|
Born November
1972. Lived in various places:
- Brockville, Ontario,
Canada
- My birthplace. I recall
having a very small room, a boat on the St. Lawrence River, and a few
neighbors.
- Kanata, Ontario
- Nursery school and part
of kindergarten. I recall having a larger room, driving to the boat
in Brockville a few times and splitting my lip wide open by tripping
on the dock on Picnic Island and going to the hospital, and having a
garage sale, among other things.
- Nashville, Tennessee,
U.S.A.
- Kindergarten through 4th
grade. Being only 5 years old, I experienced relatively little Yankee
culture shock moving to the states.
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- 5th through part of 7th
grade. Mostly we had a cool house with 2 acres, 1 of which was entirely
swamp. Forgetting the mosquitoes, this was a nice (if brief) excursion.
- Nashville again
- Most of 7th through 12th.
Having experienced the excellent public schools of Minneapolis, my parents
decided I should go to a private school in Nashville so's that I could
eventually make something of myself. Montgomery Bell Academy was the
place. An all-male school, which put an enormous dent in my pitiful
social development, but a worthwhile place nonetheless. Here I learned
to question authority and keep my wits about me, as my grandfather would say.
All in all, MBA was a fine school to have attended.
- Ann Arbor, Michigan
- University
of Michigan, College
of Engineering, got my bachelor's in mechanical engineering. Here
I learned that college itself does not make a person either smart or
mature. (I also learned that I'm a lousy student.) Starting my second year, I began working for the consulting
group of UM's computer bureaucracy (the User
Services division of the Information
Technology Division), where I further developed my hopeless (but
useful) attraction to computers.
- Royal Oak, Michigan
- I moved to Royal Oak to
be close to my job coming out of school: Farnam Sealing Systems, located
in Troy. Don't be fooled, both Royal Oak and Troy are suburbs of Detroit.
Royal Oak isn't a bad place, but since I married Peg that year and she
worked in Ann Arbor, we moved again to split the commute.
- Farmington Hills, Michigan
- This is a very boring, generally unfriendly
place. The fearful suburbanites do not frequently return your greetings,
nor does anyone appear to know their neighbors, but they think it's safe there anyway. While our nice apartment
was reasonably convenient to both our jobs, our landlords were fools
and the suburb itself had no spirit to speak of.
- Indian
Village, Detroit, Michigan
- A 1904, 2 bedroom, carriage
house apartment with hardwood floors and an old hayloft for a living
room, situated in a historic neighborhood in which people know their
neighbors, have monthly (if not daily) gatherings, and generally keep up
with things. It's not perfect there: insurance is higher, there really
are gunshots for New Year's Day, and there's a city income tax, but
it was well worth it. After all, we could have died of boredom in Farmington
Hills...
- After a year in the carriage
house, we ended up buying a smallish house (for the neighborhood) in
the northeast corner of the village, since it was affordably cheap (in
need of repair) and we knew we loved the neighborhood enough to stay
put for a long time.
- Nashville, Tennessee
- Except that my dad decided
that boating was more fun than working, so we moved back to Nashville so that
I could begin to take over the business. I miss Detroit's museums and proximity to Canada,
but there's a hell of a lot of good motorcycle riding to be done here.
Naturally, we found got an undervalued, old house in an undervalued, old
urban neighborhood, Lockeland Springs.
We've watched for several years as the area revitalizes, and restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and even a couple of retail shops have moved into the area again. It's actually quite exciting!
|
