Hmmm... So I have never written a blog or journal of anykind. Given my relative inexperience I'm going to begin by spouting out random facts of my life as is. I am a full time college student in Burlington Vermont currently majoring in Electronic Game Design. I am single at the moment and haven't really found anyone here that suits me yet here in Burlington. I'm originally from Portland Maine, where I still have a mother and two siblings residing. I'm a big nerd, but not a basement nerd. I love being a nerd and I love nerdy people, but I also love sunshine and being able to communicate with women past banter about the weather and the latest ubuntu releases. I don't enjoy large college parties that much, I love drinking with my friends however, but groups over 20, especially once white-hats and dude-guys get involved, tend to turn me off.

That's enough scattered personal information for the moment, now sit down for story time.

My father is a douche-bag. Its true, the man is actually a giant anthropomorphic womens' hygiene product. As the story goes my parents met in college and married shortly thereafter when still relatively young. True to the Irish-Catholic tradition they popped out three children within the first three years. First my socially anxious OCD elder sister Meghan who currently resides in Burlington like I do, then me the eldest son, and then in quick succession my near Irish-twin Katie. They cave my mother's vagina a two year sabbatical before producing their first planned conception my younger brother Brian. If you haven't picked up on the themes thus far my family is very proud of their Irish heritage. So proud infact that my father took quite well to the olde Irish tradition of drinking and making an ass of oneself.

My early memories are scattered and split between the many different places we lived in. My father didn't play well with the other children and when he didn't immediately make friends we all moved on with him. My earliest stable home...

Hmmm... So I have never written a blog or journal of anykind. Given my relative inexperience I'm going to begin by spouting out random facts of my life as is. I am a full time college student in Burlington Vermont currently majoring in Electronic Game Design. I am single at the moment and haven't really found anyone here that suits me yet here in Burlington. I'm originally from Portland Maine, where I still have a mother and two siblings residing. I'm a big nerd, but not a basement nerd. I love being a nerd and I love nerdy people, but I also love sunshine and being able to communicate with women past banter about the weather and the latest ubuntu releases. I don't enjoy large college parties that much, I love drinking with my friends however, but groups over 20, especially once white-hats and dude-guys get involved, tend to turn me off.

That's enough scattered personal information for the moment, now sit down for story time.

My father is a douche-bag. Its true, the man is actually a giant anthropomorphic womens' hygiene product. As the story goes my parents met in college and married shortly thereafter when still relatively young. True to the Irish-Catholic tradition they popped out three children within the first three years. First my socially anxious OCD elder sister Meghan who currently resides in Burlington like I do, then me the eldest son, and then in quick succession my near Irish-twin Katie. They cave my mother's vagina a two year sabbatical before producing their first planned conception my younger brother Brian. If you haven't picked up on the themes thus far my family is very proud of their Irish heritage. So proud infact that my father took quite well to the olde Irish tradition of drinking and making an ass of oneself.

My early memories are scattered and split between the many different places we lived in. My father didn't play well with the other children and when he didn't immediately make friends we all moved on with him. My earliest stable home was in Millinocket Maine, there my father found a sweet gig working for the paper mill. This is as far as I can tell the last time my father had respectable, stable, 9-5 long term employment. We originally lived in a trailer until my father made enough money to move us into a real house, with a real yard, in a real neighborhood. Millinocket is rural Maine, its loggers and paper mill workers, field and stream, Budweiser and Nascar, black teeth and red necks. So I grew up a little redneck boy until I was nine years old and we moved off to suburban New York. Culture shock was granted a new definition. Suddenly everything changed, our TV went above channel fifty, most houses didn't have terribly chipped and fading paint, not everyone was white and christian, people pronounced the letter 'r'. The elementary school there was light years ahead of my education, long division and graph making furtively eluded capture, and on top of that there were now three times as many people to deal with in the fourth grade.

Friends were not made, grades were bad, experience was sour, we left New York destined again to live in Maine. This time however we moved to the affluent Portland suburb of Cape Elizabeth. Per Capita the richest town in the state, I found that most of my new classmates were born and raised with firm financial security and parents who were a little more lenient with their child's acceptable behavioral patterns. By no means am I condemning them here, my strict upbringing is not something I view to favorably, but it was a stark contrast to the 'spoiled rich' kids I soon found to be in my company.

Now this is where life really started for me. For the next eight years my father never maintained a stable income. He worked for a software company, a carpenter, assorted engineering jobs, and finally a mortgage officer, a job which is at the best of times unreliable, and nowadays a disaster story. Now this is a scenario that is not uncommon in America's current economy, people change careers commonly nowadays, unfortunately my father isn't a victim of the modern economy, hes selfish, lazy, and neurotic. Allow me to elaborate. My Father refused to make a stable living, he wanted just enough money to get bye and then he'd piss it all away. He'd put his professional wants (pretty much to do whatever the fuck he wanted and work as little as possible) before his families financial needs. When the mortgage industry collapses he not only stayed in, but tried to found his own company were he could be the boss. Unfortunately he slacked off and got almost no work done. When my friends mother moved into a new house he turned his services down because he was more expensive then the other companies and did a bad job the last time they worked together. Instead of trying to work through the situation he sent her a letter explaining that his professionalism shouldn't matter, 'our children are friends' that's his business incentive. On the few occasions that we did have money, he would piss it away on useless purchases and whims. He was a financial wreck.

Though less then pleasing, being a poor provider is not by any means the only pillar of support behind my patriarchal loathing. When I was 16 my life was in the shitter, I was failing terribly, my best friend decided that dropping out of high school to do acid and play halo all day was in his best interests, a dear friend of the family died, my grandfather entered a coma, my father was out of work again, I had knee surgery, I discovered alcohol, I was terribly depressed, and my mother had cancer. My mother might be the kindest most wonderful forgiving person in the world. She had to be to put up with my father's shit her whole life. But her health was an issue for most of my teen years. Cancer was the worst of it, she was diagnosed shortly before my 16th birthday and everything for the next year was bad news until it 'cleared up'. Normally cancer is something that will pull a family close, in our case it blew us to pieces. My father grew increasingly distant from my mother and took to squabbling with her family when they came to visit. He refused to find any stable income to pay for our rising medical expenditures. My relationship with my father was already strained and started turning far worse. I was 16, I'd had enough, I wasn't a little kid he could bully anymore. I could look him in the eye, I could take a hit and stay standing. I was more eloquent more intelligent, I could carry my own in a debate with him.

Things started to turn ugly, I got sick of the way he treated my mother and my sisters, our confrontations got more heated, louder and more physical. One day he'd had enough, tried to through me out of the house after I argued against him when he suggested abstinence only education in schools. That was the turning point. My mother had had enough of him. The divorce proceedings followed with a protection from abuse restraining order. It was weird, living without him, I'd already lost my childhood, I had to grow up quick. But I soon found I was the man of the house, I was the one with the job, I had to help raise my brother, I had to keep the house in order. After the divorce the repo man showed up more often, foreclosure proceedings finally commenced on the house. We moved out, my mom won primary custody, I was originally court ordered to spend time with him in an attempt to salvage our relationship, but he insisted on calling my mother a whore and an addict; bad move. The last time we talked I kicked him out of MY house, police officers had to be present.

So that's the Reader's Digest version of my life before college, ALOT was omitted but most of this was focused on my relationship with my father. I promise all my future writings wont be so dry but this was just a history lesson. Thanks for reading.