I regard myself as the reincarnation of both Oscar Wilde and CS Lewis, but without the sensual excesses of the former or the intellectual excesses of the latter.
I am a foreigner everywhere I go. I am australian, british and american without being any one of the three. When asked, I summarize my life by saying, "I was born in Australia, I grew up in London and I have spent most of my life in Texas and Tennessee."
In 1980 I earned a PhD in biophysics, but four years later I realized I would never go anywhere in academia because my degree was not from an Ivy League school. That realization, together with experiences at small universities, caused me to view all professors with a jaundiced eye. I went into Information Technology. I started off on mainframes but moved to Unix, developing apps in C/C++ and Cobol. I have been a software developer since 1985, except for a five-year hiatus during which I taught chemistry to nursing students.
In 1991 I met Wanda and was immediately enthralled. She was more vibrant and vivid than anyone else I had met. Next to her everyone is a cardboard cut-out, colorless and two-dimensional. She had a face like a pixie baby and a bust like a bavarian barmaid. Half an hour after our first meeting I knew she was the woman I would marry. A week later I proposed, and we were married five months after that. I had dated many other girls and considered proposing to a couple of them, but I am glad I waited until I met Wanda.
I believed then, and believe now, that Wanda and I were made for each other. Our interests are similar but different enough to broaden each others' horizons. We both love science fiction but she leans toward Anne McCaffrey and Andre Norton while I favor Larry Niven and Stephen Baxter. We both love rock and roll and italian food. Wanda tells me, "You have the brains and I have the personality," to which I reply, "My wits and your tits."