Microbiography. It's the thing to do. So, I was feeling inspired and maybe a little too introspective after reading Reva's list of 100 things about herself. It's in two parts, here and here . Funny way of listing oneself, but I liked the idea and so here's my own list of 100 things that are mostly about me.

100 things.

1. My full legal name is Adrianne Leah Montoya.

2. "Adrianne" is a combination of my parent�s middle names: Dad�s is Adrian and Mom�s is Ann. "Leah" just because it�s Biblical. My parents are religious.

3. I�m religious too-- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (What's that?, you say? click here ). I love my religion and my Savior and I try to be a good Christian.

4. A few years back I spent a year and a half as a missionary for the Church in rural Louisiana. It was one of the best periods of my life.

5. I�m single.

6. I�m a Colorado native.

7. I have some serious pride in my heritage. When southern Colorado and northern New Mexico were the farthest northern reaches of New Spain, My father�s family came to this part of the world from Spain at the very beginning of the 17th century and settled the region. Speculation is that they were Jewish conversos and were fleeing religious persecution is Spain, and that's why they settled in the outskirts of the empire. There are some French trappers in there too. As cool as all that sounds, the family raised sheep and goats on a ranch. They sold off most of it when my great-grandfather died at the age of 103. Before that he had gotten a cheesy award from the governor for being the Oldest Living Colorado Native.

8. My dad�s family is HUGE. I�m one of about a bazillion cousins.

9. Mom�s family is also very cool. Her English side came over on the Mayflower, signed the Mayflower Compact, signed the Declaration of Independence, and fought in the Revolutionary War. I could join the Daughters of the American Revolution if I wanted to. One of Mom�s Dutch ancestors built the first wheat mill in Pennsylvania. Mom�s ancestors moved southish and fought in the Civil War in both the Union and the Confederacy. Some of them worked the Underground railroad. They somehow ended up in Texas picking cotton, and my grandparents moved to Colorado just before my mom was born.

10. All this history makes me very proud and makes me feel very American.

11. I�m a patriot. I used to be very critical and not so Proud To Be An American, but I�ve lived more life since then and I think I�m a little wiser.

12. My older brother Ben is also known as Lieutenant Montoya of the US Army. He commands a tank unit. I�m proud of him, too.

13. Off and on I feel like I live Ben�s shadow. I was kind of excited when he moved to Germany (that�s where he to be a missionary) when I was 17 because people would see me as Annie instead of Ben�s Little Sister, but I still didn�t really escape it. Everyone on the planet knows my brother. You probably do, too. In a caf� in Jerusalem I met a guy who had met my brother on a train in Munich a week before. No escape.

14. Back to me. When I was just a tiny thing, my first teeth to come in were my canines-- vampire baby. However, there are very few photos of me from those first several months of life (my dad did a full-time job and full-time school, and my mom was dying of sleep deprivation because I was awake all night and Ben was awake all day). I�m not sure, I think they may be lying and this is all a grand conspiracy to make me think I�m a freak.

15. I am kind of a freak. I kind of tried to be goth in high school, but I was just to goody-two-shoes. Also very nerdy.

16. I�m still nerdy.

17. I love museums and libraries.

18. There was a rumor circulating my senior year of high school that I was having an affair with my English teacher. Ick. Give me some credit, I�m not a Lolita.

19. Though, when I meet icky guys at clubs I lie and tell them my name is Lola.

20. I mostly hated high school. John F. Kennedy High School, Denver, CO. I graduated in 1995.

21. I picked up the cello in high school. I never got very good at it. I don�t play anymore.

22. My parents made me take piano lessons as a child. They let me quit when I was 13. I wish I hadn�t.

23. I�m learning to play the guitar now. I�m not very good at that, either. I don�t care. I like playing.

24. I used to sing. I even wanted to be an opera singer, but I damaged my voice my freshman year of college. That wounded me for a long time. Seven and a half years later, I�m mostly over it.

25. College. I started out at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. I loved BYU. Academically, it was amazing. I really miss the challenge.

26. I hated Provo. Still do. It smothered me. Bad memories.

27. I took a break to be a missionary. Good memories.

28. I got sick after my mission and couldn�t get out of bed and had to quit school. I moved back to Colorado, took a year off, and transferred to Metro State. That�s where I am now.

29. During my year off, I worked at a Chinese tailoring shop. I lost my job when US Customs closed them down.

30. Then I worked as a teacher�s aide and reading/math tutor in an inner city elementary school with kindergarteners and first-graders. Cheltenham Elementary. It was a hard job, administration sucked and morale was consistently low.

31. I loved the kids. They made the job worth it. The first grade teacher that I worked with, Janice Clifton, was great, too. Loved her.

32. I used to be terrified of children. I like them now, in small doses. Kids are funny, funny creatures.

33. I worked off and on for a few years for the corporate whore that is Barnes & Noble Booksellers. I worked with some really nice people and got a fantastic employee discount but sometimes it was kind of a lousy job.

34. So now I�m back in school. I�ve been going non-stop since January of 2001. This has been tolerable because I�ve studied abroad twice in that time.

35. About that study abroad-- summer of 2002 in Per� digging up archaeological stuff, and spring of 2003 taking lit classes at la Universidad de Guadalajara in M�xico.

36. I dug up parts of at least two human skeletons in Per�. We found some teeth and a juvenile male tailbone first, so we started out thinking it was a little boy so when we got to a cranium we "named" it Guillermo. Turns out the head belonged to a sub-adult female, probable cause of death a fatally crushing blow to the left temple, evidenced by peri-mortem severe fracturing of the left temporal area. Murdered by a right-handed swing? Don't know. Poor Guillermita (we changed her name).

37. I worked in the anthropology lab at Metro for about a year and a half. I have a working knowledge of human and faunal osteology. This is not the kind of useless knowledge that makes me look cool and appealing at parties. People think its nerdy and morbid.

38. Speaking of morbid, my first apartment in Louisiana was in the back of a funeral home. It was initially kind of creepy because my bedroom shared a wall with the embalming room and we could hear liquids being swapped around. Eventually I decided it was probably the safest pad in town-- I mean, who was going to break in?

39. I worked in a funeral home for a while, too, doing custodial at night. I gave me lots of time to myself to think. This was after the mortuary apartment, so by this time the dead had lost their creepiness.

40. Sometimes I think I�d like to be a forensic anthropologist but it�s too gruesome.

41. I�m a very indecisive person.

42. A fine example of my indecisive nature is the number of times I�ve changed my major. At BYU it went like this: Music (then I damaged my voice), Theatre, Anthropology. At Metro: Anthropology, Art, Art History, Anthropology, Spanish and Anthropology double major.

43. I have a love-hate relationship with archaeology.

44. My real problem is that the world fascinates me to no end and I want to know everything about all of it. Except math and business and finance.

45. I hate math. I�m really bad at it.

46. I like studying languages. I�m much better at that.

47. In high school I studied French and German. I started Spanish in 2001. When I�m thinking clearly, I realize that I�m doing remarkably well for only having studied two and a half years.

48. I really, really love studying Spanish. After all those majors I�ve found my happy place.

49. I�m a travel addict. My brother and I have a contest to see who can get to all seven continents first. Right now the score is tied, 3-3. I like to travel alone and that makes my mother nervous.

50. I dabble in photography. I own an old Canon SLR and neat-o lenses that make me look cool and like I know what I�m doing. I really don�t.

51. Sometimes I write poetry. Poes�a en castellano, even.

52. Lately I write lyrics. Reva puts them to music and the resulting songs are soooo sexy. Collaboration, kids. That�s where it�s at.

53. I love to cook. I find it soothing. When school gets stressful I have fantasies of dropping out and going to culinary school.

54. I used to be a really bad cook. Then I moved out and had live off my own cooking, so that changed fast.

55. I also have a fantasy of robbing a bank, running for the border, changing my name and opening a place on a beach in Central America. This tempting idea usually resurfaces during finals week.

56. I have a freakish and rare auto-immune disorder called Hashimoto�s Disease in which my body is attacking and slowly destroying my thyroid. This sounds awful, but all it really means is that my body ends up not being able to produce enough thyroid hormone and I have to take a little yellow pill every morning and then I'm all good and mostly normal. That�s actually fairly common and very livable. Having a hypothyroid disease is supposed to make me fat and sluggish, but I�m perpetually thin and tightly-wound, even without my little pill. I hate to think what it would be like if I had a "normal" thyroid.

57. Sometimes I feel a little too crazy to be comfortable with it.

58. I think getting through some of the rough stuff life has dealt me has made me a better, stronger person.

59. I don't trust doctors. Consequently I'm a proactive, assertive and probably annoyingly informed patient.

60. I've passed out getting my blood drawn a few times. I'm afraid of needles, but blood draws freak me out more than shots.

61. I don�t smoke, drink, or do drugs. Never have. Except prescription drugs, which at times have messed me up something awful, and ny-quil.

62. I love ny-quil gel-tabs. The syrup has alcohol in it, so it's like doing a foul-tasting shot and gives me nightmares.

63. I mostly hate taking pills but sometimes I get nasty headaches and pop analgesics excessively.

64. I consider myself a generally friendly person.

65. I hate the dating game. It drives me crazy (in a bad way).

66. I don't fall in love as easily as I used to, but I still get my heart broken.

67. I didn�t have many women friends until college. I still see and talk to my two close girlfriends from high school, Melissa (Jackson) Virgin and Colleen Thompson.

68. I got stood up for prom my junior year of high school. You're a selfish jerk, Travis Wing.

69. My parents are my heroes.

70. I believe in forgiveness and that people can change for the better.

71. I eat meat and dairy and I have no objections to wearing fur or leather or using other animal products. Nor do I think it�s wrong to use lab animals in medical testing. It beats the alternatives.

72. I trust real biologists and ecologists but not GreenPeace or the Sierra Club. They have some not-so-well-thought-out ideas, like draining Lake Powell.

73. I like the word "monkey", but I think apes and monkeys are nasty creatures.

74. I believe it�s better when possible to patronize local businesses instead of corporate monsters that drain the life out of local economy.

75. I believe in the scientific method but do not discount that there are other quite valid (if untestable) ways of gaining sure knowledge.

76. I have no faith in the UN. They were founded on good principles, but are now a spineless impotent stumbling block to progress and peace. Also a collection of idiots.

77. I believe that abortion is a form of murder and therefore wrong.

78. I am pro-Israel. You can even call me a Zionist.

79. Casseroles, MREs, jell-o, Hostess treats and Velveeta are not food. According to the label Velveeta is "pasteurized processed cheese food", but I ask you, just what is "cheese food"?

80. I once caught my hair on fire at a Latin dance club.

81. I got a concusion in an Israeli night club.

82. I am neither Democrat or Republican. I don�t agree entirely with either party�s stand on issues.

83. Even though I�m opinionated, conflict and debate make me uncomfortable and I avoid them.

84. I don�t really have a favorite color. Lately I like greys, greens, and purples.

85. When I was a teenager I didn't ever buy Bop or Teen or other lame magazines and I never had posters of actors or rock stars in my room (I was the nerdy kid with National Geo maps on the walls). Lately though I'm catching up by having crushes on latin rock stars-- why are they so dang sexy? There are limits, though. This does not include Ricky or Enrique or Marc Anthony, Alejandro Hernandez' pants at the Latin Grammys scared me, and I still don't have posters of anyone.

86. I like the idea of gardening but I don�t really do it.

87. I�m allergic to shellfish, I think mostly because they�re bottom feeders and full of toxins. I don�t eat catfish on that same principle-- not because I�m allergic to it, but because they�re bottom feeders and they taste like mud.

88. Soy makes me sick and I�m really frustrated that food manufacturers have started to put it in absolutely everything.

89. Most of my favorite foods involve dairy.

90. I want to live a long time so that I can cram in lots of growth and life experience, but I�m afraid of getting old.

91. My paternal grandmother died just before I turned 13 and I still miss her. She was the first person I really, really loved who died and it was too strong an experience for me. I think I was more prepared for it when my mom's parents died a couple of years ago.

92. The perfume that I wear is Clinique �Happy�.

93. I love the mountains. �Viva Colorado!

94. I�m afraid of the ocean. It's just so powerful and foreign and BIG. And salty.

95. I love the desert and I think it�s strangely beautiful, but I�m also kind of afraid of it. Dehydration, you know.

96. I have an irrational fear of frogs and toads.

97. I have black leather in my wardrobe.

98. I like to wear high heels.

99. One of my favorite books ever is Harper Lee�s To Kill A Mockingbird .

100. I'm really un-photogenic.

And that's my list, and some of who I am. Only some, but you still might know too much about me.