Hello, friend!

What, you ask, is a renaissance faire junkie? Well, a renaissance faire junkie is someone who thrives on Renaissance Faires and can't wait for the local faire to open every year. So a renfaire junkie travels to different faires, and sometimes even plans vacations around these excursions. A typical junkie has one or more complete costumes: a fancy costume, an everyday costume, a rainy day costume, and cold weather costume, etc. How many costumes, and how fine they are, are directly proportional to either the renfaire junkie's aptitude with a sewing machine or income. When your tax refund goes toward a new court dress, you know you are a true renaissance faire junkie!

A renaissance faire junkie should not be confused with a rennie, although many renfaire junkies are rennie-wannabes. Rennies, or renfolk, are the people who actually work the Renaissance faire circuit. In short, a Renaissance faire junkie is a patron and a rennie is a participant. I have been told that there is a special term for people like me who are more than mere patrons but less than true participants ... participatron. Hmmm. I think I like "renfaire junkie" better.

Now that you know what a generic renaissance faire junkie is, I should tell you that I am The Renaissance Faire Junkie. Yep. I got a lock on the name. Registered it with the great state of Texas. I do business under this name. So, accept no imitations. There are many renaissance faire junkies, but only I am The Renaissance Faire Junkie. And this cat to your right, his name is Simon (aka Ghengis Cat), and he is the official, copyrighted, logo-cat of The Renaissance Faire Junkie.
The preceding was a vague attempt at a legal mumbo-jumbo statement meant to warn the dastardly and confuse the innocent. 'Nuff said.

OK, but who is this Liz person?

After high school I spent my college years at The Univerisity of Louisville. I went to Speed. No, I was not on speed, I attended Speed Scientific School. That's the engineering school at U of L. I am a real engineer. It's also my "family school." My sister Virginia attended Speed; my cousins Nancy, Nick, Bill, Steve, Bill (yes, 2 cousins named "Bill") and Bob attended Speed; and I had another cousin on the faculty.

Although I majored in Applied Math/Computer Science, I also had a minor in German and spent a lot of time with non-engineering students. So I wasn't your typical engineering geek. Well, gee, I mean, I was one of the first women to attend Speed, and you just couldn't hang out with any of the guys unless you were an item. It just wasn't done.

After many years of building a career, I'm back in school again at The University of Texas at Dallas. My area of study is Cognition and Neural Networks. Nope, this is not a Computer Science (or even Engineering) program. This program is in the School of Human Development. Yep, one of the "soft sciences."

Photography

Whenever I visit a Faire, I always take my camera along. I generally use a Minolta Maxim 9 (I have another one, a medium format Yashica-A that is really, really, old but takes beautiful pictures). Most of the time I use a 35-70mm zoom lens, but I always have my 70-210mm zoom and my 28mm with me. With the extra batteries, film and filters, it's a lot to carry! All of my camera equipment fits into a big, black backpack. There is no way to disguise this backpack or make it look period. Most of the time I stash the backpack with a friendly shopkeeper (I know lots of friendly shopkeepers!) and simply carry the camera and several rolls of film.

I do all of the photography for my web pages except for the images in Valentine's Gallery of Rogues. My goal is to have a pictorial record of each faire that I visit. Sometimes this record is journalistic; sometimes it is very artistic. You can always tell when I'm in an artistic mood ... I shoot a lot of black and white. I have several thousand pictures of different faires (it's not unusual for me to shoot 10 or more rolls in a single weekend). A lot of these are portraits of the people I have met at Faire. Maybe someday I'll put together a book of the best of these interesting faces.

Software development (including Web stuff)

I'm a bit of a generalist; I've done it all: development, testing, QA, management, maintenance, technical writing and customer support. Most of my work is done on various flavors of Windows platforms using C, C++, WinRunner and Perl. I really prefer unix, but, well, hey ... the job is on Windows.

Some of the web sites that I manage include faire.net, Nebrig & Associates, Highland Anvil, Medieval Moccasins, and The North Texas Water Garden Society. I also manage several net rings, one of which is The League of Renaissance Merchants.

Other stuff I do

Corresponding with The Renaissance Faire Junkie

You can always send me email. I read it all, but I don't promise a response (I try to respond to everyone, but sometimes I just get swamped). My email address is renfaireJunkie@faire.net

Or, if you prefer to put pen to paper (or inkjet to paper, or laser to paper, whatever strikes your fancy), you can send me hardcopy missives via the US Postal Service at the following address.