People call me Eddie. I was born on October 28, 1978. My parents divorced when I was three. My mother got custody of me and my sister, Rachel, basically because she wanted us and my father didn't. I think it went something like this - Mom: "I want the kids" Dad: "Fine, I want the house". So we moved to Lawrence and in with my grandparents. I'm not sure how long we lived there, but soon after we moved... I think it was into my first step-dad's house. We weren't there long. We then moved into a trailer and were there less than a year until we were able to move into the townhouse where my mother lived until May 2001. We had it for fifteen or sixteen years. It's the place I consider home and the place I grew up.

   I was educated by the Lawrence Public School system and I think they did pretty well. I was a Cordley Comet in grade school, a Central Mustang in junior high, and a Lawrence Lion in high school. I've always had school pride and I still will occasionally attend a LHS football game. I look back fondly on grade school and have actively tried to re-connect with some friends from that time. I've had some moderate success, and I keep trying. MySpace is great to that end, despite its other faults. Junior high was three of the most hell filled years of my life. High school was just something I had to do so I did it.

    I graduated from high school in 1997. I then took a semester off after high school and worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store. I decided I really didn't like doing that so I quit and took a couple of classes at Johnson County Community College. Turns out that did more harm than good because I didn't take it serious enough and ended up dropping one class and failing the other - so when I started at The University of Kansasthe next fall, I was on financial aid probation. I was on some sort of probation (academic/financial aid) until the fall semester of 2001.  I met with my advisor once a week for a pivotal semester and it really helped. Off and on I had a renewed sense of wanting to be in college and wanting to stick it out to the end which I am proud and amazed to say I was able to do.  I graduated in December of 2002 with a degree in medieval history and a minor in psychology. For the duration of my undergrad work I held a Student Assistant position at the University of Kansas Center for Research. I did office work and backed up the Administrative Assistant. I loved the work and hoped to someday work at KU in a similar capcity.

    I met my wife, Theryn, in November of 1997. When I met her she was dating one of my best friends, Ben. We got to know each other and we became the best of friends. Then in the first week of February 1998 she broke up with Ben.  This was not  because of me, but because the relationship wasn't working. After they broke up, Theryn and I realized that there were mutual  romantic feelings, and we decided to date. Our relationship moved quite rapidly and by July we were engaged. We didn't tell anyone for quite some time after that day, mainly because we knew the wedding was so far off it wasn't necessary.  I formally proposed on our third anniversary.  We were married on June 9, 2001.

    In August of 2003 Theryn and I moved to Bloomington, Indiana.  We know some people who have lived here and met some people on Livejournal who live here so when we decided that we needed a change we drove out and visited.  It's a good town and very much like Lawrence.  It's a college town and within driving distance of a major city, being about an hour from Indianapolis.  Theryn got a job at Wonderlab, a children's science museum and she really likes it.  I worked for a time as a cashier at Lowe's but moved on to Best Buy when it opened in Bloomington.  I like the job well enough, but it was not something I wanted to make a career of. I was promoted to Product Process Senior in July 2004 and hoped to be a supervisor eventually.

    On October 22, 2004 Theryn and I walked into the animal shelter to look into possibly getting a dog.  We walked out with a six year old beagle we named Mable.  Her previous owner got her from the same shelter a year previous but is now dying of cancer so had to give her back.  Mable was was shaking like a leaf she was so scared and we're suckers for a pity case so we had to take her home with us.  If you're interested in the whole story of that day you can click here and read Theryn's account of it.

    We decided to move back to Lawrence and did so at the end of June in 2006. I transfered to a Best Buy store in KC and about a month after we moved back and right about the time I hit the breaking point with my job we found out our attempts to have a baby finally paid off. I transfered to the Lawrence Best Buy store and was a bit happier being in a store more like the one I was used to and not having the thirty minute commute to and from KC. I applied for job after job after job and finally in September got an interview for Administrative Associate with the Freshman-Sophomore Advising Center (now the University Advising Center) at the University of Kansas. I got the job and started work there in October. I love my job. It's especially great because the advisor that I saw that helped me to have the desire to finish college was in this office. Now I'm hopefully a part in helping other students do the same.

    On March 14, 2007 we were blessed with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl we named Natalie Caroline. She was a healthy 8 pounds, 7 ounces and was 21.5 inches long. She's a handful but we love her to death. She is also the cutest baby in the entire world.

    That's about where it stands now - June 12, 2008. You can find more detailed and useless tidbits of information on my old "about me" page if you're still curious.  I think I've linked it up somewhere around here.  And then you could always read my journal.

Here, also, are some relatively random facts about me.

Date of Birth: October 28, 1978
Sign: Scorpio
Place of Birth: Topeka, KS
Nicknames: Eddie, Murphy, 59, Big Mexican Eddie, E-Money
Height: 6'2"
Size shoe: 13
Hair: black
Favorite Movies: Fight Club, Glory Daze, Wedding Crashers, Dodgeball, Anchorman, SLC Punk!, the Crow, Mallrats, Dogma, Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Swingers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Favorite Books: Anything by David Eddings or Terry Brooks, Battle Circle by Piers Anthony, most books by Terry Pratchett, Candide by Voltaire, The Stranger by Camus, and the list goes on.
Favorite Food: steak
Favorite Bands: Goldfinger, Third Eye Blind, The Future, The Ditty Bops, Flogging Molly, Face to Face, Deftones, Guttermouth, The Used, Climber, Ultimate Fakebook, Suicide Machines, Pennywise, 10,000 Maniacs, the Bouncing Souls, Sublime, and the list goes on.
Favorite Solo Artists:  Natalie Merchant, Butterfly Boucher, Poe, Sarah Shannon, Sage Francis, Griffin House.
Favorite Guitarist: Charlie Paulson
Favorite Bass Player: Kelly Lemieux
Favorite Drummer: Darrin Pfeiffer
Favorite Actors:  Christian Slater, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Brad Pitt in non-romantic roles like Fight Club, Matt Damon, Jason Statham, Jason Lee, Will Smith.
Favorite Actresses:  Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Bridget Fonda, Zooey Deschanel, Angelina Jolie, Heather Graham, Kate Hudson, Eliza Dushku, Joey Lauren Adams, Kirsten Dunst.
Favorite Current Network Television Program(s): Lost, Battlestar Galactica (the new series), Survivor
Favorite Cable Television Program(s): Weeds, Rescue Me, The Sopranos, Dead Like Me, Six Feet Under. 
Favorite Magazine: Playboy, Entertainment Weekly
Phobias: heights, falling, spiders, large bodies of water, being lost
States I Have Visited: Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Virginia.
Pets: Mable
All-time Favorite Record: Goldfinger - Hang-Ups
Tattoos and Piercings: Skullfinger on my right calf, Indiana Q9 on my left calf. I want more.
Favorite Bands in High School: 10,000 Maniacs, Natalie Merchant, 311, Third Eye Blind, Garbage, Elastica, Goldfinger, Guttermouth.
Favorite Artistic Expression of Emotion: The later parts of "Passenger" when Maynard is really getting into the song, just singing for all he's worth.
Vehicle: 1999 green Mazda Protege
What I Do For Fun In My Spare Time: fuck around on the computer, watch entirely too much television read, play videogames, sleep.

Click here to see my Winamp playlist, current as of 3/8/2006.