BIOGRAPHY
Ups and downs. Isn’t that what life is all about? After all, how can you identify the ups without the downs? Like all of you, I’ve had my share of ups and downs, but I won’t bore you with too many details.
My first big up in life was studying Music Engineering Technology at Ball State University in Indiana. What a blast! Good friends, creative outlets, no real responsibilities! I chased some dead-end dreams like playing guitar in the rock band Chop Logic and writing short stories. After five years, I graduated with a B.S. in Physics and a B.M. in Classical Guitar Performance. What happened to Music Engineering? Another dead-end dream, I suppose.
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My common sense told me to ditch music and pursue physics, which is generally a more profitable venture. However, I suffer a love/hate relationship with mathematics. My brain loves it; my heart hates it. This confusion threw me into a nasty low for nearly a year after graduation, during which I worked as a cocktailer at a nightclub. The music, alcohol and camaraderie were cool, but I was losing focus in my life. Chasing another dream, a friend and I joined together to form the folkish band Sipapu, but it never went anywhere. It wasn’t right, but I didn’t know why. I had to get my head together. |
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So, I entered the graduate program at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where they paid me to play with gigantic electron microscopes. Not a bad gig! Graduate work is tough, though, and largely unrewarding, so I started spending less time in the laboratory and more time in the saddle of my bicycle. I became a pretty good bicycle racer but, not surprisingly, my research stagnated. When my ever-patient advisor said, “Where the *%$# are your results?” I realized I needed to cut back on the cycling.
Just as I committed to cutting back, though, a guy in a Banesto jacket showed up at a group ride and stole my heart. It was love at first sight … really! A year later, we married. After the wedding, I intended on buckling down and finishing my dissertation, but then a little girl popped into our lives. |
Somehow, though, with the support of Gene and my folks, I managed to finish my Doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering. Freed from the chains of graduate school, I moved to New Mexico with Gene and our little one. Immediately, we felt at home in the rugged frontier blessed with mild weather, loads of sunshine, spectacular hiking trails and … forest fires. Well, it’s almost paradise, but no place on earth is perfect, is it? Heaven can’t have competition. Anyway we slipped easily into the community, brought a native New Mexican into the world, and learned to race bicycles with minimal oxygen (our town is at 7,400 feet).
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Recently, I rediscovered my passion for literature, both as a reader and a writer. Unexpectedly, my dabbling in writing exploded into a two-novel series and a collection of short stories. Currently, I am working on my third novel as well as a continuous stream of short fiction. I don’t know exactly where I’m heading with this, but I think the journey will be fun. At the very least, it’ll be an adventure.
But that’s not the only adventure left to tackle! This year, I ran a few marathons in Colorado, learning that 26 miles takes a lot longer to do without a bicycle. Then, in October, I backpacked the Grand Canyon from the North Rim. Wow! That’s about all I can say about that! At home, the adventures continue as I finally put my PhD to use working as a postdoc at the national lab. Once again, I get to look at cool things in electron microscopes.
Through it all, though, I'll keep writing because one of the greatest thrills in life is pursuing dreams, whether sensible or a little crazy. Life is too short to do it any other way.
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