All About Me - Four Years Later!

It makes sense that while the main "Happy Anniversary" post should mirror the topic of having my blog turn four, the second post to this would be best served in updating my bio - life was very different four years ago.

So here goes:

Yes, this is me.

I've explained the nickname Tr'Aislínge at some point in the last four years, but not in the original post of 21 August 2005. My name is really Aislínge, pronounced ash-lin[g], but years ago when I worked at Miller Harness Company (then located in East Rutherford, New Jersey) as an assistant to the Apparel Purchasing division, three of us went out to lunch, actually had a drink or two and made up nicknames that have stayed since. Melissa Kaplan (now in Texas) became Smells, Rio (originally from England) became B.O., and I'm commonly called Ash, so I became Trash. I put the apostophy in shortly after to make it look more like a nickname, and since I prefer the long version of my name, I have Tr'Aislínge.

I've had my e-mail address, traislinge@yahoo.com, for at least 12 years, since 1996 or 1997. Before that, I had wiccanese@juno.com, an inexpensive software package that allowed one to write e-mails and read e-mails at their leisure and then connect to the Internet just long enough to send and receive missives. That was how Vinnie Kochhar and I met - in a chatroom, but the wiccanese address was similar to someone else he knew. I haven't thought about this in years.

Back to me. I'm 41, live with my husband of 19 and a half years, Luis, and we have two cats: Siobhan, who turned 1 in early July and Sorcha, who is about five months old now. I still miss my first cats, Ariel and Chelsea, who made it to the ripe old age of 18 years each the summer of 2008.

Luis and I will have our 20th anniversary on Monday, 22 March 2010. I will turn 42 on Tuesday, 26 January. I happen to love my birthday, think it should be a national holiday in the United States (it is a national holiday in Australia, but has nothing to do with me), should have a (free) advert run in the New York Times to announce it and absolutely want my coworkers to come and sing to me and my friends to throw me a party. I would really love a surprise party... but Luis hates party planning and even when he threw my Big 4-0 party, he paid for it all and I arranged it all!

I weight about 175lbs right now, which is better than the 190lbs I'd weighed in prior to going on vacation in late June. I returned from Montana almost ten pounds lighter and joined a gym and have kept the momentum going. I'm by no means slender, but I am working on it. I would be happy to see what 150 looks like and then take it slowly from there. I doubt I would ever get so thin that I would look unhealthy, but it would be nice to look 41 - not 50 because I'm carrying 40lbs extra!

I'm 5'4.5" (I want that half-inch noted!), and while this is the low end of average, I would not mind suddenly growing, say, two inches. Well, two and a half inches. I think 5'7" sounds like a great height to be - tall enough to see over crowds better, and the added plus of making the weight loss thing a lot easier! And I'd like-- okay. By the time I am done going down this road, I will look like Michelle Pfeiffer!

I have brown eyes, dark brown hair which has enough grey to warrant colouring it, and sallow skin that tans poorly - at my darkest, I'm lighter than other people's winter white. Normally I could care less about having colour on my skin, but my trip west saw me tan beautifully and I admit, it's been rather nice! So once a week I lay in my hammock and renew that colour.

I enjoy a multitude of mostly sedentary activities, which doesn't help - reading everything I can get my hands on (except the classics, something I've never been fond of); I love to write - blogging, letters, etc.; Facebooking (I don't think that is a verb, but it is turning into one); some television; animated movies; learning about the sciences and other things; learning new words and improving my strong but not perfect English skills; organising and (my one semi-sedentary but not when actually out activity) being an EMT.

I've been an Emergency Medical Technician now for just over six years. It is very interesting and completely satisfying work. I an a volunteer EMT, both because I enjoy giving something back to the community and because I am an adrenalin junkie. Doing this volunteer is really great. The hours aren't always ideal - 18:00 to 06:00 - but I like putting in Sundays to get the daylight riding experience.

Now, I suppose I could turn out to be a stay-at-home homemaker but those of you who know me, know that is not possible! I don't like, want or have kids. I love my line of work and I love where I work. I'm happy with everything about my profession. I have a charmed life. It is not perfect - whose is? But it is better than average and I would not trade it in for anyone else's!

Luis and I live in an 11-room house on the Lake Hiawatha side of Parsippany - we are in Parsippany, but not in any other section. Parsippany is quite big - here is what Wikipedia has: "According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of 25.4 square miles (65.8 km²), of which, 23.9 square miles (62.0 km²) of it is land and 1.5 square miles (3.8 km²) of it (5.82%) is water. Lake Hiawatha is an unincorporated area located within the township." It also has Troy Hills, Lake Parsippany, Mt. Tabor and Rainbow Lakes. All have the same zip code except Lake Hiawatha.

I was born in Lenox Hill Hospital (Manhattan, New York) to Harry and Wendy Trebilcox on a Friday at 10:39. They divorced in the early 1970s and Harry went to live in Pennsylvania and my mother and I moved in with Ray Kellogg. I have the unique family set up of having two fathers, which is interesting. They are both wonderful people and very different from one another.

I spent the first two and a half or three years in Demarest, New Jersey (Bergen County); moved to Wallington, New Jersey (also Bergen County) after that and lived there until I was 13, then we moved to Wayne, New Jersey (Passaic County) where I grew up and moved out at age 22.

Luis and I moved in together in October of 1990 in Fairfield, NJ (Essex County), then bought our first house in Lake Parsippany (Morris County) in 1994. We had to get a bigger house in 2002 when his mother died and we got the inheritance... his father. Not exactly what I had in mind when the word inheritance came up... but on the other hand, I love our house, the area and the squad! So while yes, it is an unmitigated pain to live with Luis' father, there are the payoffs, too.

I've covered four New Jersey counties in 41 years, which is not too bad!

I also grew up in Trucksville, Pennsylvania (Luzerne County) where my grandparents lived. Here is the entire Wikipedia entry on this teeny town: "Trucksville, Pennsylvania is an unincorporated village located in Kingston Township, Pennsylvania, a township of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. It is the "neighbor town" of Shavertown, located literally adjacent to Trucksville. The village is the site of the Lands at Hillside Farms, a popular small dairy store planned to expand into a major U.S. attraction the likes of Williamsburg, Virginia. The town has a volunteer fire department, Methodist church, and less than 1,000 residents. Trucksville is named for the town's founder, William Trucks who operated a sawmill in the 19th century."

I stayed there every summer, every school break a week or longer and every Christmas. I loved being there and I really loved my grandparents. I was never close to my mother's mother and my maternal grandfather was a smoker and died when my mother was 15 - more's the pity, because I think we would have gotten on extremely well.

Professional success came late to me because I'm flaky and have to struggle to manage what comes so easily to many others. I started out working at Wyckoff Bakery while I was in high school, then worked in the Willowbrook Mall, then my mother pushed me to go to Kelly Services, a temporary agency in Fairfield. I worked for two days filing and hated it, then went to NJCT and learned how to operate an absolutely flooded switchboard. Eventually I moved to being a receptionist at different places, including Miller Harness Company, where a big guy named Izzy decided he liked me and hired me to be the assistant to three people and him in the Apparel Purchasing department. I left there in 1994 and went on to Fillimerica as a receptionist, Meta4 Digital Design as assistant to the owner, and then finally to PNY Technologies in January 1998 as the Human Resources Rep with one other person and the manager there, Jocelyn Rondina.

I stayed with PNY until April 2001, then had some temp jobs until I became the Human Resources Generalist for Universal Solutions in 2003. The company began its permanent downhill slide in early 2005, when I left there and went to Givaudan as a temp from March until July, when the manager of the Liquids Compounding department died (we had been working on making me a permanent part of the staff). I made the choice to leave there and temped briefly at Berlex, then began temping at a private facility in 2005. It was the strangest place in the world to work after all the corporate time... but I would not ever work anywhere else!

I think that covers all the highlights!