Let's hear it for grasping desperately at the fading dust of a bandwagon trailing off into the distance. I blame camera troubles. I'm not tagging anyone unless he's so apathetic that he can't get up the gumption to do this without being tagged, in which case, please let me know and I shall rectify that posthaste. 1. I am a Roman Catholic. This is working out quite nicely so far. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that we are not obligated to believe that evolution is a fraud, all nonbelievers are going to Hell, and homosexuals are inherently evil. Some people tend to lump us in with the fundamentalist types, which annoys me a little bit. Jesus hung out with sinners rather a lot, so I'll do the same. I try to lead by example more than words. 2. My ethnic heritage is roughly a quarter each of German, French, Dutch, and Norwegian. It mainly manifests itself in the form of good cooking and also a beer brand that shares my last name. 3. I tried growing a moustache by the simple expedient of not shaving over winter break. The result, seen above, was recently put out of its misery. 4. I am one of a select few who can build proficiently in both System and Bionicle/Technic. What this means, I'm not sure exactly, but apparently I am a special flower so it's all good. 5. As anyone who saw me at BrickCon last year can attest (especially one of the Bros. Becraft, who was heard calling me a 'dirty hippie' as I accepted my prize for Best Large Bionicle), my hair is very curly, which is odd because neither of my parents have ever had curly hair. The two competing theories involve me inheriting all the alleles for waviness from my parents which then combined to produce curls, or else being secretly adopted. Even stranger, my hair was mostly straight until a couple summers ago. 6. I was homeschooled until I was 16, which has worked out just fine academically, socially, spiritually, gramatically, ecumenically...the first one so well that I scored ridiculously high on the ACT and SAT, then got ridiculously high academic scholarships, despite the fact that I can be a terrible procrastinator with hardly any ambition geared towards what society says is important. :S 7. I like spicy food. A lot. I used to drink Tabasco sauce from the bottle as a stimulant before I discovered Mountain Dew. I now have Mountain Dew boxers. 8. Right now I have a couple part-time jobs, as a lifeguard at the local rec facility and a waiter at a nursing home. Both have their own perks, and I enjoy both of them for the most part. The least part would be my lazy coworkers. If you're going to work in the service industry, please try to actually serve people. 9. One of my main hobbies aside from Lego is acting. My favorite role to date is that of Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker, which was very fun, and I'm currently involved in a production of the musical Damn Yankees, where I get to be very crude and boorish and so forth. 10. Despite the fact that words are to a degree what we make of them, I generally refrain from swearing in English out of respect for people who are nonetheless offended and may instead substitute the appropriate word or phrase in Spanish, German, Latin, or Klingon.

Never enjoying the Michigan winters, my wife and I have been talking about moving to a warmer climate for a couple of years. Basically, once Cathy finishes Grad school, and Eric finishes high school, and hopefully the housing market recovers, we will be ready to move. Maybe in about 2 years. So we figured it was time to start scouting out possibilities. We were looking for longer summers (gardening, biking, hiking, etc.), but still a change of seasons; a place with lots of green (trees, plants, etc.), not too humid, and maybe even mountain views. We also will have horses, so we needed at least 5 acres. Also, I have been wanting to get back into doing Physics R&D, my true professional love, instead of engineering. So the place had to have plenty of opportunities in Physics. Cathy wanted to work in a state that had laws attractive to Nurse Pratitioners (the degree she is working on). There were not too many places that met these requirements. Albuquerque and Santa Fe New Mexico did. So at the end of February, we traveled to Albuquerque and Santa Fe for a week to see if we liked the area. We figured February was a good time to visit - we would see it during one of the worst months (weather wise). We fell in love with Albuquerque! We were so enamored with it, we bought some land! 10 acres! So in a couple of years, we will be moving to New Mexico! Here you can see part of the 2 or 3 acres of wooded land that lies above the 150 foot tall ridge on the eastern end of the property. Notice the mountains in the background. I love mountains!