My online name is Iryl because she’s a character in a book that I’ve started and haven’t finished (the state of most of my novels). My real name is Beth, or Elizabeth. Please just call me Iryl unless you know me personally. I’ll get really confused if you start mixing things up.
I was born in 1983. I have red hair, blue eyes, and am paler than Dracula. I'm frighteningly cheerful. Like Hello Kitty with a knife, Jon (my brother) says. That's in person, at least. I exert myself excessively to make myself agreeable to others -- and I cry easier than I'd like to admit. I'm so sensitive that I can be taken for reserved, because I can get hurt so easily.
I’m one of the few people that can enjoy almost any type of music and not really care about any particular band or artist. Alex is all about the Beatles and very much not about some other things, but I’m all good. I will say, however, that some things can ruin the song for me – too much cursing or explicitness. For one thing, music helps me write and anything that distracts from that is bad. For another, I'm a Christian and, well, you know. Morals and all.
My religion is nondenominational. I am not affiliated with the Baptists, Protestants, or (as some seem to believe) the Catholics. The churches I attend use only the Bible and have no creeds or heirarchy outside of the individual church. My position on other Christians is ambivilant -- if folks are honestly trying to do what Jesus said, the more power to them. I will never, ever say that someone is unsaved if they just have a different group name than mine (yes, this is done -- don't be surprised).
I also can honestly say that I have a decent understanding of the failings of my religious community as well as the strengths. I pray that this understanding will be used by God to help the Christian community I am part of become stronger. I do know that corruption and dirty fighting exist in religion, but I also know that good people and clean, inclusive leadership exist as well. I take a practical view of my world, neither skewed toward anger nor toward naievete. I know these things, I should add, through painful personal experience as well as classroom learning. (I've been told before that I grew up in a religious bubble -- if this is true, it was filled with pirhana.)
My dad's a preacher with 50% disability from his time in Vietnam (diabetes and some sort of very painful but non-threatening skin thing). My mom's an image consultant, president of both the local groups she belongs to, and is always stressed out. Both my parents were reported beauties in their youth. I can't tell because, hey, they're my parents! I don't really care!
My brother, Jon, is a preacher in Minnesota (where he lives with his wife, Leah). He reads all of these old theologins all of the time -- he now speaks like they write. ^_^ Meh. We have a really good relationship.
Dad was my hero growing up, but Jon was my role model.
My parents have four cats whom I love. Three are skittish females. One is a lazy boy. I'm obsessed with cats – as my husband can attest.
I’m married to Alex, a computer programmer from Arkansas. He doesn’t have an accent and hates trucks. ^_^ He’s so great.
This one time in a Hastings parking lot, there was a fat red spider on the antanne of the car. Alex flicked the spider off and it landed right behind his right rear wheel -- so he got back in the car, started it, and BACKED OVER the bug! *triumphant* I've never loved him more than that moment.
We have one cat, Tiger, who we adopted when we moved to New Jersey. I was baking a cake one day when we had a friend over, and I exited the kitchen and said, "You know what the best thing about Tiger is?"
And Alex said "Cake?"
And our friend said, "I could sum you both up in that one exchange."
Because I love my cat and Alex loves cake.
I graduated from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. It's a private Christian college and I majored in English with a minor in Bible. Though that still does not make me an expert about all Biblical things. I went to Harding mostly for the Bible classes and the Christian teachers because I'd had non-Christian teachers all my life. And I went for the society because, well, being a shy preacher's daughter means I've always been kind of secluded from my church youth groups (kids can be pretty shallow). So I wanted something drastically different from public school and tiny youth groups and Harding was it.
I liked Harding -- it had its pluses and minuses like every school. Being a Christian college and run by mostly old people, of course it was going to be strict. Everyone in the dorms had curfew at 11pm weekdays and midnight on weekends. If they had any reason to believe you'd been doing something against the rules (drugs, alcohol, smoking, dancing, sex), you got kicked out (though I think you could come back later). Dancing was just because the people who ran the place grew up when dancing was becoming more sexual. So until another generation takes over, it's taboo there (though we did have performances with "choreography").
Harding is not as strict as David Lipscomb and is more strict than Pepperdine. So it's sort of a nice medium with a tendency more toward conservative than liberal. For me, I never broke any of the rules so I didn't worry about it (I'm a bad dancer and I went to bed at 9pm). And the academics were really pretty good.
And the people were amazing. I mean, sure there were people who just acted nice and "Christian" in order to be popular, but Harding also attracted lots of really deep, sincere people with a craving to be honest and righteous in their lives and doing God's work. I met my husband by joining a mission campain led by the husband of my French class's assistant, Karen. She was the sweetest, most soft-spoken and quirky darling of a woman I'd ever met, and I signed up because I'd promised God I would if a not-too-scary campain came my way.
And I attracted my husband because I was a cow. Literally. It was halloween and I had an awesome cow costume on with rubber udders -- and people would try to touch the udders and I would call them perverts.
Anyway, these days I'm a writer. I mean, I always have been, but I'm full-time now. You can follow my somewhat pathetic career on my professional writing site.
I always cry when the episode of Buffy comes on where she died to save Dawn's life against Glory and the big swirly portal. My brother laughs at me for it. But that's why I don't like really powerful sad books or shows -- they always make me cry, no matter how many times I've seen them.
I like Tara best when she gets to interact with the rest of the cast more. It shows other levels of her personality that didn't come out when she was with Willow. A sort of motherliness.
I love fantasy, romance, and fairy tales. But not grocery store romances. Those are implausible and silly. I like romances like Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables, Crown Duel, etc. Something where the plot moves the romance instead of the romance dictating the plot, you know?
I was obsessed with Chrono Trigger for a while. It was my first RPG (role player game). Super Mario Cart and Legend of Zelda are way cool. I now have a PS2 and Alex is content to just watch me play (a skill developed from years of watching his older brothers play video games because they were bigger and could wrestle the controller away from him). We're working through Final Fantasy and trying to get hold of some more 2-player games.
