interests

I have many interests and so called hobbies. I have collected some things for many years, other interests of mine are more recent. I love history, and I always have. Any kind of history has always held an interest for me. Of course I wanted to be an archaeologist as a child, along with an astronaut of course, but I became neither. I still hold on to that dream of being an archaeologist someday, this time an amateur, and the location is Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima is a small volcanic island 750 miles SE of Tokyo, and it was the site of one of the most famous of WWII battles. You probably recall the picture/painting/statue/etc of the flag raising by the marines, well that photo was taken atop Mount Suribachi which is located on Iwo Jima. Well, I digress so back to the point. Someday I will get to Iwo Jima and follow that dream. My favorite part of history is 1932 to 1945, in other words, WWII. I have read and studied the period quite extensively, and have visited as many WWII sites as possible, and that ain't very many. Pearl Harbor three times, the airfields in hawaii, and that is pretty much it. Not many people share my enthusiasm for this, and I imagine very little benefit will come to me from studying this period of history so closely, but hey, what can I say-I am me, and that's all I will ever be.

Besides history I possess a great love for nature as a whole. I don't mean just the living aspects either, I mean the rocks and the sky, and the stars, the physical universe in general. I also love the animals, and I have an especial fondness for aquatic plants (??) and coral reefs. I hope someday to be able to afford a very large aquarium where I can build my own coral reef. My favorite land animal is the elephant. I have quite a few carved wood and stone elephants in my house, as well as a tiffany style elephant lamp and some other assorted things I brought back with me from Africa. I also have a special fondness for fish, and I currently have Hoover, my pet Chinese Red-Tailed Catfish. He is classified as a giant predatory catfish, and he is about 18 inches long. I have had him since he was a wittle baby, and he is extremely tame and friendly. I make a point to pet and play with him otherwise he seems to get sad and bored. I am still working on being able to pick him up out of the water, and I am also working on getting him to eat sandwiches, but he won't eat the bread-I don't think he is big enough yet and it just falls off when he goes to eat it. Someday maybe we will learn that catfish prefer the zesty taste of Miracle Whip to mayonnaise. You will probably also see him on America's funniest pets someday. I have no idea how I am going to move him when I move to Florida, which is the place I want to go. I don't want to get rid of him, but what am I to do? Oh, woe is me.

I spoke of rocks and the sky and the stars as well, I find beauty in them all. I took several geology courses in college, including one on sediment transport (now that was such an exciting class, doesn't it sound like it would be), and those classes changed the way I look at rocks. Now when I look at a rock or a mountain or whatever like that I see the past instead of just a dead rock. I see how it was created, the environment under which it was layed down, etc. I know it probably sounds pretty geeky, but it enriches my life a great deal. I received my degree in Atmospheric Science, and so I have studied the sky and oceans in great detail. I am not much of a forecaster since I specialized in climatology, air pollution, and ozone chemistry. I wanted to make a difference in the world, but what I found when I got out of college was that there weren't any jobs in my field, and so I ended up working with computers. The money is good, but I make no difference in anything important in this world, so I am unsatisfied with my career, not unhappy, but unsatisfied because I want something more from life. Whoops, off track again, so back on track now. I like to photograph sunsets and other optical phenomenon that occur in the skies like sun dogs and rainbows. Also in college I took several astronomy courses and was an assistant for two and a half years in a two week astronomy lab course. The course was hands on training on how to use a telescope, identify the stars and constellations, performing experiments with the planets and such, and astrophotography. The pictures of the galaxies and other stellar objects that you may have seen on this website were taken by me after hours at this course. I have many more pictures, so maybe I will scan some more and put them on here someday. I hope to someday have a decent sized telescope so that I can share this part of my world with my friends and family.

I'm a big fan of strategy games like chess and other board games. I do play some video games on the computer sometimes, but I am by no means addicted to them , I find them quite boring much of the time. I do like to play with pictures on my computers, and so I have five different photo software packages on my computer to play with, as well as a scanner and a nice color photo quality printer also. I am still learning how this whole html/web thing works, and as I figure it out I will be making this site better. The computer is awesome for putting together those multiple picture panoramas whose pictures never quite seem to match up. Just look at the Lost Valley and you will see what I mean. Coming soon-the Groot Gat. That is Afrikaans for the Big Hole. It is in Kimberley South Africa, and is the largest hand dug hole in the world. More on that when it comes.

One of my really big loves is music. My musical tastes have changed a great deal in the last several years. I went from heavy metal like Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne, to lighter rock, and then a few years ago I made the switch to country music. I would never have guessed that this would happen to me, but it did, and I will never be the same again. Listening to country music has changed the way I look at many aspects of life, and I know that I have become a more caring and sensitive person because of it.