[3W4DW] 13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they?

[kaberett]

... How'd they get there?

(I'm going to be away from the Internet for much of Saturday daytime for family stuff, so let's have this now in an attempt to calm me down enough to sleep.)

Yes.

Lots.

• cavalier cookery: see question 12.
  
• flamboyant socks: in my secondary school, the only piece of clothing that might ever be visible that wasn't regulated was socks. I got into the habit. Having stripy feet makes me happy. Having rainbows up to my knees makes me happy. Having dinosaurs up to my knees makes me happy. They are a way for me to pretend to be formal, pretend to be adult and sober and sensible, and hide a little of myself away.
  
• gender geeking: because it helps me understand myself. Because it helps other people understand themselves. Because gender expression versus gender versus oppositional sexism is fascinating. Because sociology.
  
• history of theology: because it was reading about the history of the Bible that set me free, that made me realise I didn't need to feel guilty for not believing.
  
• lumps of rock: see question 12.
  
• male-coded formalwear: because, for a long time, it was the only way I knew how to express my gender, to be legibly myself. I'm learning other ways, these days, but I owe a debt of gratitude.
  
• mantle melting and plate tectonics: rocks. This is what I love most: that I can look at a single volcano, a single region, and if I've chosen it well it will inform global models. Because it's what's underneath us.
  
• other people's libraries: no faster way, I'd argue, to get to know someone; because it's a fantastic way to be introduced to new things; because being permitted to browse feels like an expression of trust, an extended hand; because I love seeing how other people organise them.
  
• proper chemistry labs: because for years I thought I'd be a chemist working in total organic synthesis, and though I love that my laboratory is the planet, I still pine, sometimes, for clean benches and fume hoods and proper pipettes and lab coats and jars of solvents and glassware and the magic that is coaxing clear colourless liquids and white crystalline powders to behave just so. On the plus side, I'll likely be working in something pretty similar again in the near future, and it won't be the same, but it won't be awful either.
  
• snail-racing: because snails are lovely, and yellow-and-brown striped ones especially so (Cornish beaches in the summer, and Mama who never had her hair unhenna'd when guests were staying, even when she was an in-patient), and because childhood.
  
• stompy queer activism: because well-behaved women rarely make history, and the same is true of queers. Because asking nicely rarely works. Because I'm allowed to make noise, to take up space. Because the more I do, the more okay I make the world for kids like me. I'm not likely to ever be a biological parent, but this: this is a thing I can do; this is a gift I can give you.
  
• stories with dragons in: see question 12.
  
• sun dials: because I love the ways we've devised to tell time and to track the skies. Because of Frank King. Because of the beauty and ingenuity of design. Because of the ways we try to tame our world, try to slice it into pieces we can manage, and how large - and how gently amused - it remains in spite of us.
  
• tenor envy: because I knew I wished I were a tenor long before I understood anything else about my gender.
  
• trilobites with eyes on stalks: trilobites are extinct marine woodlice. They lived in shallow oceans; most of them were benthic - they lived on the surface of the ocean floor. Some were infaunal: they burrowed. Most infaunal trilobites were blind. Some, however, had periscopic eyes on stalks. (Also? Trilobites' eyes have lenses made of calcite. Minerals have three optical axes; along two of them, calcite exhibits double refraction. Trilobites very carefully grew their eye-lenses so that the calcite crystals were oriented along the single optical axis that results in them not seeing double. If you don't think that shit is cool, I'm afraid we can't be friends. :-p)
  
• unopened art supplies: because colour and joy and potential are waiting.