bio
I am a 33 year-old self-taught web and graphic designer living in Alexandria, Virginia.

My education (B.A. and M.A.) is in English Literature. Although I was on the Ph.D. track at the University of Virginia (wahoowah!), there was a bit too much academic egotism for me to really last; I salute those that persevere while avoiding critical social and emotional maladjustment. I still enjoy reading the great books; I just don't want to have someone describe them to me ad nauseum (why do we italicize Latin phrases?).

I bounced around a bit, traveling to Alaska for a short time as a Forest Service volunteer for about 4-5 months in the summer of 1994. It was a great time in my life, though according to some, I am an incredible bore about it. I don't know; it seems to entertain people the first time around. I took my first helicopter ride, shot my first bolt-action rifle, and saw what a really pristine wilderness can be. And I BECAME A MAN. Just kidding, I did that before I got there (I think).

I was lucky enough to be working a scrub job back at UVa when the web became The Next Big Thing in or around 1994. I beg, borrowed, and stole whatever I could to learn HTML and graphic design and hoodwinked enough people into giving me web design jobs until I actually knew what I was doing (um, probably about 1998).

I lived in Los Angeles for about a year, fell in love with California, then moved back East when the time seemed right. I took a job at Quicken Insurance, which was the brand new insurance division of Intuit, the guys who make Turbo Tax and Quicken. That was a four year surreality during the dot-com era; never quite making it big on the options, but certainly living the dream. It all came down with a crash in 2001, but it was a nice ride while it lasted and I met some great people, including m'girl, Renee.

QI got sold to the arch-enemy Insweb (do I care?) and we all got laid off, but with nice severance packages. At about the same time, my apartment was claimed as eminent domain by the state of Virginia for the Woodrow Wilson bridge expansion project. Right...evicted. But, as it turned out, the state owes you when it does that to you. So, evicted and laid off in the same 2 month span and I had never been more solvent. So I took 6 months off to focus on a life-long dream: writing. And when I say life-long, what I mean is: this is going to take the rest of my life. As William Zinsser once said, "I don't like writing. I like having written."

Needing to put beans on the table after half a year, I began searching for a job and, in a tough market, landed the web coordinator job at Pact, an NGO in Washington DC that does some incredible stuff around the world. It's been another great ride.