Wow, Machiavellian! I don't know what to say, I never would have expected this.
* takes out twelve page speech *
When I received the now ended Fan of the Week award I think I claimed to have been born in a log cabin. In my first article for the Gazette I claimed to be from an extinct knight order and the child of an angel and a demon. (One can make a fair argument for the latter, I have all sorts of strange ideas about theology.) The truth is a bit more mundane - I was born in Connecticut on the American east coast and except for one year in Virginia - which is where I lived when I first came to this forum, and I hope to return sooner or later - I've been here for all my thirty-four years.
Like most of you I suppose, my path here is a bit convoluted. As a child I loved science and mathematics, but by the time I was in high school this morphed to history. (I remember a surprisingly ugly debate with my physics teacher about the Battle of Hastings.) I also became involved in role-playing games, and through those games learned something of how to write and to use my imagination. There are those who'd say I rely too much on my imagination ... I'm a dreamer who constantly plots and replots, and I have an unfortunate tendency to be humming along with my data at work, then suddenly grab a piece of paper and sketch some notes.
I had EU1 back in its day, but I never really grasped it. I found the histories and leader profiles from the instruction book more interesting than anything. I forgot about it soon enough, until last April or so. I'm not sure how I ended up on Paradox's site, but I did...and started reading the AARs, and decided I *really* liked the alternate histories these people were writing.
I happened to own HOI1, but again I just didn't enjoy it. However the AARs convinced me to get a copy of EU2 through ebay.com, and that's about all she wrote. 'Resurrection' began soon afterwards, and even through a very difficult and painful move where I was away for...two months? ... the characters and plots quietly worked their way through my head. There was a second AAR, 'A Distant Mirror' which was a Hands Off for the Mongol Empire Scenario, but I didn't really enjoy it after the first few posts and was happy to rush through to the end. Currently I'm also GMing one of the PBEM Diplomacy games set up as a prelude to Paradox's next project.
As for what I want to do when I grow up, some days I'm still working on that. I've always loved science fiction and fantasy, but I have to say what I've read here in the past year's taught me a real affection for alternate histories and historical fiction.
Thanks again Machiavellian!