An Opening Statement:
No legal spouse, no children except our pet birds. My partner Bob and I recently celebrated 32 years together.
The line above needs updating. After it was legal in Delaware, Bob and I became civilly united. A year later the state convert our civil union into a bona fide marriage. In my wildest imaginations I never believed I'd see the day. Ever the pessimist I worry now that the Catholics on the Trump Court and their allies among Christian Nationalists will revoke my marriage.
We thrived in DC under Carter and suffered the Reagan era there, too. After Bush senior was elected we left the country for a long-overdue junior year abroad. After that year in a small village near Orvieto, Italy, we bought a small farm in NC where I tended gardens, pastures and chickens. In 2004 we sold the farm and moved to Lewes, DE where Bob's mother and brother lived.
After graduating with a degree in History and Russian (Wake Forest, UNC) I moved back to DC where I looked for work using Russian. After a couple of interesting odd jobs, I took night courses in computer programming and had a string of jobs using those skills: a law firm, a defense contractor, The Source, The Nature Conservancy. My last employer was me.