CanaryNoir creator and webmistress.
Name: Jennifer A. Ford (and to borrow someone else's joke, I hope to someday be Jennifer THE Ford)
Other Alias(es): Milo, Ford Prefect, Norya, Rubberband Girl...
Parents: Two, still mint in the box.
Siblings: Two older brothers
Birthplace: At the hospital about a block and a half from where I'm sitting RIGHT THIS MINUTE!
First Appearance: tea time, July 28, 1967 (about a month after Sgt. Pepper's)
Vital Statistics: Green eyes, red hair, shortest person in my immediate family (but most people think I'm taller than I am).
Base of Operations: Fort Wayne, Indiana
"Real-Life" Occupation(s): Ex-librarian (but I still do random acts of research for people), web designer
Special Skills: shooting very small things with rubber bands (kills... bugs... dead); cat herding; from-scratch pie crust making; long distance driving; organizing things.
SuperNatural Occurrences: For YEARS, whenever I traveled out of town (alone), I brought the worst weather whatever area I was going through and to had seen in ages along with me. It was so consistent and so extreme, friends started asking me if I was going to be traveling while arranging their own plans so they could avoid my "putting the curse" on THEIR travel plans as well. I seem to be over that now.
Past Affiliations: I'm not a big joiner.
Current Affiliations: Well, I've pledged NPR but that's about it.
Favorite excuse: "Sorry, I can't work late. I have a thing." (I actually used this and it WORKED! I think I stunned my poor supervisor into speechlessness)
Most harrowing experience involving dental floss: I didn't go to the dentist for several years somewhere between junior high school and graduating college (and yet still no cavitites!) because a dental assistant seemed to be trying to remove my lower teeth with dental floss, scowling all the while.
Favorite authors: Connie Willis (Bellwether, Doomsday Book, Impossible Things, all of 'em...); Lois McMaster Bujold (especially Borders of Infinity, Memory, Curse of Chalion); Caroline Stevermer (A College of Magics and, with Patricia Wrede, Sorcery & Cecelia); Neil Gaiman, Anne Perry, and Richard Adams (Watership Down).
Favorite comics: current-- Powers, Out There, Batgirl, Planetary, Green Arrow, The Authority, Strangers in Paradise, Supergirl, and even Birds of Prey. historic, defunct, what have you-- Sandman, early Starman, Crimson
Favorite TV shows: current-- Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Alias. historic-- X-Files (through last season; I no longer watch it); SCTV, Bob (the one where Bob Newhart's character is a comic book writer/artist -- wow. I never laughed so hard), both Bonnie Hunt shows, Space: Above & Beyond, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Strange Luck (I used to kill shows with fair regularity just by watching them from the first episode. Buffy broke that curse for me ;-)
Favorite movies: Argh! Can't CHOOSE! Lessee... this is slightly different from my site's "best" list. These are movies I just love to watch over and over and never get sick of -- Monsters, Inc. (yes, I already know this to be true), Mulan, Enchanted April, Persuasion, Cold Comfort Farm, Chicken Run, The Mummy & Mummy Returns, Jumanji, Jurassic Park, Strictly Ballroom, Practical Magic... I love movies...
Favorite actresses/actors: Greer Garson, Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, William Holden, John Wayne, Sandra Bullock, Buster Keaton, Sam Neill, Judy Davis, Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Russell Crowe, Kenneth Branagh, John Cusack, Julia Roberts, Daniel Day-Lewis... and on and on and on (I really love actors, too).
Favorite Music: popular -- Kate Bush (who wrote my favorite song of all time "Love & Anger"), The Corrs, Rich Mullins, Michael W. Smith, the Beatles, the Who, Fiona Apple... symphonic-- Aaron Copland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Gershwin, Mozart, lots of soundtracks (Gladiator, Last of the Mohicans, Empire of the Sun, Harry Potter, Dances with Wolves [I remember the Hayden Valley every time I listen to it])...
Favorite defunct TV series: Doctor Who & Northern Exposure (up until they started using the scripts as a way to punish Rob Morrow for wanting to leave the show...)
I'll stop now.
Additions by the Webmistress
Contribution to Women of Gotham: You see it on practically every page: the Birds of Prey Partnership and its faboo banner, not to mention this very page's background. Jennifer also gave me heaps of advice when I began this site, and is co-moderator of the Words of Prey Message Board.
Check out CanaryNoir, WoG's partner site:
Birds of Prey Partner.
Words of Prey Co-Moderator.
I won't!
