In the year I was born, the Watergate scandal was topping the headlines across the nation’s newspapers.   There was a recession, energy prices were skyrocketing, and my family moved from Washington State to the east coast to find work.  My father got a job at the Pentagon as a computer programmer.  This was back in the time when paper punch cards were fed into a machine to analyze data.  Needless to say, he has seen a rapid progression of technology in his lifetime.  Incidentally, the computers my father programmed were deep in the belly of the Pentagon, in the top secret “basement” you hear about in film and TV.  I could tell you more about it, but you might get an unexpected visit from the men in black. 

My family moved back to Washington State in April of 1980 to the Yakima Valley.  A week after our arrival, Mount St. Helens erupted.  The sky grew dark.  The land was covered with grey ash that fell to the earth like some apocalyptic snowstorm.  The next day there were fourteen inches of the stuff on the ground.  Soon after this historic event we moved to the east hill of the Kent valley.  I attended school in the Federal Way School District during the height of the Green River killings.  In fact, some friends of mine stumbled across the body of one of the victims while sneaking off of campus.  This just goes to prove you should always go to class!

After graduation, I attended BCC (no, not Bellevue Child Care), Western (where I got a BA in English), and Central (where I got my teaching certification for English and History).  During this time I worked a wide variety of jobs including: field hand, cook, custodian, music store clerk, checker, paper deliverer, assistant restaurant manager, sporting goods department manger, toy department manger, electronics store manager, cartoonist, warehouse stocker, and customer service representative.