Some personal information about me:

• Family: My wife, Gretchen, and I have been married for nearly 15 years. She is a registered nurse. We have a newborn son, Kieran.
• Pets: We have two cats. Winnie has been with us almost as long as we’ve been married. We rescued Merlin from an animal shelter two years ago.
• Interests: The list of what I’m not interested in is probably shorter!
• Hobbies: Amateur astronomy, blogging on astrobiology (see Alien Life), genealogy (see Kieran’s Family Tree), reading and writing science fiction, model rocketry; remote control airplanes, hiking
• Places traveled: (COUNTRIES) Azores (Portugal), Belgium, Germany, Mexico (STATES) Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin
• One place I must visit before dying: Australian Outback
• Most outlandish thing I’ve ever done: Taking up Gretchen on a dare, we drove 12 hours to Las Vegas and got married one Saturday. We bought our rings for each at a J.C. Penney in Flagstaff (she's since received a much "nicer" one).
• Heroes: John Peter Zenger, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, James T. Kirk
• Sign (for those who find value in such things): Sagittarius

Some of my favorite things:

• Artwork: Kandinsky’s ”Nel Blu”
• Football team: Green Bay Packers (For those from the U.K., Manchester United)
• Movie: ”Citizen Kane”, followed closely by ”All the President’s Men” and ”2001: A Space Odyssey”
• Music: Beatles' “Rubber Soul”/”Revolver”/”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”; but also into jazz, particularly be-bop and especially Miles Davis’ ”Kind of Blue”; and Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ”Time Out”
• Novel: Albert Camus' ”The Stranger”; (the Justin O’Brien translation), Ernest Hemingway's ”The Sun Also Rises”
• Pizza: The Flying Tomato - a thin crust pizza with extra cheese wrapped about sliced tomatoes, topped with Italian sausage. Goes great with a ”Newcastle beer”.
• Poem: Dylan Thomas' ”Fern Hill”
• Soda: ”Coca-Cola Classic”
• Television show: “Star Trek” (The Original Series, of course)