25 Thing about Me.

Yes, the facebook meme. after I was tagged for the third time, I decided to find some time and join the fun. The facebook posting is here, but I figured I’d post it here, too, and inflict it on everyone.

  1. I have been happily married to Laurie for over 20 years
  2. The music on my iPod looks like it was used for the Big Chill soundtrack album
  3. I am a published fiction author. My first published story involved a dead Marilyn Monroe coming back to seduce Jack Kennedy.
  4. I live in a blended household: an umbrella cockatoo and two cats. The cats think they run the place. So does the cockatoo
  5. I grew up a big basketball geek, Jerry West kinda guy. Wilt Chamberlain ruined it for me by changing the game to an above the rim game. I find the NBA completely unwatchable today, and college basketball uninteresting. Maybe if they ever start calling travelling again.
  6. We expect civil war to break out between the cats and the bird any day. Our job is to forestall that. Our money is on the bird
  7. Laurie and I once collaborated on a story for DC starring the Penguin where he rips off the Catholic Church (a “Cardinal”, get it?) by hacking their bank accounts over the net. In it, a geek is killed by a Macintosh Computer.
  8. I was involved in theater through high school. My last performance was long before, when I played a deer. That died. After that, I went into lighting and sets.
  9. That was our second story idea for DC. The first was rejected at the point the Penguin’s former catholic school teacher was killed with a huge metal ruler.
  10. In high school, I played the clarinet. Pretty well, actually.
  11. I actually admit to being a fan of (most of) Andrew Lloyd Webber. But I really love light opera such as Gilbert and Sullivan. Yes, I am a Pirate King, tra la!
  12. I worked at Disneyland for four years, driving a forklift delivering stuff for people to buy and eat.
  13. That allowed me to spend way too much of my free time at the park for free which is how I discovered and became a fan of swing music.
  14. Count Basie rocks. So does Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. I am probably the only person in the universe with Basie and Black Sabbath on the same iPod.
  15. I have had a nervous breakdown and ended up in therapy. So has a significant percentage of Silicon Valley, but they’re unwilling to admit it. It might have been the best thing to happen to me in a long time, because it made me fix things in my life that seriously needed fixing.
  16. I’ve been nominated for two Hugo awards, one for best fanzine, one for best fan writer. I finished ahead of “No Award” in both.
  17. I am very interested in photography, especially nature and bird photography: — I rarely shoot photos with people in them, but I need to do more of it.
  18. I am an avid but still learning birdwatcher. My birdwatching hobby grew out of a combination of trying to get outside and away from computers more, and enjoying the challenge of photograping birds. Better photography requires better understanding of the subject.
  19. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. Usually,my weight has won. The quote “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” reminds me it’s time to try again.
  20. Laurie and I were big baseball fans, minor league season ticket holders for years, and visiting ballparks all over the west. My interest in baseball has faded seriously, but Laurie still goes to spring training every year (I go out some other time and photograph birds).
  21. We once drove to Edmonton and back going to baseball games along the way: 13 games in 10 cities in 21 days. We’ve talked a number of times about doing the same with hockey.
  22. I do not believe in regrets, grudges or hidden agendas. They create negativity and hold you back from your goals. Learn, let go, move forward. I believe in embracing the positive.
  23. I do make exceptions to that rule. It may be hard to get on my shit list, it’s harder to get off. My key regret is allowing myself to stop being an athlete (even a mediocre one). Fitness is like a credit card – avoid letting the balance grow too high for too long.
  24. 2008 was frankly pretty sucky for a number of reasons. I regret that, but I committed to returning to the ideal of living for the positives instead of being held captive by the negatives in 2009, and it’s started out pretty well. I’m going to do what I can to continue to make that happen.
  25. If for some reason you can’t find me, you should check (a) the Oregon coast, especially Astoria; (b) Victoria, BC; (c) Portland, and (d) Vancouver, in that order.

You might also want to read:

  1. A funny thing happened on the way to going pro… A long time ago in a galaxy far away — way back in 2005 — I made a decision to get serious about my photography...
  2. One thing I’m not going to do… One aspect of figuring out what to do in a second career is understanding what NOT to do. As I noted in the intro, one...
  3. Is there a thing called normal? We buried dad friday at the Riverside National Cemetery, the busiest cemetery in the U.S. they had 73 burials planned that day, so things might...
  4. ICING – NEVER A GOOD THING Dallas Stars Blog:: ICING – NEVER A GOOD THING: I’ll tell you what I’d do. Instead of altering the rules that govern icing I’d just...
  5. What’s that thing up in the sky? Oh, I almost forgot — it’s the sun! Amazingly enough, it’s not raining, and actually hasn’t been raining long enough to get some work done...