About Me

[Revised November 2018]
Personal
I am an early 50's married father of two daughters. We live in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. I work for a Fortune 400 health care company in commercial/sales operations. My daughters are in high school and post-high school job training, and watching them grow up is a non-stop wonder. A wonder that is going way too fast.

Wargaming
I have been wargaming since I was a teenager, starting out with board games during the glory days of SPI and Avalon Hill. For a decade or so following college, I pretty much fell by the wayside as far as gaming went, but picked it up again at around age 30. I began miniatures gaming in my mid-thirties, and it has gotten to the point over the last several years where virtually all of my gaming has been with miniatures. I still have a fairly extensive board game collection that I have accumulated over the years (and even had one of my own designs published), but I rarely seem to touch a board game any more.

My periods of interest span a wide range from Dark Ages through Medieval into the Renaissance, along with the early and mid gunpowder periods ranging from the Seven Years War through the American Civil War. I have a strong interest in WW2 history, but for some reason have never really gotten into gaming it, although that seems to be changing some with the appearance of Fireball Forward! on the scene.

Geocaching
Since trying it out in the spring of 2010, I have been an off-and-on geocacher (mostly off now...). I love the fact that it is something that can be done with my daughters (when I can get them to), with my brother Dave, or alone, and that it works well in conjunction with my love of the outdoors. In a fairly short period of time, geocaching has given me reason to go to all sorts of places and see all sorts of things that I may never have seen otherwise. At the moment, geocaching is more something I do when traveling to new places or when hiking somewhere that has caches in the vicinity of where I will be anyway.

Literature
I read voraciously, both history and modern literature. It is a rare night that I am so tired that I don't want to read for a while in bed before turning out the light and going to sleep. Books, fiction or not, transport me, and are a great way to wind down at the end of a long day. I cycle between reading lots of fiction, then lots of history, then lots of wargaming magazines and rules. I am sure my blogging will reflect that. I try to abide by a rule that the (net, not gross) number of new books coming into the house can't be more than double the number of books that I read. Sometimes I even succeed at that. Used book stores and book fairs are my downfall.

Food and Wine
I love to cook, and have a separate blog dedicated to recipes and things I have tried out. Cooking is a creative endeavor that I find to be very relaxing, and I love cooking on the weekends as a way of getting away from the hectic schedule of the work week, and doing something completely different from the data, numbers and analytics that are my career. I am certainly not a trailblazer by any means, but more of a cookbook aficionado who loves food from all over the globe. I don't often try to create a recipe, but I do follow them very well. Primary food interests at the moment are Indian, Thai/Southeast Asian, and Cajun/Creole. But this changes regularly.

Outdoors
I have always loved the outdoors, and spent countless hours as a kid out in the woods. I have always loved to fish, and still do, but don't get out as often as I would like. The rest of the family likes to fish too, so as the girls have gotten a little older we have been able to do more of this together. The biggest change in my outdoor interests beginning in 2009 is a new found love of hiking. Dave and some of the guys from childhood have been doing this for years, but for whatever reason I never really participated. That has changed as my kids have gotten a little older, and one of my favorite things these days is to spend a few hours on a trail somewhere nice. I've even started to do some backpack camping.

Music
Music has always been a big part of my life, with my interests including classic rock, jazz, classical, and a little bit of country music. From a rock and pop perspective, I will admit to being behind the times and I am fine with that. Most newer music that I like tends to be newer music from older bands. There are exceptions to be sure, but I have strong classic rock leanings. I also like guitars, and own four of them (despite the fact that I can't play very well and don't have the discipline to learn). I have a Fender made-in-Japan (1991) Strat, an Epiphone ES335 Pro, an Epiphone Les Paul, and an Epiphone EJ-200 acoustic/electric.

So that's me in a nutshell, and pretty much anything that shows up on my blog will be related to one or more of these topics. Family. Wargaming. Books. Outdoors. And other stuff...