Area Youth Falls Prey to Narcissistic E-trend

THE COHORT

Here's a tiny bit more information about the characters behind the names that appear or have appeared regularly in the blog.

Home Base:

Aisha (Sha) - easily my oldest (not age-wise, length-of-friendship-wise) friend; we've been attempting to pull off heists since the 2nd grade. She's living in London now, and I miss her a lot. Although, in all fairness, I did go off to Russia before she went off to England.
Ambrose - my fish, a blue-green Betta with red stripes. Suffers from melancholia. Vacillates between attempting to dash himself to death on the rocks of his tank, fighting with his reflection in the tank glass, and huddling despondently in the corner. Named for Ambrose Bierce.
Colin - one of my two ferrets. He resembles a small co-dependent gay raccooon.
Erica - She and Jess (see below) are twin sisters, and Er is supposedly the "good twin," but we all know better. She's earned the coveted title of "grown-up," as she's graduated and has a real job as a journalist.
Fischer - listens to talk radio, but I like him anyway. (There should probably be a winky emoticon here.) I spend most school breaks in St. Paul with him and Kym (see below), to whom he is married.
Jason - one of my roommates. Kicks my ass at Mario Kart. Dating Liz (see below).
Jessica (Jess) - our high school band director described her as the "significantly meaner" twin. We talk about forensic pathology at cocktail parties and freak people out. Hollywood convention would suggest that she's secretly crying on the inside, but I'm pretty sure she's not.
Jessie - Loves both romantic comedies and football. A pop culture guru. Yells at the TV. My roommate.
John - a veritable wizard, which is a good thing, because he's about to become a science teacher. Didn't fire me when he was my supervisor at the school cafeteria, which proves he's a saint. Now one of my roommates.
Kym - Probably the best listener I know. Should get a job talking people down off ledges. Charms every animal to which she is exposed, even including my bastard of a Quarterhorse. Married to Fischer.
Liz - Thrown together by alphabetical order, she and I have been friends since the 7th grade. One of my roommates. Dating Jason. Did I ever tell you she once killed a boy with a hairbrush?
Malfoy - the other of my pair of ferrets. He's either a little bitch because he's named after a Harry Potter nemesis, or named after a Harry Potter nemesis because he's a little bitch; I can't remember which. He's white and sickly.
Rahma - A politically savvy activist, she was voted the most outspoken in our graduating class. She went to Valparaiso for her first two years of college, but came to her senses and is now at Madison, where we can get Einstein's bagels twice a week and bitch about the state of the country.

Russia:

Amanda - a fellow Hertzen student, Amanda was always ready for the next ridiculous adventure. Witty. Insists that Maxim Gorky was a jolly fellow.
Kait - a fellow American study-abroad buddy. She likes pirates.
Katia - yes, this is the same Katia from Middlebury. She also ended up at Hertzen university for fall semester. I think we got along better at back Middlebury when we weren't allowed to speak any English.
Lena - my Russian tutor. Tiny, no-nonsense, and always wearing very stylish pants. She was studying to be a Russian teacher, but got a job with a soulless corporation instead.
Sofia - Name pronounced with a long I, dammit. We recently had an hour-long IM conversation about what one should do if she were stalked by a former American Gladiator. She writes a comic called Boomslang: the People's Defender about a man who was turned into a giant snake in a logging accident caused by bourgeois greed, and now uses his snake-powers to fight the evils of capitalism. Need I say more about her?
Sonya - my host mother. An elderly Communist with a heart of...well, not gold, because she gave her gold to the state long ago. But something shiny, at least. Married to Tolio (see below).
St. Princess Olga - the erstwhile ruler of Kievan Russia. Her husband was killed by a neighboring prince, who then proceeded to try to marry her to take control of Kiev. Not one to take that kind of bullshit, she buried his emmisaries alive, set the his knights on fire, then rode to his kingdom and knifed him. Then she reigned sucessfully over one of the more peaceful and pleasant chapters of Russian history. I'm a little nervous to tell people this, but she's my hero.
Tolio - my host father. Deaf. Was convinced I was from Canada. Likes crossword puzzles. Smokes cigarettes secretly. Henpecked. Married to Sonya.

Middlebury

Katia - one of my suitemates. Shared an interest in literature and avoiding inane group activities.
Lermontov - another dead Russian. He was supposedly quite dashing and hot and sucessful and bright, but he believed that poets should be angsty, so he purposely made Bad Life Choices and then wrote mopey poetry about it. He died in a duel at age 27. I kind of love him.
Marusya - another of my suitemates. A sweetie. We could be found downing mixed drinks at The Two Brothers of many a weekend night.
Pushkin - the Russian poet. And while I enjoy his poetry, I enjoy his biography even more - he was constantly pulling crazy stunts, right up until one of them got him killed in a duel in 1837.

Family:

My family's a little complicated. My mom and my dad are now divorced, and both remarried, my mom when I was in junior high and my dad recently. My dad and his wife, Paula, who has a daughter of her own, live down in Georgia. My mom and my stepdad, Bill, live on a horse farm in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin, where I grew up. Bill has three kids, two sons and a daughter. Here's the extra tricky part - I also have two sisters, from Sierra Leone and South Korea, who my mom and dad adopted before their divorce. And now my little sister has a baby, so I have a niece, Kiki! My stepbrother's fiancee and one of my stepsisters are also expecting. It's sad when at 22 I'm the dried-up old maid in the family.