I've been writing this journal since just after my 39th birthday. It's mostly a way to force myself to write regularly. The original title was Miriam's Midlife Crisis Journal. I changed the title to Areas of Unrest in late May 1999 and bought the areasofunrest.net domain name. The title is a sort of pun that came about from a euphemism for the Los Angeles riots. I claimed it's appropriate because I live in L.A. and I'm a riot. I've left Los Angeles, but I'm still a riot.
The quick version of who I am is:
Age: 45
Sex: Female
Marital Status:Single
Ethnicity: Jewish
Birthplace: The Bronx, New York
Current Residence: Fairfax, Virginia
Education: S.B., M.I.T. 1980 and Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 1990, both mechanical engineering
Occupation: Aerospace Engineer
Major Avocation:Storytelling
Other Stuff I Do:Travel, Volksmarch (international walking club), Crafts, Reading
Goals: See my Life List - Goals and Accomplishments
Obsessions: the Red Sox, world music, trying to simplify my life
I have two other web sites, by the way. My home page at cinenet has odds and ends, including a more complete bio, plus pages on storytelling, books and needlework, but is rather badly in need of updates. My newer travelogues are at xenophilia.net and my older ones will get moved there eventually.
My entries tend to be partly about things that happened and partly about issues I've been contemplating for no particular reason. I more often suffer from too many things to write about than too few. Some topics come up a lot - business travel (of which I do too much), real travel (which I don't do enough of), restaurants, random factoids, the deaths of obscure celebrities. I tend to get obsessed with something or other for a short period of time so just because I ramble about something for 3 or 4 weeks in a row doesn't mean you will ever hear about it again. I write at least weekly, unless I am on vacation (and, sometimes, even then) so there are updates almost every Sunday night. There may be updates at other times, but I make no promises.
Mom - My mother. She drives me insane from a few states away. She watches too much TV and stubbornly refuses to go back to college, like she was supposed to after my brother and I were through. She is determined to gamble away my inheritance at Atlantic City.
Dad - My father passed away in October 1985. He was a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto and of Dachau and came to the U.S. in 1948, when he was 18 or 19. (There's a long story about the ambiguity in his birthday, which I may write about someday.) Anyway, he went to Detroit Central High School and the City College of New York, became a civil engineer and worked for the New York City Housing Authority for many years.
Elliot - my brother. He's a computer programmer who lives in San Jose, California. He tends towards long periods of unemployment.
Ramona - Elliot's ex-wife. She left him for a liquor store manager from Memphis who she met on AOL.
Fina - World's most neurotic cat, having done too many drugs as a kitten. Full name is Empress Josefina. Elliot and Ramona share custody of her.
Marcia - a friend who I first met on the net around 1986. She and her husband, Jim, live in Colorado Springs and I get to see her every now and then on business trips there. We also chat on-line fairly often.
Robert - the gentleman with whom I've been conducting the world's longest running meaningless fling. We intended to have a brief affair in, oh, 1985. We tried to be just friends for a couple of months, but he'd be embarrassed if I told the story of how that ended. He lives in London now, so I don't get to see him very often. That may or not be a good thing. Chemistry is very evil.
John - a South African doctor who I met when he was the ship's surgeon on the RMS St. Helena. We were first introduced at the cocktail party on board the ship and got to spend a lot of time together when I was seated at his table on the second leg of the voyage. We've kept up the friendship via frequent email about a wide variety of subjects. John is a good friend and the sanest person I know.
Milo - my former boss. Inventor of the Swinesweeper, a method for eliminating landmines by training pigs to dig them up. We used to exchange weekly haikus. We still exchange puns by email.
Jim, Rob, Mary Joan, June, Dave, Dave, Mike, Barbara, Art, Lance, Suzanne - former coworkers
Jack - my current boss. He neither writes haiku nor puns.
Alan, Steve - current coworkers with my company
Valerie - our secretary
Brady, Kelly, Kurt, Alex - coworkers who work for other organizations. Alex is particularly colorful.
The Biona Bards - we used to meet monthly to work on stories and storytelling. We were well on the way to breaking up even before I left Los Angeles. They included Penny, Greg, Kane, Barry, and at various times Marsha, Dino, and Barbara.
Community Storytellers - the West L.A. storytelling group that first got me hooked on storytelling. Some people whose names may show up (in addition to the Bards) are Audrey, Kathleen, Lynn, Leonard, Katy, Hank, Michael and Leslie.
Long Beach Storytellers - another storytelling group I went to, though less regularly. Names I may mention include Nancy (actually, there are 2 Nancys there), Mary, Carol, Lee, Sylvia and Ed.
Norman - member of Long Beach storytellers who died in 1999
Patti, Elena, Wanna, Nick, Linda - assorted other Los Angeles storytellers
Ariane, Ralph, Margaret, Jane, Debbie, Bill, Laurie - D.C. area storytellers
Lonny and Lauren - friends who host sporadic game days. I stayed with them when I came back to L.A. and was apartment hunting.
Gene, John, Laura - other gamers. Laura is the world's busiest person and is usually working about six jobs.
Emma/Saori, Caracatacus/Bob, Tumbolia and Maegwin - People with whom I've played trivia and had horrible pun contests with on various MUDs.
Copyright 1997-2003 Miriam H. Nadel