Hello to my Witch (and anybody else who might be reading this)! I'm sure that soon, questionnaires will be flying around. I tried to be extra-thorough with mine since I don't have a huge presence forumwise, but here's a quick rundown.

Hi! My name is Liz. I'm 24 years old, I'm a Cancer, and I live in Upstate New York. I'm in college right now and I'm a fine arts major, but I hope to pursue a graduate degree in Art History and eventually go on to get my Ph.D, because apparently I love school so much I never want to leave. My eventual area of focus as an art historian will probably be the Italian (and specifically the Florentine) Renaissance, both because I love the period and because there is a preponderance of primary resources — commission documents, papers, and journals. The Florentines apparently loved keeping journals. However, my true love among art history is the classics — ancient Greek and Roman art, especially sculptures.

I love to travel, and I love visiting museums, of course. My favorite artists include Praxiteles, Andrea del Verrochio, Giambologna, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Simone Martini, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Artemisia Gentilleschi, and Tiziano/Titian. Of more modern works, I also like Max Ernst and have an abiding fascination with Salvador Dalí, fostered by a high school sweetheart, and Auguste Rodin, Alphonse Mucha, and the architect Rem Koolhaas.

I enjoy roleplaying games — I've been engaged in RP since I was twelve years old, and was an officer of my high school's D&D and tabletop roleplaying club. I also like computer/console RPGs — in spite of the bugs, I think Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords was one of the best-written games I've ever played. I have a Macintosh computer, so I don't get to do a lot of PC gaming. I do play World of Warcraft, on the Moon Guard server. My current "tabletop" game is hosted over Skype and is a Warhammer 40,000 game — we have a few Deathwatch marines, one Rogue Trader, and my own Dark Heresy commissar. I don't play the 40K minis game, but I like the figurines themselves and would like to paint some.

I also love to read — I'm big into cyberpunk science fiction. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is my all-time favorite novel, though it's not part of his cyberpunk oeuvre. Pat Cadigan is also a favorite, and I also enjoy the official novels for both the Warcraft and 40K franchises. On the more fantasy end of things, I liked the courtly intrigue of Jacqueline Carey's books and would like to read more in that vein, and I also love Neil Gaiman. I don't listen to very many audiobooks, but I'm willing to give them a try — I used to take public transportation and read on the bus. Now that I drive, it has cut down on a substantial chunk of reading time.

I do read non-fiction on subjects that interest me (mostly art and cooking, but I've also read books about libraries and sundry other things). i picked up Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confessional from the library this summer, and it made me want to give up on academia and just become a cook. A little. He has a great voice as an author.

Aside from my art and reading, my biggest hobby is cooking. I love to browse around on tastespotting, and I'm subscribed to several recipe blogs as well as the recipe community on Reddit. A history professor in high school recommended we all take up breadbaking as a stress-reliever, and I fall back to that occasionally (I don't own a bread machine and until recently didn't even have a handheld mixer, so kneading dough was more effective than punching a pillow). I really enjoy baking, but I also like to cook for my family (I live at home with my mother and younger brother and commute to campus). Thai food is a personal favorite, though less so with the rest of the family, who are happier if I make Americanized Italian or Mexican cuisine. I also enjoy mixing cocktails, and windowshopping at the Williams-Sonoma in the mall.

I'm a little bit new to BPAL "fandom;" my next post will probably be a breakdown of what scents I already know I love and what scents I think I'd love to try based on what I'm discovering works for me, and after that I'll start answering the daily questions and any questions emailed or PMed to me.

I'm really looking forward to my first round of Switch Witch!