I was born Julie *******, in Baltimore, Maryland on October 17, 1978. Apparently my biological father was a raging alcoholic who couldn't hold down a job and would bring other women home in front of my mother, because he was so drunk he didn't realize what he was doing. So when i was about 6 months old, my mom divorced my biological dad and moved back in with her mother(and my grandmother). My mom apparently had to sell their house to get my dad out of it and i guess couldn't afford a new one, or couldn't afford a babysitter outside the family. My mom was a nurse back then, and i don't think she was paid terribly well. So she moved in with my grandparents so they could watch me while she worked. When i was a baby, my mom and i lived with my grandparents and my two uncles, neither of whom could afford to move out at the time. So i spent the first 6 years of life living in a  pretty full house with all those people and 2 dogs. When i was 6 years old my mom married the man who raised me as his daughter, and we moved out of my grandmother's house. Because my father was still a raging alcoholic, my mother arranged for her new husband to legally adopt me, changing my last name from **** to **********. When i was 7 years old my mom gave birth to my sister. After that she worked in nursing, part time, for about another year until she finally quit to raise my sister and i. I enjoyed elementary school and high school, but middle school was very difficult for me. Kids can be cruel at that age and i got made fun of by the "popular" kids, because i wasn't one of them. I had my friends, but none of us were considered "popular". Things got better when i got to high school. I guess people found other interests outside of teasing people they didn't consider "cool." In high school i was one of the "theatre kids". I wasn't an athtele, and i wasn't in the band, but my main focus in high school was choir and theatre. When i was in the 10th grade i tried out for the school's production of Phantom Of The Opera. They cast me as a dancer, and i tried to tell them i can't dance to save my life. But all i heard was "oh don't worry, we'll rehearse until everyone knows the dance perfectly." Well, what actually wound up happening is that the director(who also happened to be my english and drama teacher) cut me out of the play, THE NIGHT BEFORE it was supposed to open. I was sooooooo upset because i had already sold tickets to my friends and family to come to the show, and i had been all excited about it. Then my mom had to argue with my teacher to get her to refund all the money my family and friends had spent on the tickets. I think she finally did get the money back, but i was so upset i swore i wouldn't do anymore theatre in high school. That didn't last though, because acting is in my blood, and besides, most of my friends were still involved in the shows the school put on. I had a string of unmemorable parts in plays no one had ever heard of. Then senior year of high school, the drama club did something called Theatre In The Round. Basically, everyone in the drama club was allowed to pick a scene from a play or musical and perform onstage with the audience sitting on 3 sides of us, rather than down in the auditorium. I did two skits with my friends. One was the "double double toil and trouble" scene in Macbeth, and the other was a scene from the book "Little Women." I played Meg, the oldest sister. Then spring of senior year the music department put on a musical called South Pacific. I had never heard of this musical and thought it sounded boring, but i knew this was my last chance to be in a play in high school, so i tried out. I wound up getting a part as one of the bali hai girls(basically a hula girl.) So while i didn't have any lines, i had to dance and sing in French. When you consider the fact that i can't dance and i failed French i guess i'm amazed i didn't get kicked out again. But the chorus teacher directed this show and he knew me and liked me, so i was never in danger of being kicked out. When the curtain came down for the final night of South Pacific, i couldn't help but feel sad because i knew i wouldn't get to act again anytime soon. Which i haven't and i dearly miss. So right after my final musical was our big high school graduation. Oh boy did i cry at that. All my friends did. You spend 4 years wanting to get the heck out of high school and then when you do, it's kind of sad because you know that that chapter of your life is now over. That fall i started at community college. I didn't apply to university right away because my SAT scores were not high enough to get me into the college i wanted to go to. So i did 2 years of community college. Community college was pretty fun, i had a group of friends i hung out with in the student center between classes. But eventually i moved on to university and some of those people were still going to what is only supposed to be a two year college. Anyway, in September of 1998 i started at Towson University, which is the school i had wanted to go to in the first place, but didn't have the SAT scores for. University was pretty fun, although by then i wasn't seeing much of my friends around campus due to everyone's schedules being so different. Back then we were still getting together on Friday nights and going to Rock n Bowl. We did that for years, through the last couple years of high school and the first few years of college. It was fun, but after awhile you just start to get burned out. Plus by then some of my friends were getting married, getting jobs, moving on. Gradually we went from seeing each other all the time to rarely seeing each other at all. My friend Chris got married at 20 because she and her boyfriend got pregnant. So she was married, with a child, and understandably didn't have time to do the things we all used to do together. Then my friend Brian got married in December of 2001 and then there was one less person to hang out with. Then 2 years ago, my best friend all through school, Amy, got married. I think i've seen her maybe 3 times since then. When i graduated from college in May of 2001 the job market was so bad i knew getting a job in my field was out of the question for awhile. So i continued in various retail jobs, and i am still stuck in that rut as of now.

 Anyway, in January of 2000 we moved into the house we live in now. It's a much bigger, newer house, with walls i can't put my foot through. So that is the place i still call home today, although i'm hoping like hell to be able to move out within a year. At this point it's up in the air over where i'll be moving to, because while i had been looking to get an apartment right here in my hometown, i now have a desire to go to graduate school in either NYC or NJ and relocating to one of those places.I'ev also been thinking a lot lately about getting my master's degree in secondary school english, so i can become a middle school or high school english teacher. My bachelors degree is in journalism and that is one competitive business. But i know that teachers are in demand pretty much everywhere. Plus i like children,and  always got good grades in my english classes. So english teacher seems like a logical career choice.