My Whole Life

22 Feb 2009 If I don't write something I'll spend the next 5 years with a mind to post something grand. So if I haven't talk to you in like 30 years or whatever this is my entire life.

1. I went to Columbia University in the City of New York after attending Tenafly High School. I noticed a month or 2 after being there 4 years I had a degree, I think in Physics. It is in Latin, which despite me being a well rounded liberal arts graduate is Greek to me.


2. I went from there to U Colorado for grad school in, hold on, "astrogeophysics" (talk about amalgamating programs) with the former Pat Crelling, whom many of you reading this may have had the pleasure of meeting.


3. Stayed there 1 year up in the mountains, with Richie Furay from Poco as my neighbor (though never met him he supposedly did the road plowing) in a geodesic dome with no insulation and no heat. "A Good Feeling to Know" was more like "I Freezin' and Its 20 below". I couldn't find a project I liked and had an itch to get back to Alaska. Ending up doing my PhD at the Geophysical Institute of the U of A in Fairbanks measuring winds and temperature in the upper atmosphere and the influence of the Northern Lights on them. Ms. Crelling morphed to Mrs. Sica. Left in 1984.


4. Did a postdoc at Utah State (Logan). 1987 gave us son (Cassady), 1988 daughter (Cheyenne). Loved living behind the Zion curtain. So many sins, so little time as they say in Utah.


5. When Chey was 2 months old I got my job here at UWO, where I still am (London, ON), as is Pat. I'm still in University, just getting paid rather than paying. Pat did yeoman service with the kids full time. They are both in 3rd year University now, Cass is at Brock in a program to get a teaching degree (wants to be a Phys Ed teacher), Chey at Queens University is into Geology.


6. Pat got a job a few months back as a video game tester for a company in London. She apparently was so good at this they are having her help with game design. Who'd a figured that, she is charitably not strong with computers and spent considerable time making sure our kids didn't play any video games. "When life looks like EZ street there is danger at your door." In January the company essentially folded and about 20 folks lost their jobs. :-(


7. I spend my free time training for distance triathlon, which translates to I have no free time. Must have been trying to run that Hunger Walk in Grade 9 that inspired me (see previous post)!


8. My parents are no longer with us, my Dad lost a cancer battle in 2000 and my Mom joined him in early 2004. They were living in Toms River at the time, so my kids have good memories of going to the Shore every summer and chillin' at Island Beach.


9. When my Mom died we had to go back to take care of things and I took them through Tenafly, then over the GWB. I managed to find my old house but it had changed so much I couldn't even recognize the corner. That being said I'm proud to be a Joisee Boy and thank God for Joisee Girls.
   
   Tweaked version of one of my first fboo letters to VA. VA, if you can forget you are married I can recycle my own words, just like I do with my lectures. :-)
   
   So people that's the past, on to the future!