More background: personal

A little bit about me:

I'm 31 years old, and have lived most of my life in Oregon, primarily in the Portland area. I love Oregon, and am proud to be a Portlander. Though I've really liked many places I've visited, so far there's no other city I'd rather live in.

I lived most of my childhood on a 40-acre farm in Yamhill County, bucking cows, milking chickens, and slaughtering hay bales. Or something like that...

After attending a few parochial elementary schools for my first few years of education, I was homeschooled for 5th through 8th grades. This experience ranged from a loose structure to outright "unschooling," though I only learned that term a couple of days ago. If my vast, rabid readership is interested in hearing more about that experience, I'll be glad to share.
I attended a parochial boarding school for my freshman year of high school. After that didn't work out, I finished the year and the next two years at my local public high school. About the time I got settled in there, I gave the Christian boarding school idea another go.

I dropped out of high school near the end of my senior year when it became apparent that I wasn't going to pass my classes. I got my GED (I'm pretty sure they told me I got an "Honors GED," whatever that means), and quickly set about to make my mark on the world by becoming homeless.

After a couple of years of that and several years of other twists and turns in my life I decided I wanted to go to college. Also, I had never lived outside the Pacific Northwest, so I randomly decided to attend a school down in Tennessee. Boy was THAT an eye-opening experience... now I'm more glad than ever that I live in Oregon!

I only went there for one semester, and didn't really focus too much on my studies. I passed all my classes, but my main focus was my new romance with Tiffany, a Senior nursing student from WA, who also just happened to be studying in TN. After she graduated, we both moved back here to Portland.

A year later (about two years after we met), Tiff and I were married. :D

This was also the point at which I set the goal of becoming a nurse, and began taking classes at PCC. Strangely enough, having a specific goal and someone to help support has made quite a difference in my scholastic motivation, and at PCC I've accumulated a 3.94 GPA. This has been very strange for me, since prior to now I was used to failing my classes pretty consistently. It's a nice change.

So that's where I am now. I have a really wide range of interests (about which you'll hear more in the future) and like new experiences, many of which I'll review for you so you don't have to bother with experiencing them for yourself. ;)

That's all for now.