I grew up in Texas in the Greater Houston area (Santa Fe, to be exact).

I lived with my family in a three story house. My parents have been married for more than 30 years.

I have three sisters. The oldest is Jessica and she is 33. She has two kids- Fallon (12) and Dustin (11). Then there is Tiffany. She is 24 and has one child-- Damian (2 1/2). Both Jessica and Tiffany live in Texas. My third sister is Danielle. She is 22 and lives here in Oregon.

I work in the computer industry. Primarily I work with political non-profits in the areas of web design, database design and maintenance, and event planning. In my spare time I train individuals how to use their computer and the Internet.

I'm involved in local politics and am a Steering Committee member for Democracy for Oregon (DFO), formerly known as Oregon for Dean. I also work with the Oregon Bus Project and the Democratic Party of Oregon.

As part of my work with DFO, I serve as chair of the Technology Committee.

Where I Live

In 2000, my husband and I moved to Oregon where his family lives. We have a nice little two bedroom apartment in a suburb just outside Portland. There is a pool, sauna, hot tub and workout room here at the complex.

From my bedroom window, I can see the tree covered mountains. You can also see Mt. St. Helens from the property. I was lucky enough to be able to see the mountain erupt for the first time in years. It let out a good sized ash cloud into the sky last fall.

Once you go up the street a bit, you can also see Mt. Hood, which is covered with snow for much of the year. Timberline, a hotel at the mountain's timber line, was used for the outdoor shots in the movie The Shining.

We're not more than 40 minutes or so away from Mt. Hood and about an hour and a half from the coast (neither are far mile-wise, but it's all the driving up the mountains that makes it take so long).

In the winter of 2003, we had our first major snowstorm since moving here. Our first snow of the season happened just before November, 2003. It was minor and only stayed around for a day. It was about an inch or so.

The second snow came the Monday following Christmas. We had snow on and off all week, but nothing bad enough to hinder vehicular traffic too much. It was several inches (possibly as much as 6"), but it was the nice fluffy stuff that was great for snowballs. My husband and I built a 5' snowman in the yard.

The last snowstorm was the worst. It hit on my birthday, January 6, 2004. It started snowing that day and didn't let up. We had at least a foot of snow fall in a few hours. At the same time, we were having 40+ MPH wind gusts. That meant there were snow drifts several feet deep (I sunk to my knee and didn't even hit the ground).

Then we had several inches of "sleet" fall. Sleet is precipitation that starts as rain, but freezes quite a ways up. Because it starts as rain, it freezes into small pellets (similar to hail).

After a couple days of that, freezing rain fell. Freezing rain comes down as rain almost to the surface. Near the surface the temperatures are at or below freezing. As such, the rain freezes to anything it lands on. As such, you end up with solid layers of ice covering everything that is open to the elements (vehicles, electrical wires, the sidewalk, roads, etc.).

Needless to say, this did make traveling impossible. Virtually everything shut down for nearly a week.

That is the only time we've had a bad snowstorm here. We didn't receive any snow this last winter, as we had higher than normal temperatures and very little rain. Come springtime we had lower than normal temperatures and lots of rain-- apparently our seasons were confused.

One of the views from our apartments-- taken from the second story