My First Blog Posting

Welcome to my first blog posting. This is a new experience for me so bear with me while I work out the bugs. It's been awhile since I've written anything much less mindless ramblings to the masses posted on the Internet.

I guess I should start with why I'm doing this in the first place. I have many interests and I suppose I wanted a place to organize them in a format anyone could read. Makes sense doesn't it? As i said in the page description my family and I have recently moved to a more rural setting. My wife and I were raised, and lived, until our mid 30's in either city neighborhoods, or suburbs. It has always been a dream of mine to live and raise my family in the country, and shortly after my son was born we took that step.

Please understand that my definition of country may vary slightly from yours, so here is mine. I live, for the most part, in the woods. I have a long gravel driveway that steadily meanders its way up a large hill. I have one neighbor within sight of my home. For the most part my water comes from rain collected by my gutters and dumped into a large concrete hole under my back porch. Having said that I still want the grocery store to be as close as possible without disturbing my delusions of being isolated in the wilderness of southwestern Ohio. To be honest I am perfectly willing to be more removed from the hustle and bustle of city life, but my wife and I both work the government and my wife's employer believes it's their managerial right to dictate where we live until she retires. Don't get me started on that.

Aside from my own selfish reasons for living here I also want my children to experience things that one can't get living in a condo or rowhouse, or a suburban neighborhood for that matter. I can literally walk out of my house and be in a deer hunting stand in 5 minutes. Can't do that in the city. If I walk out the other side of the house there's the chicken coop, albeit currently empty. Try that in the suburbs and count the days until a local zoning official knocks on your door and if that doesn't scare you into removing the egg factory, the ensuing lawsuit likely will. You get my meaning.

So right here and now I have the best of both worlds. I can sit on my deck with a fire in the chiminea, and look for satellites or the space station passing overhead (yes you can see them out here) without the fire department showing up. On the other hand if we are in the mood to go Great American Ballpark and take in a Cincinnati Reds game we can do that too. Who could ask for anything more.