You think you'd be able to rattle off a bunch of info about your life real easily, but when it comes down to actually doing it, it becomes rather difficult.
Currently, I live in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Originally, I'm from Noblesville, Indiana, a city about 30 north of Indianapolis.
When we moved to Noblesville we lived in an approximately 100-year old house with many creaks and squeaks. It was, and still is, a very nice house. I attended Connor Elementary for one year, and then moved onto Noblesville Junior High School. Note to self for my next life: Try not to win the spelling bee and science fair in the first year at a new school. It's a good way to get yourself labeled. At elementary, I met Matt and John Gernand, the first of two sets of twins that I ended up being friends with. Matt and John lived one street over from me. We remain friends today. Following Junior High, I moved on to Noblesville High School, where I graduated from in 1996. For the most part, I managed to stay out of trouble throughout my younger life. My mom might disagree. I definitely did some stupid things as a kid: throwing smoke bombs into a local candy store, shooting rocks at my neighbors car with my slingshot, and throwing rocks at the outside lights of the high school. I won't mention any others that truly cross the line of legality. Based on the three things I just listed, it appears that I had a natural propensity towards rocks (more on that later and throughout this site).
In high school is when I got my first taste of a new brand of music: the jam band. My best friend Matt Thomas had started to listen to a then unknown band called Phish. Phish was many times earmarked as the next coming of the Grateful Dead. I had listened to the Dead previously, but Phish seemed to have a new sound that I liked much more. Matt's older brother had been listening to Phish while attending Depauw University and the progression down the family line began. Phish turned out to be one of the most influential forces within my young life. Matt and I started regularly following them around during high school and college, when our parents would let us and our schedules would allow.
Here are some more good music sites that I like, including some of the other bands/artists that I like:
During high school, I became interested in economics and decided that was going to be my study choice at college. Based on that decision and Indiana University's well known economics program, IU became the college of choice for me. I began at IU in the fall on 1996.
Here are some of my favorite geology websites:
Check out my Geology page.
During my years at IU, I hung with good friends Matt Pruden, Steve Pruden, Ryan Kirkendall, Matt Gernand, Nick Dickos, AJ Piga, Andy Taylor, Stephanie Buchenberger, Angela Lee (now Kirkendall) and Ben Allen. Matt Thomas had chosen to go to Purdue University to study chemical engineering, so we didn't hang as much as we would've liked. Sophomore year, Ryan, Matt, Steve, and I rented a house on 12th Street in Bloomington. What a pile that house was. We treated it like crap. Nick was on the lease, but had chosen to move back to Noblesville, so we had a spare bedroom. Besides me, everyone was studying business. You couldn't have paid me enough to study business. The thought of sitting behind a desk and writing code or analyzing computer systems makes me cringe. But they seemed to like it so, to each his own. We did more partying than studying. Matt, Steve, AJ, and Andy had a band called Recluse, now defunct. Recluse had been together since we were in high school and each member was quite talented at their respective instruments. In fact, each of them still plays in their own bands in the cities that they currently reside. Check out the websites for the band that Matt is now in called Syrius Jones and the band that Andy and Steve are in called Saints and Strangers.
We had some kickin parties with Recluse at the 12th Street house. The most intriguing part of that house was the porch. The bricks that comprised the porch were homemade, literally. They were fired in a kiln that was formely located in the basement. In true Bloomington neo-hippie fashion, the bricks were inlaid with colored glass of all shades. I can picture in my mind some hippie in the 60's or 70's hanging out in his basement smoking some chiva, listening to the Dead, and dangerously firing some bricks. I'm sure the words eminating from the basement included: dude, awesome, radical, and sweet. Junior year, we had a new roommate move in, Ben Allen. Ben was a gentleman that we met living with a friend of ours at Read Dormitory. At that time, he was a music major studying trombone. After he moved in with us, he changed his major to environmental science. I don't really know what happened to Ben following graduation, other than I know that he moved back to Washington, DC.
Ryan, Ben, a geology buddy of mine named Bo, and I moved into a house on University Street for our Senior year. It was a sweet house that was cheap and way too nice for us. We actually treated it well. I went to school for an additional semester following senior year to finish up my econ and math minors. By this time, most of my geology requirements had been met. When I finally finished, I moved up to Indianapolis to be with my girlfriend, Stacey, who had moved up there 6 months prior. For some unknown reason, I decided it would be a good idea to move in with my grandmother. What a nightmare that turned out to be.
Stacey and I were together for approximately another 7 months once I got to Indy. We decided that we needed to part ways. This led to my move out to Colorado. My dad, Gary, had just moved here and I wasn't getting too many job offers for a geology-related field in Indiana. So, basically, I packed up the Honda Accord and started driving to Colorado. I had been there a few times on vacation, but didn't really know too much about it. It has turned about to be one of the best decisions that I've ever made. I got a job at a small engineering/consulting firm called Hirsch-Gibney, Inc. I cold-called the president, Richard Hirsch, once I got to Denver. He had never had an employee before, but was impressed that I had the gall to call a stranger soliciting for a jobby job. I will forever be indebted to Rick for getting my foot in the door. My life and Rick's younger life had some strange parallels to it and I think that he remembered being in my boat, so he hired me. Despite the fact that I no longer work at Hirsch-Gibney, Rick and I remain close friends.
I worked for Rick for about 10 months. I really wanted to buy a house and start to get my life in order living in Denver. Living with my dad, while good, was wearing on both his and my nerves. I explained this to Rick and very graciously, he put me in contact with a former hydrogeologist colleague of his, John Rohde. John worked for a similar company to Rick's, Clayton Group Services. Clayton was a much bigger company (>500 employees) than Hirsch-Gibney. I had two interviews at Clayton and was hired on almost immediately in July 2002. I'm still there today. To make this short, I work within the Geosciences and Remediation group at Clayton. Basically, I perform subsurface site investigations into soil and groundwater contamination. Once a problem is identified, my group develops a remediation strategy for the cleanup. Here are some of the contaminants that we've developed systems for cleanup:
Overall, I love my job each day I go to it. Of course, if I win the lottery, I'm quitting Clayton. I have a good mix of outside work and office work. As I said before, office work drives me crazy, so this job is perfect. Check out my resume page.
That's the very short synopsis of my life. Check out the rest of my site with the links below to find out about what I do around here in Colorado. This is one of the nicest places I could ever imagine living. We have over 300 days per year of sun, there is no humidity, and the mountains are a stones through away (no pun intended). I'll tease you with two pictures from Colorado, but you'll have to check out my pictures page to see more.
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