About Me:

Name: Courtney

Age: 24, 25 on July 11

Location: Tyler and Dallas, Texas

Grew up in: Denton, Texas

Family: Mother, Stepfather, Father, Stepmother, three stepbrothers, two stepsisters, three grandmothers.

Education: BA in Journalism, May 2002

Writers: Michael Chabon, Irvine Welsh, Charles Dickens

Bands: Belle and Sebastian, Built to Spill, Spoon

Films: Fight Club, Trainspotting, Beautiful Girls

Places: France, Dallas, England

$1,000,000: Pay off all of my debt, convince C that travelling for a long time is a good idea, go around the world for a while, come back, and do something responsible with the rest. Would also give a girl graduating from my high school some kind of 'Get out of Texas for college' scholarship.

Other: I have been a vegetarian for more than ten years. I have a Border Collie and will soon own a Manx cat. I wear these glasses on about half of my days. I love bridges. I must take sleeping pills every night to be able to sleep. I'm in a sorority. I took German for eight years. I'm hopelessly addicted to magazines. I prefer Crane's stationery for letter writing. I collect postcards.

About the people I talk about:

Courtney - this is me. See above.

C - my boyfriend. One year younger than me, extremely intelligent, tall, handsome, charming and confusing. Is currently a middle school English teacher.

Cj., H., N., T. - My closest friends. I met Cj. during my first semester of college. He gives wonderful, honest advice. Getting married to V. in July. H. and I have been friends since fifth grade. She's the photograph to my negative - my perfect opposite but just like me. N. and I met when I was 21 and she was 22. We'd both broken up with boys over spring break, and bonded over the fact that we were both bawling during all three journalism classes the first Monday back. We've been very close ever since. I met T. online about five or six years ago, and got along right away despite the physical distance and age gap (she's 4 years younger than me) between us. I went to visit her for a week back in the summer of 1999. We're planning a Texas trip for her this fall. We talk every day, and know pretty much everything about each other. All of the above live in or around Dallas, except T., who lives in New Jersey.

A., M., P., S. - My most favorite computer friends. Have met M. in real life, hope to visit the others someday too.

I do know more people. I will add them here as I refer to them.

Why I do this:

I got my first computer, an IBM PC jr, on Christmas Day in 1984. We'd played with Apples at school, but my stepdad worked at IBM, thus I got an IBM. Oh how I loved King's Quest.

My interest in computers stayed pretty consistent throughout my childhood, and when I was in high school, I met a boy who liked computers too. It's so funny to think back on it now - one night we were driving down Beltline in Dallas and passed a CompUSA store. He said something like, "I want to tell you something, but I'm really embarassed about it. I like computers a lot, and run these things called Bulletin Boards on my computer at home." Much to his delight, I thought that sounded really cool, so he showed me how he could hook a phone line to his uh, Commodore or whatever kind of machine it was, and actually communicate with other computers! Amazing!

When he was in college he would sneak me into the computer labs at his school so I could use the internet. I thought Webcrawler was just about the neatest thing I'd ever seen, and the first thing I remember looking up was a list of famous serial killers.

Once I graduated from high school and started college, I had pretty much unlimited time to play on the internet. One day I thought, "Hey, this looks fun," and created my first website - way back in 1995. It was painfully terrible looking, and was only changed every now and then so my friends off at other schools could see what I was up to. I've had several websites since then in many different incarnations, and have attempted several times to do an online journal, but never kept up with it. I'm making a concious effort, this time, though, and am going to try to update at least the blog every day.

I'm about to graduate from college (seven-year plan), and will be starting a new career as a teacher this summer. There's a lot of stuff going on in my life, and a lot more about to happen very soon. I want a way to document this, and, to perhaps get feedback and advice from other people about my choices. I know reading other people's online journals over the years has helped me a lot - who knows, maybe someone can learn something from my mistakes too.

About the site:

Schadenfreude means something like malicious joy or pleasure in pain in German. Hochachtungsvoll means yours truly or yours faithfully.

The inspiration for my design is this postcard. I did the HTML myself, with help from various HTML websites. I'm still learning. Images are done with Photoshop 6.0. Much to my dismay, this site was built on a PC. Anyone willing to buy/donate a Mac for my use is more than welcome to do so.