I'm a glutton for ambiance and mystery, I suppose. ;)