personal & confidential

career & cat

I grew up in Texas, lived in California, and moved to Florida in 1989. I now live in Ormond Beach with two teenagers sometimes, as well as a psychotic cat named Buster all of the time, who is the subject of too many conversations and Facebook pages. While writing my dissertation a few years ago, Buster provided extensive distraction from writer's block by posing for hundreds of photographs. (See image, below right and click here to experience the Buster Retrospective.)

I like to write fiction and non-fiction, fiddle in Photoshop, create web pages ... like this one and this one and this one where I am speaking to you and only to you and where you can listen to the special song I found just for you  ... and think (sometimes write) about how texting creates a peculiar sense intimacy between sender and receiver, and how all communication, oral and verbal, involves elements of performance, particularly Facebook.

travel & conferences

In October 2011, I did a presentation for the PCAS/ACAS conference in New Orleans this Fall under the umbrella of an Americanization of existentialism panel. A nine-year-old boy, with autism, who stayed at our campground during a whitewater rafting trip on the American River inspired me with his enthusiastic "What are you doing?" greeting. See image left.

In addition to the rafting trip last summer, I revisited Saddlebrook Resort for a tennis refresher with Max and Friends and hit Chicago for Edward Tufte's information design course with Sydney. 

In April 2011, I presented a paper at the Popular & American Culture Association conference in San Antonio that offered some evidence of a data cloud developing over your body. San Antonio taught me to Never Surrender and Remember the Alamo, which I will always do.

In January 2011, I presented a paper about the design of sex education curricula in US public schools at the Fifth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices in Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (see image, right), where my international audience of designers showed an enthusiastic interest in the topic, notwithstanding that they were served Champagne and cookies as a symbolic act of group self-gratification. In Rome, I learned that Italians are not fanatic joggers and they aren't partial to athletic shoes.

tennis & miscellanea

I love tennis. I maintain a somewhat disturbing running commentary of my tennis team's exploits that provides insight into women's recreational tennis personalities in Volusia County. It is not for the weak hearted or lovers of accuracy. A link to the site has actually been banned by one more pious-minded tennis club. Enter with caution: www.ScreamingDivas.net. [This site is temporarily down for a rest.]

The Screaming Divas are currently a USTA 3.5 Women's Team headed toward their Greatest, Greatest Victory ...

I recently took up running and participated in my first but not last Tough Mudder event in Tampa. I am registered for the Tough Mudder in Beaver Creek, Colorado, this summer. If you're into it and you're a bad-ass Mudder Fudder, please contact me immediately. I created a blog to chronicle our Mudder Training program, but did not particularly feel like maintaining it. Still, it's a marvel of design.

I also like skydiving but have only gone tandem. 8 times.

Mostly unrelated, in the summer of 2010, I  participated in a wedding ceremony, which you can watch and read about by clicking here.