User Profile

I has a cat.
'La Déesse' rhymes with 'Ah, say yes' - it's French and derived from my real name in the same way that 'Hergé' is derived from 'Georges Remi.' Other than that, I choose not to use my real name online except with close friends and confidantes. I'm an eccentric bluestocking from New Zealand, and a secondary-school English & Media Studies teacher.
I live in a very strange little flat that is one of a row of sort of conjoined cottages from the 1950s or 60s up a very long driveway that makes people feel like they're going to a farm. The toilet is off the wash-house; it's like the olden days. But the living-room and bedrooms are cosy and comfortable. I really, really like my flat. One of the banes of my life is conducting myself with sufficient frugality to afford to continue to live here. I like stuff too much.
I went to the University of Auckland and have a Master of Arts degree in English, topped off by a Graduate Diploma of Teaching (Secondary). I've travelled to the USA, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia and England, and lived in England too. My strengths include imagination, enthusiasm and humour, with a strong sense of history and feeling for language, and my weaknesses include depression, occasionally excessive introversion and a tendency to officiously correct people's spelling, punctuation and grammar. Well, I am an English teacher. Please tell me gently if I'm annoying you; I will try to make amends. And I take nice little white pills for the depression, so usually I am reasonably calm and cheerful. Hurrah!
The Main Cast
air_and_angels: me. Has a grey cat called Meg.
Wendy: my mother. A really wonderful woman but maddening at times.
Tony: my father. Will one day have a beagle called Alan. A bit of a loony.
Kate/Katie/Katinka: my sister who dyes her hair the color of Coca-Cola, hence 'Cokehead.'
Joan: both my grandmothers, aka The Good Nanna and The Bad Nanna.
jigglykat: a California girl who lives in New York and helps animate Kappa Mikey and Speed Racer and knows more about Pirates of the Caribbean and new-school Doctor Who than you. Has an elderly schnauzer called Gidget who exudes woe.
lostsailors: a Utah girl (but non-Mormon) and cousin of jigglykat who lives in Los Angeles and will be an important screenwriter if she sticks at it and knows more about It's a Wonderful Life than you. Has a small orange cat called Sebastian and a (late) guppy called Napoleon and miniature poodles called Ignatius and Bruce and so on and so forth.
eendje77: basically Nanny Ogg as a young woman, living in the Netherlands with a white cat and a frog. Alternatively, picture Dawn French as a Goth. Quite possibly knows more about Star Trek than you.
dayjournal: Jesus is her homeboy. She is emo and has a cat called Moo. She knows more about The X-Files than you.
With guest appearances by the staff and students of the school where I work, _poe_ who was the Indian baddie on Xena and knows more about Pulp Fiction than you, my honorary maiden aunt Jannie, and Eccles.

About 'Friends'
I wish that LJ called this feature something like 'Regular Reads' or 'Bookmarks,' because the label 'Friends' implies a closer relationship than I have - or can have - with many of the people whose journals I have on this list. The situation is ripe for giving offence to people to whom I bear no ill-will. I've taken people off my Friends list in the past, not because I grew to dislike them personally, but because I was no longer enjoying reading their journals. Our interests had diverged. We were never actually friends in the first place, any more than I am friends with the characters from Achewood, whose fictitious blogs I regularly read. (Ray answered one of my emails once though.) Likewise, when I don't want to add someone to my Friends list, it's usually just because there are so many journals on it already that it's in danger of becoming unwieldy. Periodically I trim it down to keep it manageable. Some people on my Friends list really are my friends - but they know who they are, as we have a relationship beyond Livejournal.
The reason this LJ is 'Friends Only' is for privacy reasons. Because I work in a school, I like to keep my online identity and my real-world identity separate. Kids today play on the Internet so much that if I didn't cover my tracks it would be easy for some of my students to bump into me online, and then I'd have to act like a good role model instead of just having fun. Besides that, I sometimes vent my frustrations with difficult students or colleagues in my journal, and obviously it would not help anyone if they read what I said about them when I was just letting off steam.
My point is simply that none of this LJ 'Friends' stuff on my part is meant to be elitist, snobbish or hurtful. Please don't be offended.
A Thing I Won


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Friends (24):

Mutual Friends (18):