1. It took me four years of undergrad, plus two years of graduate school, and six summers of working full time to determine I didn't want to be a chemist after all.
2. After instead being a computer programmer for about 23 years, I decided what I really want to be (when I grow up) is a photographer, so I quit my job and set out on my own.
3. I've also briefly considered music as a career (back in my trumpet days - now I play tuba), but decided I like eating and having a roof over my head.
4. I have a recurring half-formed desire to "go feral" - living "off the grid" with just what I can carry, with no particular fixed home base. I would never do this to my family, but if I didn't have those ties, who knows...
5. I played taps at General "Mad" Anthony Wayne's gravesite on Memorial Day of 1976 (the Bicentennial).
6. I also played taps at the close of the Bicentennial Wagon Train in Valley Forge Park later that year. I was described in the Philadelphia Inquirer as "a tall thin man in a sodden blue suit". (It was a rain coat, actually. It was POURING down rain!)
7. My college mascot (and my wife's and son's) is a chicken. Really. And I have a nephew whose college mascot is a slug. No joke.
8. I tell everyone that the "pepper nose" shot that's my image here and is my corporate logo is "what happens when my wife lets me do the shopping." This is, in fact, true. I bought it because it was pretty (along with a bunch of other fruits & veggies). When I got home and put stuff away, I took them into my studio and shot. We ate the pepper later in a salad.
9. One time a gal drove (by herself, in a big conversion van) about 300 miles round trip while 8 1/2 months pregnant so that I could shoot nude maternity shots of her. That shoot resulted in one of my absolute favorite shots (an implied nude).
10. I'm the chairman of the board of a non-profit organization (Vista Expertise Network) that promulgates and supports a free open-source complete hospital information system that runs on an open-source database on an open-source operating system (i.e., essentially all the software is basically free). It's being installed in a number of countries throughout the world. Ask me about it!
11. I really like Roberts Rules of Order. REALLY.
12.For a while, my wife and I were learning to ring tower bells (change ringing). Unfortunately we moved to a state that doesn't have a functioning ring of bells anywhere.
13. I've never been outside North America (US, Canada, Mexico and various islands). I'd like to correct that and see the other continents.
14. With one dubious link (involving a multi-great uncle hanged for murder in Colonial Pennsylvania), I can trace my Scottish heritage back to the 1500's. I'm a card-carrying (literally) member of the MacPherson clan (by way of the Gillespies, a sept thereof).
15. My wife once got me a T-shirt that says "Does anal retentive have a hyphen?" and the first thing I did was go look it up. Since then I've learned the correct answer ("it depends..." - ask me, if you care). Yeah, I really am that anal retentive.
16. I love doing double-crostics and once wrote a program (several hundred lines of BASIC written on a dual-floppy original IBM PC) to help in constructing them.
17. I've ridden in a helicopter doing an "autorotation" (an unpowered descent, the equivalent of gliding a plane into a landing without the engines). It's pretty cool, actually.
18. I've driven a forklift (one day only), tractors (a couple, for many hours), and fire trucks (several, many times). I've never driven an ATV, motorcycle, snowmobile, or jet ski, though, and have no desire to.
19. I've started in with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and have a "little borother" named Eulus. He's great. Everyone should do this!!
20. I once got to crawl (more like slither) inside the windchest of a pipe organ (while it was on), helping the organist fix a cipher (a stuck note).
21. I've been in all but six of the fifty United States (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, North and South Dakota and Oklahoma (I'm not sure about the last one, actually)). I've actually eaten a meal in all the states I've been in except maybe Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Caraolina and Vermont - and I might have eaten in any or all of those).
22. I took fencing for a few months while at college. It was the only sport I ever felt serious about, and it was the only time I was ever able to touch my toes.
23. I live in mortal terror of ever causing (inadvertently) someone's death or serious injury. I don't let it control my life, but it something I think about a LOT. I'd much rather die than be responsible for someone's death.
24. I think at this point, most of the people I consider "good friends" are people I've never actually met face-to-face (you know who you are!)
25. My photography has been featured in an advertising trade magazine. In Bulgaria.
