A little about me...

The basics:  I was born in Alexandria, Virginia, but my parents moved shortly thereafter back to southern West Virginia (Fayetteville, WV) where they both grew up.  I lived there with them until graduating from high school in 1985, then attended Virginia Tech where I received a B.S. in Computer Science (and Psychology) in 1989.  I've since finished my Master's Degree at George Mason University.

After graduation from Va Tech, I got a job in Northern Virginia (D.C. metro area), and lived there until July 2004, when I decided to move to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.  After I sold my house in VA, I put everything I owned in storage, and took seven months off, four of which was spent traveling around the U.S., which was an amazing experience (see pics here, here, and here).

Since then, I bought a nice house in NC (March 2005), have had several good contracts for work, made some new friends, and met a wonderful woman named Elise. We got engaged at Niagara Falls in August (on the one-year anniversary of our first date), and got married December 3, 2006 in Cancun, Mexico at the "Dreams Cancun" resort. It was an incredible setting, and a beautiful day that we shared with our immediate families.

Elise is originally from Lebanon, and it's been interesting learning about Lebanon and the culture there. Her English is perfect, but I'm still trying to learn even a little Lebanese, which is a dialect of Arabic. She knows my native language, I'd like to learn at least a little of hers. We hope to go to Lebanon some day soon so I can meet the rest of her family and learn a little more about her native country, but it'll have to wait until the political situation settles down a bit more there.

In the time since Elise and I met, we've gone wakeboarding/skiing numerous times, been to Italy together (Rome, Venice, Cortina), been snow skiing several times, gone to the beach several times (Ocracoke, Virginia Beach, Carolina Beach), bought a lakefront lot at Lake Gaston (border of VA/NC) together, and are almost done building vacation home there. Obviously, we've been busy, but having a lot of fun.   We have a lot of goals and interests in common, great chemistry, have a ton of fun together, and I'm very happy to have her as my wife. It's been amazing so far, and I'm excited to see what the future holds for us!

I have wonderful parents, who still live in West Virginia, where I grew up. I try to get in to visit with them as often as I can, but it's never often enough, and the visits are always too short. Mom's side of the familiy gets together every July 4th at their house, which is always fun. Few of them live close, so I rarely get to see them at any other time, which makes July 4th special. Most of Dad's family still live in WV, so I get to see them more often, usually on holidays (our Christmas Eve get-together is a long-standing tradition).

I also have pretty cool brother (Neal) who owns and runs an advertising company (Palette Communications) in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has been getting more into Web design as well. I'm glad that we live closer together now, so that it's easier to visit (2-hours vs. 8 hours from DC).   Only one of my grandparents is still living (Dad's mother), but she's an amazing lady, and I cherish the time I get to spend with her. I never knew my Mom's father (he died before I was born), but I miss my other grandparents a lot.

I still have a lot of friends in the DC area, but unfortunately I'm sure some of those will trail off with time...many friendships dwindle with distance, but true friends make the effort to stay in touch. I'll hopefully maintain some of my longtime friends from my years in DC, but I'm already making some new ones here in NC, which is good.

That's my life in a nutshell. As far as the more generic stuff, I'm about 6'4", 220 lbs, blue eyes and brown hair.  Just for grins, here's a few "favorites" lists.