First of all: I am a Freelance Web Designer and Developer
Though not making a living at it, I consider myself a Web Designer and Developer, which started out as an interesting hobby but has now become a passionate obsession. I work various jobs to make ends meet, from manufacturing work to customer support via telephone, which I hate but I guess I’m good at it because I approach it with such a vengeance.
It doesn’t stop with building websites though. I enjoy blogging, writing articles for certain online writing sites. Currently, I maintain over a dozen blogs ranging from recipes, restaurant reviews, and kitchen tips, to photography, which I dabble in from time to time.
My 2 favorite blogs are my food-related one and my book one. Even being proficient in WordPress, my CMS of choice, it still takes a great deal of time and effort to maintain them.
Secondly: I’m an avid Foodie!
My food site, Fusion Culinaire, is by far my most successful with nearly 1200 hits a month and growing. It started out as an online repository for all the recipes I had stored and spread across the net at various food-related social sites, but since consolidating them all into 1 place, I’ve grown quite obsessed with it too and constantly work at keeping it updated with fresh new content.
I acquired a fondness for food preparation in my school years and it grew when I was married to my first wife as we would try various culinary ideas together. A lot of inspiration came from the televised cooked programs popular at the time, especially Express Chef featuring Pasquale Carpino, my favorite!
By the time I was on my second marriage, my cultivated ability to produce meals was a necessity as I did most, if not all, of the cooking throughout the term. Notice I say term. That’s no accident. My second marriage caused me to come to the ultimate conclusion that “I do” is not a vow but a sentence!
Being single once again, I still enjoy cooking my own meals but they usually aren’t anything extravagant unless I’m cooking up something for guests or when invited over for dinner.
Third: I read a lot!
Probably having a Mother that was a school teacher had something to do with my knack for reading. She enrolled me in a book club she had her own students involved with and picking up the ability to read pretty quickly, I was well on my way to a life-long love of reading. It’s not really even a past-time, it seems to just be a part of life, something you do daily, like wash your hands, make your bed, and so on.
The first reads consisted of the likes of “Robinson Crusoe”, “Swiss Family Robinson”, “Old Yeller”, and “The Yearling”, but before long, I was tackling much more complex works such as, “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman, “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, and William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. By the time I was ten, I was reading about 20 to 30 books (some much shorter than others) a year.
My favorite genres
- Memoirs and Biographies.
- Thrillers, notably mystery, conspiracy, legal and medical thrillers.
- History.
- Science.
And: I’m a jazz enthusiast!
Vintage jazz, fusion, new age, even chill and ambient, I love it all and listen to it every day! I also enjoy good classical music and classic rock. I even like some country and a little rap!
But not necessarily in that order!
I really have more interests than those mentioned above but those are my favorites at this point in my life. I haven’t the zeal for participating in sports like I used to 20 years ago, though I still support my favorite teams to a fair extent. I guess it’s just part of getting older, old pursuits just don’t appeal as much as they used to.
Perhaps gone forever are the days of playing golf twice a week, racquetball 3 times a week during lunch, an occasional snow skiing trip or scuba excursion. These days, I feel more comfortable just sitting in my “man cave” tinkering with my websites, blogging and reading. Oh, and cooking!
Okay, enough about me, I’d like to hear from you! Please, feel free to connect, as that’s what makes it all worthwhile!
Thanks for reading!