About Me

My name is Kathleen (do not call me Kathy). I’m married to Tim (“Canetto”) and we have a daughter, Avery, who is a total piece of work six. Also part of our family are Seamus and Electra – two orange cats who love me most when I am wearing black.

Tim and I met the first night of our MBA program when he sat next to me in class and I asked him to walk me to my car, then tried to set him up with several of my girlfriends. For some reason, I thought he was a player and I wanted nothing to do with that. Though, apparently, I wanted that for several of my girlfriends.

I’m a good friend.

When we finally went on a date six months later, it was the best date I’d ever had. It involved a snow storm and some random person giving us tickets to an Alabama concert. It would have been a tough date to follow under any circumstances, but the second date ended with him vomiting in my car, so the first one pretty easily held up as the best.

I was born in Syracuse, New York, and lived there until I was seven, then moved to Virginia Beach with my family where I lived until I graduated from college. I also lived in London during the height of the mad cow era, and to this day I am prohibited from donating blood because of it.

After college, I lived in every Northern Virginia suburb until finally settling in Oakton, which is 15 miles west of Washington, DC. It is exciting to live near the legislative hub of the country, though as a member of both NRA and PETA, I will never understand politics.

I work in marketing, communications and public relations. I’ve worked for advertising agencies, the gun lobby, the concrete lobby, the county government, two Internet start up companies, and now a government contractor. I have also been a bartender and an adjunct college professor which were probably my favorite jobs, ever. I currently write a weekly humor column called At Home with Brutalism at the Oakton Patch.

I will do anything that has the potential to become a great story, which is why I’ve served cocktails at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in LA, rocked the house as the lead singer of the band [sic] at ladies' rock camp in Rhode Island, worked at a Soldier of Fortune convention and the Charlton Heston Celebrity Shoot, was in the Guinness Book of World Records for tap dancing, started the Dilettante Club, and traveled from DC to Chicago with a PEEPS diorama.

In NYC setting the Guinness World Record for tap dancing.
Or overuse of spray tan products.

I love cities -- my favorite places are New York City, Hong Kong, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles and London. Which explains why I live in the suburbs.

Nothing makes me happier than travel, GAMES magazine, and sleep.