My full name, as seen on my birth certificate, is Kathryn Anisette Krueger, and I sometimes go by Kathy or Kat. I grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. I attended Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Willow Creek Junior High School, Lourdes High School, and Mayo High School, and I graduated from Mayo. Throughout much of my younger life I had a crush on a cute redhead named Dean Ingram, and I've had a soft spot for redheads ever since. That's probably part of why I fell so hard for Jeremy.
I discovered the internet when I was 15 or so, and I've been hooked ever since. My first email address was krueger@sparc.isl.net. I spent horrendous amounts of time on IRC, generally bumming around the undernet in #forest and #vampcafe with JaNdeR as my primary handle. I also played around on the local BBS's during that period of my life. There was a nifty little one called This Broken Machine, or TBS, that a bunch of the little geek boys in town hung out on. I met Sean, mentioned in a previous post, on TBS. My handle on the boards was Sunshine, and I was perky-happy despite emotionally-troublesome, messy stuff going on in my life. The year before I went off to college, I started mudding on ROM as Skuld. Years later I mudded quite a bit as Mircalla. These days I don't mud at all.
Upon graduating from high school, I headed off to the big city - New York. I attended New York University (email address kak203@is5.nyu.edu) for one year before transferring back to the University of Minnesota - TC (email address krue0136@tc.umn.edu). In college, I studied Computer Science. In 1999, I took 9 months off from UMN to work a Co-Op at IBM, Rochester (email address kakruege@us.ibm.com). It was interesting being back in the home town, and even stranger working at the plant my mother had spent 23 years working at. So many people that I worked with and/or for knew her or knew of her, and I felt that they all expected me to live up to her reputation.
Within a year, I ran off to work for Microsoft in Redmond, WA (email address kkrueger@microsoft.com). I worked at MS for a few years, and left last April. I've been on an extended vacation since, learning to dance and learning to play classical guitar from Peter Caruso, whom I absolutely adore. I still live in Redmond at the same apartment complex with my dog, Louie, and with my birds. I keep cockatiels, parakeets, and a lovebird. At some point I plan on going back to work, although I've been taking my time. I'm also considering going back to school.
Other hobbies, then and now:
- Music. I played the piano as a child and I played the cello in junior high and part of high school. I was in a girl's choir in my younger years, and sang in a gospel choir in New York. I played bass guitar just well enough at Lourdes to play in the school jazz band, and alto sax just well enough to play in the marching band. These days I'm learning classical guitar; I'd do much better with it if I put a bit more time into practicing.
- Drama. I made it into "A Fifteen Minute Hamlet" my freshman year at Lourdes and have been hooked ever since. I did drama all through high school, did Mantorville Melodramas at an historic opera house in Mantorville, Minnesota during my summers, did a bit of community theatre, and most recently played Mariana in the Microsoft Theatre Troupe's 2002 production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure". I also did speech team all throughout high school.
- Games. I love board games, card games. I started playing on the Zone long before MS ever discovered it; my handle there is Katthryn. I also played in a spades group on the zone for a while as Kitty_Dawg. These days I get together every Tuesday night with a group of friends in Capitol Hill to play games in person. I'm also addicted to the Sims, although I haven't allowed myself to play at all since last November.
- Art. I love oil painting, although I haven't done it for years. I mean to get started again, but it's expensive. I also enjoy sketching, sculpting, drawing, water color, - it's all good. I've recently started up with a bit of small sculpture and with water colors again.
- Literature. I love to read. Wuthering Heights is still probably my favorite book. One of the best things about not working is that I've got time to read; I'm loathe to give that up.
- Animals, birds in particular. As mentioned above, I keep cockatiels, parakeets, and a lovebird. I'd like to have a bigger bird or two someday, an amazon, maybe, or perhaps a macaw, but I'm not even going to consider that until I own my own home. I used to post religiously to several avian newsgroups, and have been meaning to get back into that.
- Dance. Swing! I'm way into Lindy Hop right now. I'm also on a bit of a Balboa kick. More recently I've started learning Argentine Tango, and I could see myself getting into that pretty heavily, too. I go dancing in Seattle 5-7 nights a week these days. I'll probably have to cut that down a bit when I get a job again, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
- Ultimate Frisbee. I first got into this while working at IBM, and played all the time while I was working at Microsoft. I haven't played all that much since I got into dance, but I'd like to get back into it someday.
So that's my life in a nutshell. Lots has been left out, but hopefully it will be enough for anyone who might really want to search me out.
We now return you to your originally scheduled program.
Note: All email addresses mentioned above are now defunct, and have only been included for searching purposes. These days if you want to reach me, you should try kkrueger@[REMOVE_CAP_TEXT_AND_BRACKETS]exmsft.com.
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