I was born on March 11, 1982 in a hospital in Houston, Texas. Most of my family lived there at the time, and I was able to visit my aunts, uncles, and grandparents regularly. In 1984, my brother was born, and a year and a half later, we moved from Houston to an apartment in Culver City in Los Angeles, California. I still went back to Houston every summer to visit my relatives, and have continued to do so for the past 12 years. I donít remember much about the apartment (we only lived there for 7 months) but the one thing that sticks out in my mind is playing with my plastic cooking set on the balcony in the evenings. I usually went out there in the evenings, waiting for my dad to come home, because I could see him coming up to the door from the balcony. After living in Culver City, we moved to a small house in Pacific Palisades, which is where I live to this day.

When I was about 8 years old I fell off my bike and had to get stitches. The story begins about 2 weeks before the actual incident when a family conversation led me to proclaim myself as the only member who hasn't gotten stitches yet (which of course jinxed it....) Two weeks later, I was in school one day when they showed us this bicycle safety video as part of an assembly. The video showed people riding their bikes in the street and using arm signals (where you stick you arm out to one side depending on which way you want to turn), and using all sorts of safety measures while riding. When I got home that day, I decided I was going to be "cool" and use the arm signals (while riding on the SIDEWALK, I might add!-making it completely unecessary to do so.) Anyways, I stuck my left arm out to make a left turn onto my block, and left it out while I turned and lost control of the bike and fell off. I was half a block away and my chin was bleeding, it left a trail of blood on the sidewalk as I limped home, and the moment I got in the hose my mom could tell that I would have to go to the hospital and get stitches. It ended up that the cut was so deep I had to get 2 stitches inside my chin and another 7 on the outside. That'll teach my to keep my mouth shut next conversation!

I've always enjoyed music. I can remember when I would visit my grandparents during the summer, and they would have this nice piano in the living room that I could play on. I would get on and play random keys, having no idea what I was playing, but acting like I knew exactly what I was doing - like I had wanted to play it that way. I eventually became more interested in learning to play the music I heard, and asked my dad to show me how to play certain chords on our ukelele, since the neck of the guitar he owned was too wide for me to hold. The summer before I went in to 9th grade, I took piano lessons from a local teacher. I was taking the lessons to learn how to read music, but I would always play the selections once or twice, and I would already have it memorized so that I never needed to read the music again. After about 6 months of these lessons, I reverted back to my normal way of playing music: listening, and figuring it out on the piano. To this day I still can not sight read, but Iíve realized that my ability to be able to play something after only hearing it once, is a talent and isnít something that everybody can do. I've learned to deal with that and only occasionally bought sheet music or guitar tabs if I was having particular trouble with a certain section. Even then, it takes hours for me to transcribe the notes into letters, then the letters to the keys on the piano or frets on the guitar. Some of my favorite music to play is by Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, and Garbage.

I'm not oblivious to the fact that my parents are strict with me, but I don't enjoy it either. I do notice that my friends, even if they are only one year older than me, have many more privileges and freedoms than I have. For one, I couldnít go to parties at people's houses where my parents didnít know their parents. The only exception to this was in my junior high where almost all of my friends were in the Highly Gifted Magnet. My parents figured if the kids were smart, their parents were good people, and we wouldn't get into trouble. Our parties were rather tame, except for the time when we had all finished the dreaded "Jack London Term Paper", a forty-something paged paper on the man and his books, just days before. We found a Jack London book in a friend's room during one of our parties, I think it was Call Of the Wild, and brought it out into the street where we set it on fire. Besides that, I wasn't allowed to see PG-13 rated movies until I was 15, and I still can't see R rated movies. If I'm just out with friends, I have to be back around 9 or 10 unless I'm at a "pre-approved" friend's house where I'm just staying inside, then it's dependent on what time they want to go to sleep. I can't drink the Passover wine, and have to go to church every Sunday. It's punishable if I don't go, because my disbelief in God rubbed off on my brother (at least that's what my parents say, I think he's old enough to form his own opinions) and now I have to go every Sunday until I leave the house to go to college. Regardless, they do let me go river rafting on class IV rapids and go off to Washington D.C. for a week with my class. I am able to my belly button pierced, and many other ear piercings, including a cartilage pierce. And then there's the time that they let my brother and I take the Subway in Washington, D.C. by ourselves from the White House, to the Courthouse stop (a 15 minute ride), but they weren't being liberal, they just plain out made a mistake with that one.....

My brother, David, and I have an odd relationship. I'm 2 and a half years older than him, but I'm 3 grades above him. (I skipped kindergarten, so I'm going to be a senior in high school this year even though I'm only 16.) This year will be the first year since elementary school that we are going to be in the same school. We have this love-hate relationship, although, if you ask him, he'd just say he hates me. About the only time we get along is when we're both against our parents. I had to share a room with him until I was 10 years old, and we added four rooms to the back of our house. He kept our original room and I moved into our old parent's room. David is still bitter because I got the bigger room (his is 10x10, and mine is 10x12.) Right now he's in his pyromaniac phase and blows up and sets fire to many thing in our back yard. So far he hasn't majorly hurt himself, but now he's working with Salt Peter (Potassium Nitrate), and black gun powder, so I don't know long he can stay out of harm's way.

Right now I'm really interested in acting and music. I dabbled in the Drama department at my school, but I didn't really feel accepted by the people there since it had taken me two years to get into it at school. At my school it seems like the only way to get into drama, is when you're a cute little 9th grader and all of the seniors pick you for their Festival scenes. From then on you're in, regardless of your talent. I only made it into the Fall play (I was turned down for the Spring Musical) but in the Spring, I got involved in the Media Academy at our school and wrote, had the lead role in, helped direct and produce a short film for our Media class. We had our own little Academy Awards, judged by a panel of industry professionals, and I won an Oscar for Best Actress. Our movie also won for Best Cinematography. I had loved acting for a long time, and would always go up on any stage and make a fool out of myself. In Jr. High, I spent my entire time in Drama, and did 2 major performances. One time when I was younger, I went to the redwoods, and there was this huge stage made from the trunk of a tree, I think. I gathered people to the benches surrounding it, and proceeded to sings songs and do a "one-woman show." My grandparents, who had taken me there, even received a letter from someone who saw me and had taken pictures!

As for music, I love playing the piano and guitar. I have my own acoustic guitar, and electric guitar, and learned a bit on my dad's bass guitar. I got the acoustic guitar for my 15th birthday, and the electric guitar for Christmas that same year. We have an eletronic piano, not one of those laptop keyboards, but a free- standing electronic one that sounds close to a real piano. I can definitely tell the difference, ours has a more plasticky feel to it (if that's even a word...) My favorite piano to play is ironically enough in the sanctuary at my parent's church. I used to go with my dad when he had to fix the sound system in the sanctuary and score free playing time. I haven't come up with many of my own songs yet, but I'm still working on it. Right now, I love listening to Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, Jewel, and lots of the artists on KROQ, our local alternative radio station.

Besides that, I think I'm a normal teenager. I don't like school, I like weekends and sleeping late. I have a job, and I'm practicing for my driver's license right now. I don't have a boyfriend. I'm just starting to apply to college. I hope to get accepted into either UCLA, USC, Berkeley, NYU, or Boston University. I have that little girl's dream of becoming a movie star, but really I would just be happy doing something having to do with music or acting. I spend way too much time thinking about what I'm going to wear. I'm a walking statistic. I like my music loud. I wear "strange" clothes. I spend more time in my room than in the rest of the house. What else is new?