I strive to be kind to and to seek joy for myself and others. I hope you do, too.
Personally
- I’m enormously proud of my family, especially my two adult sons and my daughter-in-law. (The latter three live in Long Island.)
- I’m proud to live in Austin and I love being close to two of my five siblings, to my mother (who was born in 1929), and to many dear friends (several for many decades).
- I love my very large house cat, Willy, adopted in 2020 with his litter-sibling Sasha (since passed), when they were eight years old.
- I was born in Houston in 1958 and I grew up in the Spring Branch neighborhood.
- For many years I lived in the northeast, including in Upstate New York, southern New Jersey (near Philly), and New York City. I very much miss my old friends from those places.
I have hobbies
- I love movies!
- I like to take pictures.
- I have enjoyed baking since early days in the kitchen with my mom. I love what I bake and I’m particularly proud that my friends love my baguettes.
- I enjoy studying family history (genealogy), mostly my own.
- I poke around with computers and websites. I have had a long fascination with timekeeping and digital randomness.
- I used to ride my several bikes a lot around Austin and I occasionally raced, albeit very slowly.
Professional work
- I’m a professional stage, screen, and voice actor.
- I was a software developer, but I’m now retired.
- For spare change I do copyediting work and I help with website maintenance.
Last but not least
- I suffer from chronic neurological illness: migraine and autonomic dysfunction. It’s not terribly serious — mostly just annoying — producing bouts of fatigue, light-headedness, and drowsiness. It makes it difficult to read books and it prompted my departure from cycling and my early retirement from software development, all which I enjoyed very much.
- Due to Ménière’s disease, I am functionally deaf in my left ear. I can hear sounds, but I can only understand speech from my right side.
As a family historian, I have studied many lives and many deaths. Although I don’t expect to die anytime, soon, I hope I will have lived a life such that people can both laugh and cry at my funeral. (See “seek joy,” above.)