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My family is very important to me. If you believe
in this sort of thing, it probably has to do with my astrological
sign of Cancer, the Crab. I'm one of those rare children
whose parents actually stayed married to each other. It
made life very interesting. My whole clan tends to be a
matriarchy, dominated by women. Having lots of strong female
role models has been great for me, I think. I know there's
nothing I can't do, if I want it badly enough and am willing
to work for it. Below is a photo of the ladies of the Shingledecker
clan.
From
Left
Top Row: Nola Shingledecker (my mother), Mary Shingledecker
(my grandmother)
Middle Row: Rainya (me), Shannon (my older sister), Aurora
(my younger sister)
Bottom Center: Skyler Caldwell (Shannon's daughter)
My name is of particular interest to me. Rainya
came from an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
The character's name was Rayna, a blonde android who falls
in love with Captain Kirk (didn't everyone fall in love
with Captain Kirk?) Her discovery of emotion destroys
her. The name of the episode is Requiem
for Methuselah if you're interested (look in the
third season of the Original Series). Anyhow, my parents
changed a few of the letters and came up with Rainya.
My last name,
Shingledecker, is a derivative of the German name
Shindledecker. In our research, we've discovered
that it does in fact mean "one who puts shingles
on decks (of roofs.)" It does not, nor has it ever
near as we can tell, had more than one C in it, regardless
of attempts to spell it Schingledecker.
If you're curious how exactly it is pronounced, click
here for a wav file. If you don't
feel like downloading a sound file, or are one of those
poor souls without proper sound, you say it like you spell
it: Rain-ya (rain from the sky with a ya on the
end of it) Shing-le-deck-er (like shingles on the deck
of a roof). That wasn't so hard now, was it?
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