I’m Bethany, actually. (I’m not Beth or Stephanie.) Yes, actually, I do use the word “actually” a lot. One of my favorite movies is Love Actually.

For my 100th post, I wrote the traditional list of 100 things about me. I don’t expect you to read that, really. But it was fun to write.

I am 33 years old. I’ve been married to Troy, a Navy officer, for 12 years, and a stay-at-home mom since my daughter Annalie was born in May 2004. When I do have a paying job, it’s usually something to do with kids or education.

I crochet and take lots of photos. I read every day. I love to sit around bookstores and read and drink coffee, but I don’t get to do that as much as I used to, which is probably a good thing because those coffees are expensive. I have the bad habit of interrupting people when they’re talking. I love to cook, but I also love to eat out. I like writing with green ink and am partial to prime numbers. I used to be a runner, and keep meaning to get back to that someday. If you offer me a choice between chocolate cake and lemon cake, I will probably choose lemon.

I first created a homepage in 1997 using the free webspace our ISP provided, mainly for fun and to teach myself HTML. It morphed into a way for Troy to keep friends and family up-to-date during his first Navy deployment in 1998 (and his second and third deployments in 2001 and 2003), and a catch-all means of staying in touch with people as we moved around. I maintained the site for seven years, updating it about once a month with news and photos, moving it to new webspace each time the Navy sent us to a new city, often redesigning the site in the process.

Then Annalie was born. I kept it going till she was 5 months old, when it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to keep the site up the way I wanted to. So I closed up shop. I always intended to have a website again one day, so three years later, here I am. I expect this will be a constant work in progress. Wish me luck!