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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

The hurdy gurdy girls were women who danced and entertained the miners in gold rush towns. Ever since I moved to northern BC, I've been fascinated with the hurdy gurdy girls of Barkerville (a preserved gold rush town in the area). There is such a contrast between Victorian ideals of womanhood and the setting these women lived in. I know that exploitation of women existed in gold rush towns, but there were also women who used the frontier setting as a place to carve out a more emancipated life for themselves, freed from some of the strictures of so-called "civilized society." (It's not surprising that the women of the HBO series Deadwood are some of my favourite characters on TV.)

Besides, it's a fun name to say. Hurdy gurdy girl!