25 random things

I was tagged on Face­book to do this list, but I thought here was a bet­ter place.

1. I very much love my wife Heather and find great inspi­ra­tion (and sparks!) from her.

2. We have been mar­ried for 20 years, this August!

3. I love to col­lect things. Cur­rently I’m fight­ing that urge through only col­lect­ing dig­i­tal pho­tos and movie footage (ie; that I take). Oh — and inter­na­tional toothpaste.

4. I have been a graphic designer for most of my career. I took a two-year break by doing man­age­ment from 2005–2007. I’m back to design with social media added to my mix.

5. I am good at draw­ing but hate to do it. Cre­at­ing each art­work is like hav­ing a baby. Thus, I love dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy — the rewards come much eas­ier and faster.

6. Jesus is more than my reli­gion. He influ­ences my days, weeks and years. The peace he gives me is hard to explain, if you haven’t expe­ri­enced it.

7. I love my three kids. They grow me beyond what ever could have hap­pened oth­er­wise. It’s excit­ing to watch them develop and change.

8. I have climbed the two tallest moun­tains in Africa — Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro (19,330) and Mt. Kenya (17,058*). The sum­mit of Mt. Kili was the hard­est phys­i­cal day of my life. *The actual sum­mit of Mt. Kenya is 17,058′, but we only made it to Lenana — 16,355′.

9. I love music. But I’m very picky about what I lis­ten to.

10. I love see­ing live music. You guessed it — not just any.

10. I played vio­lin from 4th through 7th grades and one semes­ter in col­lege. I was good, but it was another of those having-a-baby expe­ri­ences... not enough joy to make the work worth it.

11. I love Mac com­put­ers. I would never work & play on a non-Mac, if I had any choice in the matter.

12. I greatly pre­fer lap­tops to desk­tops. If I had two com­put­ers, though, my sec­ond would be an iMac 24″.

13. I have never died my hair.

14. Choco­late is an impor­tant part of life.

15. I like good pizza bet­ter than I like steak.

16. I love cars but waited to get my dri­ving license because of my love for bicycling.

17. I am very envi­ron­men­tally aware. I will pick up an alu­minum can in a park­ing lot to recy­cle it, because I read some­where that recy­cling just one can saves the equiv­a­lent amount of energy of run­ning a TV for an hour.

18. Col­orado is a great place to live, because it has so many sunny days. Oh yeah, and there are those won­der­ful mountains.

19. I have lived eight years of my life over­seas — five in Nairobi, Kenya and three near Oxford, England.

20. I think the only way under­stand poverty is to live out­side of North Amer­ica. There is poverty here, but it’s noth­ing like in other parts of the world.

21. If air travel were free, I would go to Bel­gium three times a year. (My sis­ter and her fam­ily live there.)

22. My brother was my best man in my wed­ding. I’m still glad about that.

23. Spicy foods are right at the top of my food-of-choice list: Ethiopian, Indian, Mex­i­can. Yes to all.

24. I’m not good at sports. When a ball is thrown at me, my body is unable to con­nect with it.

25. This list seems very nar­cis­sis­tic. I hated say­ing “I” so much.