[Mika: Kathy Kunkle also teaches History and Latin. She taught me Latin while I went to Midland, and Dan Kunkle is a damn good math teacher.]
At the age of twelve two things hapened -- I discovered AD&D, and my family bought a computer. This combiation invariably led to first MUDing, then MUSHing, and finaly to almost full-fledged geekhood. Yay! My first Pern chaacter was named Starratiel, but I eventually got tired of playing her-the angst was killing me-and gave her to a Midland student. Now you can see me on PernMUSH as Lusani, who now rides blue Myndirth at Ista (we have our own standard for canon, thankee) and is Meg's half-sister and the bane of her existance.
[Mika: Poor Starratiel went through many users, in fact, I don't even really know who plays her anymore. I think it's my friend Amber, who also was Akima. All I know is that I've yet to do anything to Star's page since 1995 or there abouts. If you take out some updating of links...]
{Izzy: Star was actually mine all the way through. The myth that she wasn't is due to a remark that ended up in a whole web of lies back when I was still in my Being A Twit About A Guy stage. And I haven't updated this bit since then. Aie. I did stop playing her, though, for basically those reasons.)
Well, life goes on, people get older, and that's how I've come to be here. Deciding that I didn't really /want/ to go to high school with all the people I knew and hated in eighth grade, I took myself off to Phillips Academy, there to spend four years living in a dorm, eating cafeteria food three meals a day, and using a computer lab to get online. And I've finally made it to Senior Spring. Woohoo!
My family moved from Midland to Dunn School last year; Dad became a math teacher, and Mom worked for the college counseling and nurse's offices. In the same summer, I was doing fun things like holding down my first productive job while simultaneously falling in love, looking at colleges, and writing a novel. Yes, I am still sane--or as much so as I ever was. We are moving to Gould Academy this summer. This is Maine, so we'll either freeze to death or be eaten by shapeshifting clowns. Yay.
My Family "You can't pick your relatives." -Someone I'm supposed to know about, probably.
Well, the distance between my immediate family and the families in, say _Little Women_ and such books is something like the distance between Earth and the Crab Nebula. The distance between us and the Manson or Menendez families is significantly closer, but not there yet. :) Profiles of all follow. (You're reading this, therefore you care. If you don't like it, stop.)
My Dad
Educational guy. Good with math, a skill I didn't inherit, and likes camping, an insanity that wasn't passed down. He's a generally nice guy who hasn't done anything colossally idiotic like threaten guys I bring home with steak knives. (Which does make me have to do that for the ones Emi dates, but hey.)And we have quasisimilar tastes in entertainment. However, he's completely insane. He dances to the blender, for one thing. For another, he talks to the dog in German. (Neither he nor the dog is German. I think this may be a bizarre form of Tourette's syndrome.) My dad also went to Phillips Andover, and graduated with honors in the class of 1969, thus enabling me to do the "Mallrats" joke.
My Mom
Vastly cool woman with a bizarre egalitarian outlook that makes her lecture me about offering to pay freshmen to shovel snow for me. She has Ethics. Dad has Ethics. How they managed to birth and raise me (Izzy "Ethics are good things for other people to have" Kunkle), I do not know. The two of them come up to Phillips occasionally and ask me such things as, "Have you joined a religion which makes it a sin to vaccum?" and "How can you possibly wear a red sock with a purple one?" The answers, in case you were wondering, are "No" and "Because they keep my feet warm."
Emily
The source of incoming issues of Seventeen in our household, my sister actually cares about things like clothing and makeup. Oddly enough, she's going to my dad's former school, where students have neither hot water nor central heating, rattlesnakes abound, and everyone chops wood. She also listens to Ani DiFranco. So the kid's somewhat redeemable.
© 1997 Mika Ariela Epstein, who takes
absolutly NO responsability for the horrors
contained on this web page! In fact, she is
SHOCKED! Just SHOCKED that Izzy would want this
as her home page
Copyright 1998, Izzy Kunkle,
who responds to the above coment, "Bleah."