Oh, that sounds so stupid. What does my mother think she's doing, anyway, giving me a diary for Christmas. I'm 26 years old, for the Goddess' sake. (Maybe it serves me right for not telling her I'm not a Christian anymore).
Well, Mr. Diary, my mother is sure to hunt you down next time she visits to make sure I'm telling you stuff. Since you've got pressed wood pulp for brains, Mr. Diary, I guess you don't know anything about me. I'd better start at the beginning.
My name is Renaissance Alison Smith. It's not my fault. My mother (who saddled me with you as well as my name) is a history teacher who did her doctoral research on some obscure artist from Renaissance Italy. She had me right after she got the degree, and, well, here I am. So anyway, I have a first name nobody can spell. Most people don't even know it, though. I usually say my name is Renee, anyway most of my friends call me Ren.
My mother, whose name is Emily, is now a high school history teacher. My father is a tax lawyer. I swear, tax law is the most boring stuff on the planet. I've heard enough lectures on the subject that I know far more about it than I ever wanted to . Why my father thinks that basis and imputed income are appropriate dinner table topics, I will never know. Well, what can you expect from a man named Jon Smith?
I'm an only child, so that's it for my family; on to me. I'm short, about 5'1" tall, with shoulder-length blond hair and brown eyes. I'm not pretty, which I consider a good thing. If I were, people would call me cute. I hate cute. I just wish I could get people to take me more seriously sometimes. They seem to equate my low height with being childish or something. Makes me want to shoot them, which, by the way, I know how to do. Dad keeps a gun for protection, and he taught me how to shoot it. Now I've got one of my own. I can almost always hit what I aim at. There's a secret to that: choosing a big target. (It's hard to miss the broad side of a barn!)
By profession, I'm a bacteriologist. I have a master's degree in pathogenic bacteriology from Michigan State. I got my undergraduate degree at Penn State, because I didn't want to have to pay out of state tuition.
College was a real revelation for me. Until I spent a semester living in a dorm room with a complete stranger. I didn't realize 'til then how many personality quirks I have that might annoy somebody.
I like to live in an organized environment. Or, as my roommate Melody put it, I'm a 'neat-freak.' Okay, maybe I am. It drove Melody crazy. Eventually she put a piece of duct tape down the middle of the carpet, and told me I could only keep stuff super-net on 'my' side. That drove me crazy.
Other than that I had a pretty good year. My boyfriend, Aaron, I met in one of my basic biology classes. We got along great until I fell under the influence of my next roommate. She..., damnit, I'm late for a meeting. This is your fault, Mr. Diary.
- Ren
I'm back. Mom wouldn't be happy with just one entry, so I'll continue. Where was I? Oh, yeah; Aaron. He was a really nice guy, very logical and practical. He just couldn't deal with me going all spiritual on him. What happened was, I got a roommate who was a pagan. She taught me all about her religion. I couldn't help being interested; I'd always been an indifferent Christian, anyway.
Biology is the study of life. Learning about biology, you can't help but realize that plants, bacteria, everything is made of the same stuff. There's nothing that makes human beings intrinsically better than any other form of life. Christianity is just so humanocentric. worshipping a Goddess who is equally the mother of all life just makes so much more sense.
Well, getting involved in this stuff meant that I suddenly had a whole new group of friends. Before, I'd really just had a bunch of acquaintances. We'd talk when we saw each other, but I didn't go out much except with Aaron. Anyway, I had all these new friends, and the only real problem I had with them was they kept hugging me. I guess I just come from a undemonstrative family, the I don't like a lot of casual touching, especially with strangers. Even Aaron didn't hug me very often (at least not in public). Besides, Mr. Diary, do you have any idea how many germs get passed from person to person every time they touch? (I took my first Micro course that year and I was both fascinated and disgusted.)
Goodbye for now, Mr. Diary. I don't feel like talking to you anymore. (You're not much of a conversationalist.) I'm going to go do a couple crossword puzzles out of my new Games magazine, then go to bed.
- Bye,
Ren
I just finished reading this great mystery novel called The Open Hand by Dr. Stephen Edwards. Best one I've read in a while.
Well, where was I in the personal history I've been feeding you? Oh, yeah, getting involved in pagan religion. The most interesting part of it all was the magic. I was always a bit skeptical about the things my friends thought they were doing magic-wise. It usually seemed to me to be mostly wishful thinking.
Now don't get me wrong, I believed in magic even then, just not the stuff that my friends were doing. I mean magic has to exist. I mean just look at life, all the way down to the genetic level, and then all the way up to consciousness. It's just all so incredible. Next to that, magic is easy.
So I learned the religion side first. I'll get to the magic part later. If I get out of order I'll skip stuff
Aaron and I broke up in a loud and messy fight. He thought Wiccan was even dumber than Christianity, and had a low tolerance for my 'wasting my time with religion.' I weighed my options and chose against Aaron.
My grades suffered a bit from my new preoccupation, so I only graduated cum laude, but my grades were still good enough to get me into Grad school at Michigan State.
Almost the first thing I did once I got there was to look for some other pagans on campus. It's kind of funny how my priorities had changed. I don't even think I'm that deeply religious; I just know that this is the sort of people I want to hang out with. It has to do with the sharing of a certain type of mindset, I think.
Any way, I had trouble finding the sort of people I was looking for. I found the extremes, you know, the people who claim to be powerful magicians and get stoned every weekend to the ones who talk but don't believe.
I found a few people, and we mostly were just casual friends. I've since decided this was a good thing. I think I'd gotten a little out of touch with reality. (Believing in 'reality' is optional; knowing what everyone else sees as reality is still a good idea.) Roxanne made me realize that when she started teaching me. She said she had no use for someone so closed off that I couldn't interact with anyone who saw things differently than me.
Roxanne. Now there's a story. One of those casual friends I mentioned introduced me to her. She set up a meeting between the two of us.
I'd been so busy all week with research and teaching micro lab to clueless students who didn't understand fractions, that I almost didn't go. I shudder to think of the opportunity I almost missed.
Mr. Diary, if you ever come to give advise to anyone on the subject, people discourage them from serving an apprenticeship at the same time as preparing a Master's thesis. It's just way to much work.
You see, Roxanne St. Claire was my mentor. She taught me about the Verbena, guided me toward awakening, and taught me magic.
I don't think I want to go into a lot of detail about that. If my mom ever gets ahold of this book, she'll have me committed!
Where did I leave off? Oh, yeah, there. So I survived a very hectic year, getting trained in two different fields.
Once I actually started learning how to do magic, both fields came together, sort of. I mean, what I do is primarily life magic, and I learned to focus by applying it to my thesis research (Correspondence between toxicity of Enterotoxigenic E. coli ST enterotoxin and mannose sensitivity of pili receptors,' if you care.) It was really neat; I could just look at the bacteria and see how different conditions I set were affecting them. No microscope required. Cool, huh? Of course, I still had to use a microscope to keep my advisor from thinking I made up all of my research.
I didn't want that; Dr. Tecklinski is a good guy. He came from Durham, and he knew who I should contact to get a job in the area.
I wanted to move someplace new, to 'try my wings' as Roxanne put it. One of Dr. T's contacts came through with a good job offer, so here I am.
I've been working hard since I got here; I haven't even gone hunting for people to hang out with. I mean I know where the Verbena around are, but other than the various festivals I don't see them much. I know I just struck out on a tangent, where was I?
Oh year; I'm working for a company in RTP called Darmore Laboratories. Its one of those companies that makes the equipment, agars, strip tests, etc that get used in microbiology. It also has a research division which tests equipment and also develops and studies different strains of bacterias.
I hae my own (little, tiny) lab, essentially a cubbyhole with a door, a window, a bookshelf and a lab bench, but, well, its 'home.' I have to step outside to get practically anything I need to use except for test tubes or a microscope. (That's okay, I don't really need a lot of equipment.) I've been spending alot of time recently classifying E. coli strains. I've run more agglutination tests lately than I want to think about.
I don't have much of a social life, so I think I've covered everything up tot the present. So this is goodbye, Mr. Diary, until something else happens that's worth reporting. Bye.