About me

My name is Katharine Magary and I am a student at the California Institute of Technology. I am currently a third-term sophomore in Blacker Hovse, which is one of the seven undergraduate houses there, and I'm on the house social team for some odd reason. I am officially a geology major and have decided to stay that way because (pun warning) geology rocks.

I am from San Francisco, California, which is about 400 miles away from where I go to school (in Pasadena.) I went to Lowell High School in San Francisco, which is an academic-type school. Before that, I attended Katherine Delmar Burke School, a private school for girls. Although I made some great friends there, and got a good education, I didn't particularly enjoy the nine years of my life that I spent there.

During high school, I also took classes at the University of Califoria, Berkeley, which is a wonderful college that I hope to go back to for my graduate studies. Berkeley is an interesting town, but since I had spent my whole life in the SF Bay Area, I wanted a change of scenery for school. I have also worked on and off for four years at the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in the city. I worked there for three years in high school, and then again after my freshman year in college.

My hobbies currently unclude various crafts, not limited to stained glass and metalworking. I don't know how to cast yet, but I'd like to learn how at some point. I also sing in the Caltech Women's Glee Club, which does choral music. I am also involved with TACIT, the campus theatre group, and have been in the last two productions even though I have absolutely no acting ability whatsoever. I would, however, like to learn some basic acting skills sometime so that I don't feel so silly onstage. My other main hobby is online roleplaying, which is, in a way, interactive fanfiction. I have a page about that here. I wish I were a better writer, because I enjoy doing it, but currently I'm a lot better at developing one character than I am at creating worlds and plots. Additionally

I am, by heritage, half Swedish, though most of my family members have been in the United States for a long time. I am a fan of Nordic culture, however, especially after having visited Sweden in the summer of 2003. Since I really like the languages, I want to visit Finland and Iceland (preferably during the lighter times of year.) Maybe I can arrange to study something geologic in Iceland. I also want to visit New Zealand.

My favorites:

Places: Northern California, especially San Francisco and the redwood areas in Sonoma/Mendecino/Humboldt/Del Norte counties. Joshua Tree National Monument. Many desert locations. Sweden. England, because I like British accents. ;)

Sports team: The SF Giants (baseball) because they're my home team. They should have won the 2002 World Series. Everyone knows that.

Type of rock: As far as rocks go, granite or dolomite. My favorite mineral is biotite, mostly because it's fun to pick apart. My favorite rock formation is in the Coso volcanic field in California. As far as geologic interests go, my favorite topic is Cordilleran tectonic history and maybe I'll do graduate study in that field.

Fruit: Peaches.

Musical artists: Radiohead, R.E.M., Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, The Gloria Record

Songs: Radiohead: "Like Spinning Plates (studio)", "There There" (live in Lisbon, scratchy but excellent bootleg), "A Reminder", "Planet Telex", "Lurgee", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", "How to Disappear Completely", "You And Whose Army?", "Permanent Daylight", "Backdrifts", "Where I End and You Begin"...ummm...I like too many Radiohead songs to list them all. Sigur Ros, "Flugufrelsarinn". Grandaddy, "Broken Household Appliance National Forest", "Now It's On". R.E.M., "At My Most Beautiful", "Drive". Sparklehorse, "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man". Blur, "Coffee and TV", "Girls and Boys". Coldplay, "The Scientist". Isabella Torrini, "Gollum's Song". The Weakerthans, "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open". The Gloria Record, "Grain Towers, Telephone Poles." Sarah McLachlan, "Black". Muse, "Unintended". The list goes on.

Songs to sing: Radiohead's "Where I End and You Begin" (only in the shower!). Most renaissance choral music.

Musicals: The Producers, Sweeney Todd, Rent.

Movies: Rushmore. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, of course, Monty Python movies.

Books and authors: I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy provided it's somewhat original and not just a ripoff of Tolkien. What reader doesn't like Tolkien. I'm a big fan of his fictional geography, personally. Favorite authors include Terry Pratchett (esp. Wyrd Sisters and Night Watch), Connie Willis, Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Andrews (a mystery novelist whose heroine is a geologist), Tim Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson. I also like popular science writing since it was almost 100% of what I read for several years as a pre-teen and teenager, my favorite authors there being Timothy Ferris, Carl Sagan and John McPhee.

Scenes/short stories: By far my favorite scene from a book is the chapter in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune in which Alia first meets the Baron Harkonnen in her mind. Others include "Narn I Hin Hurin" from Tolkien's Unfinished Tales. My favorite short stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe, "A Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf, and "Trouble at the Jade Towers" by Patricia Highsmith.