About Me

I am a retired engineer and high school physics teacher. I have been married for 39 years to the love of my life that I happened to meet on her first night at college. We have two grown daughters. Our oldest is a landscape architect, she has been married to an attorney since 2017 and has our first granddaughter born in early 2020.  Our youngest is a clinical pharmacist who had a Covid wedding in September to a financial advisor and will have her wedding celebration this month.

I grew up in 10 states and two foreign countries (my father was a career military officer). I was “chubby” (the politically correct word of the day for overweight) my whole youth until I started to grow in the summer before my junior year of hs.  My father was an only child and taught me how to play most solo sports. I run (well, I used to, 6 miles a day 6 days a week for at least 10 years), backpack, bike, water ski, snow ski, sail, bowl, play golf, tennis, shoot skeet and trap.  As I got older I learned how to skydive (not recently), fly (not current on my license), and scuba dive (learned this in my 50’s you are never too old to learn something new). I have been riding actively for over 30 years logging several thousand miles every year.

Accumulated Life lessons:

  • There are very few absolutes so look for the tension in the paradox and search for balance. (what you do today will have a tremendous impact on your future, yet in the future the drama and pressure of today will have faded to a pleasant memory)
  • You are not special – because everyone is.
  • Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted and wisdom is the sum of all your experiences if you are willing to learn from them.
  • Watch “The Martian” – life lesson at the very end – spoiler alert – At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you… everything’s going to go south and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math (draw a free body diagram if necessary). You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.
  • Watch or read “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch – more life lessons than can be absorbed at one time.
  • Be as gracious and forgiving as you can be to all those around you including yourself while still maintaining high standards of behavior. (refer back to my first piece of advice)
  • Have fun on the journey (even when things are difficult).
  • If you want to speed up, slow down.
  • Bring the best of you to everything you do and trust that it will be enough (it will be).
  • Don’t stop till you (not anyone else) are proud.