Karen Alfrey

Engineer, Researcher, Teacher, Musician, Writer, Gamer, Artist

The Basics

Name: Karen

AKA: Kiwi, Aunt Sissy, The Bovomancer

Age: Thirtysomething

Height: 4'11"

Glyph: The Kiwi

Tartan: MacCormick (Dress)

Weapon Of Choice: Rapier Wit

Shoes: Doc Martens, Converse All Stars, Birkenstocks

Beverages: Kiwi Strawberry Snapple, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Lemonade

Myers Briggs: INTP

Archetype: Absent-Minded Professor

Fictional Reflection: Hermione Granger

Animal Reflection: Cat

Schedule: Nocturnal

Superpower: Telepathy

Deadly Sin: Sloth

Alignment: True Neutral

Quote: "I don't need validation. I know I'm right."


Lego-me! (Via Reasonably Clever)


Hero-me! (Via Heromachine)


Doll-me! (Via Josie's Dollz)


Work Life

I'm currently a postdoc in the Biomedical Engineering Program at IUPUI, working with John Schild to develop computational models of neurons associated with the baroreflex.

Here's a brief summary of my research interests

Play Time

Gaming

As further proof of my unassailable geek cred, my life is currently being taken over by House of Cards, an Amberway PBeM run by some friends of mine. My character, Folly, intrudes on my thoughts so frequently that I even sometimes dream in character. Oh, and her page is way cooler than mine, for some reason.

My face-to-face game is progressing nicely as well. My character page for Genevieve now contains some short fiction and links to pages for the other PCs and NPCs in the game, all written in-character. I'm rather proud of the character images, too, especially Cate-Blanchett-as-Llewella. Photoshop rocks.

For more on my gaming life, check out my new gaming blog!

Words: A Love Story

Y'know that scene in "Say Anything" where John Cusack stands outside Ione Skye's window holding up the boombox? Yeah, it's a classic - but for me, it doesn't hold a candle to the scene where he flips through her dictionary, in which she's put a check mark next to all the words she's ever looked up. Now that was something this NerdGirl could relate to. My beloved red Random House dictionary, which I won for coming in, like, fourth in a state spelling bee in seventh grade (and which won an informal contest in my wing of my freshman dorm for having the most comprehensive definition of the f-word), gets so much daily use that it now lives on top of the Linux box for easy access. When I'm at work, I use Merriam-Webster Online. A lot.

So, I've never kept a regular journal, but in the spirit of "Say Anything," I'm now keeping track of the words I look up, just for kicks. Probably not interesting to anyone but me, but it is a bit of a peek inside a brain my own spouse considers "inscrutable".

A few of my favorite links

It's a Poet! It's a Sage! It's the World's Cutest Nephew Page!

........Now with World's Cutest Niece!

Last modified: 14 July 2002
alfrey@spatzel.net