Hi, Ginanna again.

I got off subject there on my into and missed a few things you probably want to know about me.

I live in the Village of Shenicqua, Wisconsin. That is spelled s h e n I c q u a. If you leave it completely out you get The Village and that’s a fictional town in The Prisoner, though sometimes I think I understand his pain. It used to be and still is a very exclusive outer suburb of Milwaukee. The area was first settled by wheat farmers and later dairy farmers after it was logged off. Because of all the lakes, a gift of the last ice-age, it eventually became a popular home-away-from-home for the beer barons, packing house millionaires and rich industrialists of Chicago and Milwaukee. If you know the history of Lake Geneva in Walworth County, the deep lake where Wrigley of chewing-gum fame had ocean going yachts shipped in by rail, you have a feel for the place. Shenicqua was even more exclusive but almost as easily reached by rail. The rich came here whenever Lake Geneva got too crowded with the proletariat, I.E. the average blue-collar folks.

In more recent decades many of the wealthy have moved to the west and south along with all those Federal tax dollars they siphon off of us here, that’s another story. Some of the rich kept their mini-baronial estates. Some converted them into fancy country clubs with luxury hotels, golf courses and Arabian horses to amuse the wealthy. A few donated their ill-gotten gains to charity and that’s why I’m here, there are several private prep schools and colleges in the area along with a campus of the University of Wisconsin system. All were former estates. I do my research here except for occasional trips to Mad City, our state capitol, and the BIG UW campus. All the schools are either in the village or within a twenty minute commute by car.

The community is currently a mix of the remaining rich and those who long for the old days, an almost bohemian artist community, lots of students, academics and that ilk AKA people like me, and just enough working class stiffs to *man the engine room*, so to speak. Hey, somebody has to staff the hardware store, be plumbers, fix cars, flip burgers and the like. I‘ve waitressed and I have nothing but respect for those poor souls. My tush still clenches involuntarily when I think of how many times it got pinched or slapped by rude diners. To be honest I liked the job and I would still be doing it if not for this confusion with the porn actresses … Aaaaaaah! God I hate it!

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, my dear great Aunt Agatha, remember she was okay, it’s what my parents did that I object to, the bastards. In any case Agatha left me a bequest in her will. I paid off my student loans and bought a neat house, a cozy Cape Cod. I rent out rooms to students in need, this nice couple Tammy and her life-mate Kymberley are my current tenants. For practical reasons and because I liked it, I bought a used Mazda Miyata convertible, powder-blue and cute as a bug! I needed a car to get to Madison, AKA Mad City as the bus connection was awkward at best and for a sports car it’s good on gas so I don’t feel too guilty. Locally I bicycle to get around or walk. It’s great little community though it is getting overgrown with artists of late. I mean, how many potteries and coffeehouses with poetry nights do we need? I’m exaggerating here but we are a very artsy-fartsy community.

I study, teach classes and blow things up, a joke among us organic chemist types. I also tutor students. That last item I’ve almost given up except when asked to by professors I trust. I had a bad experience with a student some while after the rumors started spreading that I was one of those porn actresses. This male student said he needed help with … I met him at his fraternity and … HOW could I make such a STUPID mistake? I’m supposed to be this near genius and I walk right into an attempted rape willingly. Thank god for taking a woman’s self-defense class, a female professor recommended one to me when she noticed I was working late hours in the lab and library.

I got out of there missing a few items of clothing but not anything else, and ran straight to the authorities, good move on my part, right? Wrong! The campus keystone cops said they’d investigate but nothing much happened. When I complained about a lack of progress some weeks later, I noticed a magazine of one of those *actresses* on the cover lying on top a desk. They’d failed to cover it up in time. I so wanted to tell those rednecks off but I’m not stupid enough to argue with the police so I used other means. No, I did not blow anyone up or poison them, tempting as it was. I simply hacked their university provided computer space and spilled the beans on the frat boys to the internet, every lurid detail. They’d been stupid enough to brag about their near rape, illustrated with digital pictures of my struggling self, no less, and stored them on a *secure* computer. What bone-heads! I blogged them back to the stone-age. NEVER piss off a geek.

Oh I like all sorts of music, bicycling, nature walks, snuggling with someone I love and, my guilty secret, I LOVE Cheetos, the fried kind. Give me a large bag and I’ll do ANYTHING!