Who is Xandorra, anyway?

My name is Amy. I am 20-something years old & my birthday, for those who really want to know, is 31 July. Because some people have asked - I'm about 1.6m tall, have green-grey eyes and blondey brown, wavy hair.

I was born in England, but moved to South Africa when I was 9. I lived there until I was 18, then I moved back to England with my then-boyfriend, now-husband.
We lived in London for a while, eventually tiring of rush-hour trains & the pace of life there & we moved to Cheshire, were we still are!

I've been "online" for about 9 years & I've been "Xandorra" for about half of those. There's no deep meaning behind the name. When I first signed up to Yahoo, every variation of my name was taken. I asked Andrew (my husband) to suggest something quickly & this was the second one that came up (I didn't like the first). Becuase this site was first hosted at Geocities with that account, I called it "Xandorra's Place". The "X" is quite exotic which seems to make people remember the name, so it's not so bad ;)

I am a quiet & easy-going kinda gal. I hate any sort of conflict & have a tendancy to hide until it's over, which can be problematic. I'm not particularly social & only have a small group of close friends, but I love them to itty bitty pieces.

Hobbies

Apart from dolls, I adore webdesign. I especially like hand-coding pages, I still get a little thrill of accomplishment when I see the code I have written become a webpage. My current fixation is Cascading Style Sheets - they are truly awesome.
I do the usual things - read, listen to music, watch movies. I am also quite keen on Origami. One day I will take a picture of the paper brachicosaur I can make.
I also like anything that sparkles & one day I'm going to try and make my own jewellery. I love beads, I think they are so pretty. Lobe & Josie have really inspired me to give it a bash myself.

Favourite books & Authors

Oooh... so many! I love Science Fiction best of all. When I was younger, I was very into Fantasy, but I found you can only read a certain number of stories about an heir to whatever who goes on a quest with x-number of fantasy cliches to find the magic artifact of choice before they become rather tiresome.

Science Fiction short stories are almost better than Science Fiction novels. These are some of my favourite anthologies:

• Axiomatic by Greg Egan
  A very thought provoking volume. I can especially recommend Learning to be Me, Closer & The Moral Virologist
• Otherness by David Brin
  A nice collection of stories & some of his essays. Some of my favourite stories in there are Shhh.. (I just love this one!) & The Giving Plague

If you're looking for a good collection of stories, Gardner Dozois edits an annual anthology called The Best New SF, I think we're up to volume 15 now? It's alway a good read & I always look forward to Christmas when it comes out!

As for novels, I have a a lot that I enjoy, but there are some of my favourite favourites:

• Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
  This book is increadible. If you've read it, you'll know what I mean. I read it the first time when I was 15 & it made such an impression on me...
• The Truth Machine by James Halperin
  You have to read this book. It stays with you... You so want it to be true.
• Mars by Ben Bova
  I've read a lot of his books (Venus, Jupiter, Return to Mars) but this is my favourite. I've been into space & space exploration since I was just a little girl & this book just captures my feelings so clearly.
• The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett (official site is under construction)
  I've been reading Pratchett for years now & they just keep getting better! I can't decided on my absolute favourite, but some that I like just that little bit more are: Reaper Man, Hogfather, Lord & Ladies, Guards! Guards!, Moving Pictures & Nightwatch. His Discworld books for children are also hugely entertaining - The Amazing Maurice & his educated rodents & The Wee Free Men.
• Grass by Sheri S Tepper
  My friend Lobe recommended this book to me & I am so glad she did!
  It took a while to get into, but once I did, I was hooked. It was completely unlike anything I have read before. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't say anymore, but you have to read this book!

I also enjoy Stephen Baxter & Greg Bear.

Favourite Music

I have a huge CD collection. I listen to a huge range of music, whatever sounds nice to me. I'm not keen on Rap, R&B or Garage, but there is even the odd song from that genre that I like. I listen to a lot of New Age, Classical, 80's, Sound Tracks... I could go on forever! My current playlist (i.e. the CD's piled up next to my PC) consists of:

• Ludovico Einaudi - I Giorni
• Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time (greatest hits)
• Evanescence - Fallen
• Incantation - Music of the Andes
• Good Charlotte - The Young & Hopeless
• Roxette - Don't Bore us Get to the Chorus (greatest hits)
• Chris de Burgh - Quiet Revolution
• Johnny Clegg - Best of Juluka/Savuka
• Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell II
• Avril Lacigne - Let Go
• Bon Jovi - Cross Road
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the way
• The Cranberries - Stars
• Smallville - Orignal Sound Track
• Gladiator - Original Sound Track
• Pink - Missundaztood
• Solaris - Original Sound Track
• A Beautiful Mind - Original Sound Track
• Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
• TATU - 200km/h in the wrong lane
• Indian Summer - Various Artists
• Passion Fish - Original Soundtrack
• Steeleye Span - Below the Salt
• The Best of Bollywood - Various Artists
• Elysium - Auvergne Chants
• Bryan Adams - So Far So Good
• Busted - Busted

As you can see, I really need to put some CD's away! I've recently bought quite a few & have run out of space on my CD racks, so what can fit is being put away but what I listen to a lot is next to the PC. It's a bit of a varied list... I like eclectic.

Quickfire Favourites

• Colours?
  Green, blue, purple, black, earthy tones
• Flowers?
  Tulips, Daffodils, Roses, Jasmine, Lavender
• Beverage?
  Peppermint Tea, Rooibos, Coconut tea, water, Pineapple juice, banana & strawberry smoothie, chocolate milkshake
• Dessert?
  Raspberry Pavlova, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Fudge Brownie or Cookie Dough Ice Cream, Creme Caramel, Chocolate Fudge cake, chocolate brownie with pecan nuts, sticky toffee pudding, jam sponge with custard, melon sorbet
• Fruit?
  Raspberries, cherries, melon, yellow cling peaches, pineapple, coconut, nectarines, lychees, apricots
• Vegetable?
  Broccoli, cabbage, courgetts, red & yellow peppers, sweet corn, sugar snap peas
• Other foods?
  Chinese Lemon & honey chicken, beef in blackbean sauce, Chicken with cashew nuts, pepperoni pizza with pineapple, my homemade burgers, roast dinners, pasta with carbonara sauce
• Season?
  Spring or Summer
• Time of day?
  Twilight when the stars are just coming out, 3am or there abouts when everything is perfectly still & quite, sunrise & early morning in summer when you can feel the potential heat of the day, late afternoon in Summer

That's all for now!