I was born at St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell, NY. My parents raised my brother and me in a small town outside Rochester, NY called Caledonia. I attended LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, where I earned a B.A. degree in English/Communications with a Political Science minor. Even though I learned a lot, my degree didn’t help me much in the job search. I ended up working at Borders as a bookseller, then as a trainer, then as a Community Relations Coordinator, setting up author signings and musical acts and the like. After two years, I got promoted to the corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, so Jim and I packed up the cats and headed out to the state shaped like a mitten.

After two years working in Marketing at Borders, we decided we needed a change of pace. Plus, we missed our friends and family. So Jim and I packed up the cats again, and moved back to NY. I attended graduate school full time and had a lot of time on my hands, so I started this website. I graduated with an MS in Information Management in May of 2000. I worked as a freelance writer, web designer, and adjunct instructor. These jobs allowed me to work from home, which was awesome, but they didn’t offer much in the way of stability, which became even more important when Jim’s job (and in fact, his whole organization) was eliminated due to cuts in Department of Education funding . So I went to work full-time as a college instructor at a small for-profit college. I love teaching, and kind of wish it’s what I had done all along.

My mom died suddenly in 2005 at the age of 59 and it really made me reflect and change my priorities, realizing that life is too short, and I need to spend it enjoying the people I love more. I found that as a full-timer, I was doing way more administrative work than actual classroom teaching, which wasn’t my goal. In the meantime, Jim got a job in Tech Support, which is what he wanted to do all along, and got a few promotions, because he is awesome. So I went back to being an adjunct instructor in 2007 and have continued doing various freelance jobs to supplement, and I’m way happier, healthier, and saner.

We have three cats: Grendel, Mia, and Roxanne, and one dog named Baxter. You’ll see lots of pictures of them on my site, whether you want to or not.

The technical info on this site: I use Flickr for the pictures and Photoshop for the graphics.  I have used Greymatter and Movable Type for both my journal and weblog, but have settled on WordPress for now, mostly because it’s the best free solution for avoiding comment spam that I’ve found.