A more thorough introduction

Now that I'm getting myself known out in the blogosphere (is that what it's called?), I thought it would be appropriate if I provided an introduction that goes a little (or a lot) beyond my profile. WARNING! This is gonna be LONG!

Before I talk about me, I want to talk briefly about anonymity on the web. I'm not completely certain if I need or want to stay anonymous when I blog. I'm not sure I see the point. The people who know me already know me, and the people who don't know me... well, what is a name and a picture really gonna do? But for many people, like Phantom Scribbler and Mystery Mommy (who got me into blogging), anonymity and code names are the only way to go.

So for now I've decided to stick to first names for myself and my wife, and my daughter will go by Little Miss or LM (which are also her initials). I'd *love* to post pictures of LM and show her off for everyone to see, but for now I think I'll refrain. If you know me, feel free to email me and I will send you all the pictures you could ever want!

So now, about me. I'm 33 years old and live in northern Virginia with my wife, our 11-month-old daughter, and our standard Poodle. A side note about poodles... if you think they're floofy, prissy dogs, you've never met our poodle -- or any non-show poodle for that matter. Our dog loves to play frisbee, chase tennis balls, play tug-o-war, and wrestle. She is also very affectionate and extremely tolerant of our daughter. (There, my manhood has been defended.)

Although my degree is in Integrative Arts (Music and Recording), I have been working as a web developer for the past 8 years. My current job is pretty boring and not exactly what I expected it to be, but it pays the bills. I would love to get back into the music business full-time some day, and I have continued to do occasional sound gigs at the local town plaza. I also got back into playing trumpet when I joined the Washington Redskins marching band three years ago. Yes, the Redskins have a marching band -- I believe they are one of only two teams that still have a band, the other being the Baltimore Ravens. The band is a volunteer organization, although we do get two tickets (and of course our own admission) for every game. We practice once a week from mid-April through the end of the season, with July off for family vacations. (If you live in the DC area and know anyone who would like to join the band, especially trumpets, please let me know!)

I picked the username MusicLoverMarc because of my love of music (duh!), but it looks like my blog probably end up being mostly about my daughter. I love to play and listen to music, but there just isn't much to blog about.

I love being a father and playing with my daughter. She is so funny, whether it's the way she sways to music, her fake sneezes, or how she plays peek-a-boo by hiding below the edge of the pack-n-play and then popping up with a HUGE smile. Oh, and her Eddie Murphy laugh that you can't hear without cracking up. Of course she can be cranky, and boy does she have a temper. I didn't think temper tantrums started until around 18 months, but she's been having them for months already. She'll squirm and then stiffen up straight as a board, which of course causes her to slam her head into the floor (or anything else that's behind her), which in turn leads to more tears. She hasn't quite learned yet that this is NOT a smart thing to do with you've just been seated on the floor, or really any time for that matter. But I digress.

So what else? I love cars, especially sports cars. As a kid, my favorites were always the Corvette and the Lamborghini Countach, and I've always loved other American sports cars too, like the Camaro, Firebird, Mustang, and Viper. I've owned some sporty cars over the years... my second car was an '84 Nissan 200 sx, my first fuel-injected, rear-wheel-drive car. It was also a five-speed. Unfortunately I only had it about 6 months before my younger brother totaled it. Since then I've owned a '91 Plymouth Laser (Mitsubishi Eclipse clone), a '95 Dodge Avenger, and a '99 Mercury Cougar. Then in 2002 we finally got a real sports car, a Ford Mustang convertible (although it's only a V6, due to the price and the insurance).

My love of sports cars (especially Corvettes) also led me to a web project that I started in 1999, Indypacecars.com. It was meant to be a collection of photos and historical information on the Indy 500 pace cars. As the site got bigger and started to get attention from execs in certain places, I had to be more careful about where I obtained my photos (due to copyrights) and unfortunately work on the site slowed. Luckily I met a guy who works directly with the pace car program and he has been incredibly helpful with providing pictures of the cars since 2000.

OK, I think I've rambled on long enough, but here are some other random thoughts about me.

* My wife and I love to travel. We used to take a "big" trip every other year for our anniversary, now it's kind of whenever we feel like it. We've been to the Bahamas (honeymoon), Lake Tahoe (2nd anniversary), St. Maarten (4th), Jamaica (6th), Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon (for the heck of it), and San Diego (7th). We didn't take a big trip for our 8th anniversary because of the baby. Hopefully she won't put too much of a damper on our future travels. She has two sets of grandparents who adore her, so I'm sure they won't mind watching her for a week. I think our next trip will be a cruise, and we are hoping to go to Hawaii for our 10th anniversary.

* Like most guys, I am a gadget geek. The DVR (aka TiVo) and the GPS are two devices that once you have them, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. I also love my HDTV.

* This year for Christmas I bought scuba diving certification classes for my wife and I. (This goes along with "love to travel" above.)

* I am a TV addict (hence the DVR). I'm very surprised Blogspot has favorite music and favorite movies in the profile section but not favorite TV shows. If they did, mine would be a mile long. I used to watch mostly sitcoms and reality shows, but now sci-fi dramas have taken the place of sitcoms. (Unfortunately the last brilliant comedy to be on the air, Committed, was killed by the producers deciding to show the episodes out of sequence.) My current favorites are... sci-fi/dramas: Lost, The 4400, and Battlestar Galactica; reality: American Idol, The Apprentice, Rock Star: INXS (will there be a second season?), and Survivor; other dramas: The West Wing, Commander in Chief, Desperate Housewives (is that a drama or a comedy?); sitcoms: My Name is Earl, Scrubs.

* I have ADD. You may have already come to this conclusion if you've read this far. :) ADD is not just some made-up condition, although I do believe that a lot of kids are probably misdiagnosed. For me, ADD has had a significant impact on my life. I was already in college before I was diagnosed. I was always an underachiever and had become satisfied with Bs and Cs. ADD has impacted my personal relationships and has directly led to losing several jobs, so it really irks me when I hear people say that ADD is just an excuse for laziness. It's much more than that, and for me it is impossible to completely overcome, even with medication. But the meds do help, and I have a wife who understands and tolerates me (or at least tries to). Now if I can just learn to "follow the rules" at work, I'll be set. (This is why so many people with ADD own their own businesses!)

* I am a non-practicing Jew, although my heritage and traditions are still very important to me. My wife is a non-practicing Catholic. When we got married, we determined that she questioned many of the Catholic beliefs, and my heritage was important to me, so it made sense that we would raise a Jewish family. How's that going so far? Well, maybe we'll start next year. :)

Pet peeves:
* Drivers who don't know how to drive and/or can't obey simple traffic laws. I was going to elaborate on this, but I've decided to save it for a separate entry.
* People who don't know how to use apostrophes properly. You do NOT use an apostrophe to make a word plural (i.e. "Kid's eat free" or "Closed on Sunday's")!
* To borrow a line from Committed, people who misuse the word "literally", such as "I literally died!" No you didn't! If you had, you wouldn't be standing here talking to me! I have also never seen a highway that was "literally a parking lot", except once during a blizzard on I-80 where people actually did turn off their cars and get out and walk around.

Well, I think that's enough for now! I guess the idea of a blog is for people to discover things about you as you go along, not dump it all on you at one time! Oh well... I know I'll have lots more to say in the days and months to come!