Introduction

My name is Ashley. I am a fairly simple 25 year old girl and reside in Western Kentucky with my husband, Colin, and our precious 17 year old cat, Pouncy. I also have two fish: a one-eyed calico telescope goldfish and a female betta. I am currently a computer lab teacher at a local elementary school for grades K-5. I don't feel like a kid, but I don't feel like an adult either. I just feel like myself which can sometimes feel like not enough.

Personal Life

I met my husband... on the internet. We met back in the summer of 2001 in a Yahoo Group. Neither one of us were really looking for "someone." We started out as friends, and gradually it grew into something more. We decided we wanted to try having a "relationship." Long distance relationships are majorly difficult.

Colin came and visited me for the first time in December of 2001. It was very stressful and didn't go the way we had hoped/panned. It's just a little hard to go from having no boyfriend to having one online to suddenly having one in front of you. We had to work on our relationship a whole lot. We would visit each other every four months or so. It was expensive and difficult. Colin moved to Lexington, KY in 2003 to go to the University of Kentucky's graduate school. This made him closer to me, but I still had to drive 3 and a half hours to see him. I was doing student teaching at the time, so we only saw each other every two weeks or so. When I graduated in 2005, I moved to Lexington to live with Colin. We got engaged that Christmas (2005) and were married in June of 2006. We moved back to Hopkins County (where I have lived all my life) and I got a job as a computer lab teacher. Colin got his first job this summer. He is an instruction librarian at the local community college (where I attended school!).

Personality

I'm a very shy person. I'm not the type that will just go up to someone and strike up a conversation with them. I'm not much of a talker. I prefer to listen. Once I feel comfortable with you, I will be more of a crazy, hyper, joker-girl and share with you some of my interesting talents (like burping the alphabet or barking like a dog). I prefer being at home with close family to being out in public with a large group of people. The more people I am around, the more likely I am to become agitated or irritated.

I generally like to make people happy. As a result, I sometimes find myself making others happy before making myself happy. I often will do anything anyone asks of me, therefore I sometimes take on too much. I hate saying no to people and then feeling guilty. On the other hand, I can also be very opinionated. If I get ticked off about something, I can get pretty heated.

Career

Most of my professional career has been in the field of education. I have been: a tutor, a Girl Scout troop assistant, a reading mentor, worked with a reading therapy dog, a second and third grade teacher, a school technology coordinator, and a computer lab instructor. I also briefly worked at an outlet clothing store and the local community college library (where my husband now works!). I enjoy working with children, but I do not necessarily like the way education is evolving/has evolved. I despise constant testing of students, how "Every Child is Pushed Ahead", and the lack of importance placed on teaching technology in schools.

Internet History

My family got its first computer when I was a sophomore in high school. In the beginning, I was really into computer games. Once we got the internet though, I quickly became addicted. I wanted to create a website for my favorite band, Duran Duran , so I signed up at GeoCities and got to work. I knew absolutely nothing about webpage creation. I didn't like the limitations of the GeoCities SiteBuilder, so I looked for an alternative method of creating websites. What I discovered was Microsoft FrontPage (Express) on my computer. I used FrontPage to create my website. I taught myself everything with the exception of a few tips I picked up from Lissa Explains .

I became really interested in web design. I became a community leader on Geocities. This was back when site names were things like geocities.com/sunset_strip/... Basically, what I had to do was check a block of websites and make sure the sites were not breaking any of GeoCities' rules. This is very similar to my duties now as a WorkerBee for The Quilting Bee . I was also in charge of the online Teen Hangout page for my block. And then... GeoCities died and became Yahoo Geocities. The End.

My sister introduced me to a lovely show called Digimon: Digital Monsters one summer, and I again became obsessed. So obsessed, in fact, that I began writing Digimon FanFiction over at fanfiction.net My stories were overly dramatic and often lacked character development (because everyone reading my stories was already familiar with the characters). I developed quite a following from my stories. I guess I had a few fans of my own. To this day, I still get at least one email a year inquiring about my fanfiction and where my stories can be found. Wow, I feel so popular.

During my senior year of high school, my English teacher introduced me to the world of blogging by telling us about a website called Blogger where you could create a free blog. This sounded cool to me, so I went home thta day from school and signed up. I had that blog for several years. Apparently, it's one of the things that attracted my husband to me. ;)

Nowadays, I still love the internet and am still pretty obsessed. If I go a few days without the internet, I feel so behind in things. If you're ever looking to find me online, there's a 99% chance you'll find me on The Quilting Bee website where I am a Princess Bee. I love the Q*Bee! (If you aren't a member, go join now !) I don't think I could ever survive without a computer and the internet. I hope I never have to.