GFMorris.com

Of late, I’ve been looking around and trying to find interesting new sites to read in my leisure. While doing so ignores more pressing matters [like, you know, unpacking some of the boxes from two moves ago that I keep moving with me as if they were radically important, when they were probably packed at the very last minute, knowing me], it does drive me into realizing that, well, I don’t have an About page.

That’s a shame, really.

Can’t hurt to write a little about myself.

As I sit today, I’m a reasonably-well-compensated aerospace engineer living in Huntsville, Ala., working for a NASA contractor. It is my prime job, and it takes about one-fourth of all the hours I have to give in any week. Is it totally fulfilling? Not really. Is it fun? Oftentimes it is, despite how much I might complain about it. I work for a good boss and essentially serve as his right-hand man, his man with an answer, his second brain. I hadn’t fully realized this until Friday, when Ed introduced me to our new program manager from LMCO as “the only reason I can work on five or six contracts at one time and remain sane”. I can always tell when Ed is starting to get out of sorts, because he asks me to take part-ownership of another project.

That’s my job. Supposedly I’m a structures analyst, too, but I do precious little of that. I’ve really not done much hard-nosed engineering since graduating. Funny, that.

It’s somewhat surprising to me that I chose to speak first about work. Work is not how I choose to define myself. I am looking at this about page, though, as the things I’d tell someone at a party [though obviously I'm dominating the conversation here and probably boring my listeners]. But how do you start off a light-hearted conversation by saying, “Hi, my name is Geof, and I feel called by God Himself to be a minister of His word?” You don’t, really.

It’s sad, of course, that as I type this I’m, uh, skipping morning worship at church, but I am quite comfortable in telling you that I Am Not Perfect, so I have no problem admitting that. I’ve been worshipping in United Methodist congregations all my life; I even attended a former Evangelical United Brethren church back in Ohio, so I know which parts of the Hymnal are Methodist and which are Germanic EUB. My parents and grandparents are also Methodists, which is somewhat rare these days in what I think of as “the United Refugee Church”, the one that brings in dejected worshippers from other Christian doctrinal leanings and helps them all to find a new passion for Christ.

Okay, God, work, … what next? Family seems reasonable. I’m the son of a quality engineer and a homemaker. They are both wonderful people. You might call them Sam and Trish, but I call them Dad and Mom. I only call them by their first names&emdash;and I use their real first names, not the diminutives&emdash;for effect. I am the younger son; my older brother is a TV/radio goon down in South Mississippi. Dad was Air Force, so we’ve lived all over; Alabama is my fifth state after Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, and Tennessee [in reverse chronological order].

To go extended family on you, Dad is the older of two sons, and his parents had 12 [Pops, who unfortunately left us about a month after this was written] and two [Sugar] siblings each. [If you go to my paternal great-grandfather and come down the family tree, there's over 300 of us. Scary, that.] Mom is the daughter of an only child [Papa, who unfortunately left us in 1990] and the youngest of five [Nan]. It’s sad for me to sit and think about this, but of all the great-uncles and -aunts, only one is left [that being my father's mother's sister].

I have no family of my own. I am pretty happy being a single guy right now, mainly in that I’m responsible only to myself. I like to do stuff kinda willy-nilly [okay, very willy-nilly], and not having to ask permission is pretty darn freeing [some might say too freeing]. I do have a family of sorts, though, in the friends with which I surround myself here in Huntsville. Closest is Rick, who’s the younger brother my parents didn’t have but would adopt given half a chance. I was the best man in his wedding, and unless he has a damn good reason not to be [and that reason would be, "Jessica's baby is due that weekend, and I can't promise you that I'll be free"], he will be mine. Words really don’t describe our relationship, and they certainly don’t&emdash;we say more with looks than anything else. [Yes, we're guys.]

[In reflecting on it, I've become surprisingly close to his wife, mainly because I can sense without really knowing just how much she means to him; if she's that important to him, she might as well be that important to me, too.]

Probably the next closest to me is Katharine. I was also the best man in her wedding, which made for an amusing story to tell when giving the toast at their wedding. [How many best men can honestly say, "I've known the bride longer than the groom"? Few, I gather.] Kat is like my little sister, which isn’t surprising since she has two big brothers of her own. Of all my female friends, she’s probably the best at understanding me because she’s an engineer herself. We’re still pretty different, but we’re pretty alike, too. Stubbornness would be the biggest binding trait. Her husband, Sean, is also a great friend to me, someone who, because we work radically different schedules, sometimes is stuck viewing me from afar. But Sean’s pretty good at getting through and seeing to the heart of what’s going on. He may not have any solutions for me, but he’ll at least listen.

Next comes the third and fourth pair of folks, separated not by personality but only by how long I’ve known them and what history I have with them. Jeff and Amy have had the unfortunate pleasure of knowing me for much longer, and probably put up with my neuroses better than most. They somewhat disturbingly remind me of what my parents would have been like if they’d decided to raise cats rather than children. Amy and I are closer because we are both wordy, talkative sorts, but sometimes I think Jeff understands me better.

Stephen and Misty are somewhat the darlings of our group, probably because Misty is due Any Day Now with their first child, Eli. Stephen and Misty, though, are probably the two most responsible for me turning back to this group of friends of late: strong, faithful people who share similar tastes in music and have a been-there, done-that quality when you need to discuss something non-trivial with them.

[In writing this, I find it easier to describe those that are newer in my life, and I think that's purely because it's impossible for me to stick years and years of words into mere sentences.]

I’m also close to many of the guys I’ve lived with over the years: Anthony and Leonard, the two morons unfortunately stuck with me, the boxes, and the computers at present; Todd, the big galoot who tries to let you think he’s a big, mean, nasty jerk when he’s really a large, huggy teddy-bear [who will probably kill me for writing that], and P.J., my “which major aerospace organization have I not worked for yet? I’m ready to change jobs” buddy who got me my present job in the first place. These four buffoons have gotten me in more trouble over the years than I think I would have ever been able to get myself into all on my own, and yet, I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. [Okay, so I'd trade the eight tenths of a point off of my GPA, but only every once in a while.]

Outside of all this, I still have time for other things. I’m a passionate Weblogger, and I’ve maintained a log of some sort&emdash;and often more than one&emdash;since March 2001. [Yes, I've been doing it since before it was cool and before it was cliche. Go me.] I also help run a community of fan sites for a community of singer/songwriter types out of Nashville that write for “the Christian music scene” without being part of “Contemporary Christian Music”. I find CCM to be three lies in one: it is rarely contemporary, it’s only charitably called music, and the backstabbing and lies to be found there don’t make one think much of Christ.

As such, once a month or so you’ll find me pointing my truck towards Nashville [or Atlanta ... or Birmingham ... or Tuscaloosa], headed to a show. The great thing about running the sites is that I rarely have to pay for shows anymore. Minor obsessions do have their side-benefits.

I guess I’ve mentioned every major passion except hockey. Let me just say this: last year, sometimes at my own expense, I made it to 30 of the 34 hockey games played by my alma mater’s varsity hockey program. I was the color commentator on the radio broadcasts, and there are dozens of Canadians who know me as the guy who interviewed their son [or nephew or grandson]. I’m at most every home game we have, and sometime I go on the road, too. I have a home jersey, and I wear it.

None of which explains why, sometimes, I dream that I play hockey. Crap, I can’t even skate.

But that’s me … in a fill-out-a-questionnaire sort of fashion.