| Jeanny House | |||
| Biography # 220 | email: jeannyh@fastmail.fm | ||
Jeanny rhymes with Penny. Oddly enough, most people don't know this. My life has been scarred by a constant stream of mispronunciation if people see my name first or misspelling if they hear it first. We all have our burdens to bear I grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and though I have in the past wandered far from there, I still have cheddar in my veins and Green Bay Packer paraphernalia in my house. Our family took time out for travel and experience, so I got to live with a Mexican family for three weeks when I was 11. We lived in London for a year when I was 13, I lived with a family in Madrid the summer I turned 16, and was thoroughly infected by the travel bug. I would do much more of it if I had the time and the money. Fortunately, I have a mom who thinks travel is informative and good family bonding time. She and I went to Egypt in 1992 and she took our family to the Galapagos in 2000 and Belize in 2002. After college, I bounced around a bit, looking for the career that was right for me. I tried politics, charity, and education and finally found the call that was right for me and ended up combining all three. I was ordained to ministry in the United Church of Christ in 1987. Since then, I've served churches in suburban Detroit; Janesville (Need I name the state? A true pen-o-phile will know!); Rock Springs, Wyoming; and now, oddly enough, back in Eau Claire. Though I used fountain pens a bit when going to school in England, I bought my first fountain pen as an adult in April, 1999. It was a Waterman Phileas, and I was aghast that I had spent FORTY DOLLARS FOR A PEN!!! Since then, I've bought more, spent more, sold some, made mistakes on ebay, and learned to appreciate this strange and wonderful online pen community. If I'm not playing with pens, I might be reading mysteries, especially Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, S.J. Rozan, Harlan Coben, Lise McClendon, Katy Munger, Steve Hamilton, William Kent Krueger and a few others. I might also be watching West Wing, reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or (blush) American Idol, surfing the web, I make an eastward trek each year to attend a theological colloquy on Cape Cod and to visit fountain pen mecca -- Fountain Pen Hospital in New York. Other than that, vacations tend to be opportunities to get together with siblings and niblings, mostly around holidays.
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