I grew up on an Air Force base in southern California, but moved to the northern Chicago suburbs just before I started high school. I never liked the city back then, mostly due to an unfortunate series of events that lead to me having an awful or embarrassing time each time I went downtown.
My last two years of high school I spent at a community college, earning dual credit towards high school and college. The idea was to graduate early and start on my master’s. At that point, it was chemistry all the way. THEN I took college chemistry classes and realized there was no way in hades I was going to do that for the rest of my life. I switched to biotech, which is a half-step between bio and chem. Lots of genetics, which is basically the most elegant accidental programing language ever.
By the time I got to the end of my bachelor’s, I knew that bio wasn’t for me either. I was pretty good at it and I enjoyed it but I was really sick of never seeing the blue sky. I graduated and headed off to look for a job that would pay the bills.
For the last few years, I’ve wanted to open a coffeehouse. In fact, I wanted to open a coffeehouse BEFORE I became such a huge coffee nerd. I like the idea of running a small business. Plus, I’ve got lots of friends and acquaintances that are super psyched and want to help me out. In order to get to that dream, I have to save up enough money to live off for the two years before the place actually makes money. I also need enough capital to own the place outright, because I am not going to bend to the will of investors.
To build up that amount of cash, I’m working as hard as I can. I was lucky enough to not only find a job but to find a wonderful job that I love doing. I do crash safety research under the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I live in the city, I work all over the city and I love it. I get to play with totaled cars and flash a badge for a living. Yeh, it’s pretty sweet.
If you’re ever in the Chicago area, drop me a line.
