1. I love to travel! We’ve been to all seven continents, and surprisingly, Antarctica wasn’t the last. We finally made it to Australia in January 2020. Just within the past two months, we explored South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana. We’ve also hiked to the Mount Everest Base Camp which is at 17,600 feet (more than 12,000 feet below the summit but higher than any point in the lower 48 states). It took us nine days and was supposed to be 65 miles round trip, however our expedition ended up being a bit longer. Weather conditions prevented our plane from landing in Lukla, so our starting point was much further from base camp than anticipated.
2. Even though I love to travel, I was born and raised and continue to live in Latham, NY. Through the years, I have spent extended periods of time (over a month) in several different places: Kansas, California, New Jersey, Texas, Russia and Namibia. But, I always come back home!
3. I met my husband, Tim, during my freshman year at Siena at a “mixer” – it’s what they used to call our parties back in the day at the Rathskeller (located at the time in the basement of Foy Hall). The drinking age was 18, the beverages were reasonably priced, and the music was great for dancing (at least I thought so), so the mixers drew a pretty big crowd. Tim and I met the night before the spring semester started and then realized we were both taking Religion and Western Culture with Fr. Kevin Tortorelli. As they say, the rest is history. We were married in the chapel one month after I graduated from Siena (he was a year older). Since I grew up at Siena (my dad taught in the Biology Department for 50 years), the first 3 rows in the chapel were filled with Franciscan friars and my parish priest, who was a bishop-elect at the time. Our reception was just across campus in Foy Hall… see how it all circled back to where we met?
4. We have four kids, three of them graduated from Siena with degrees in computer science. During the years, I experienced family leave while in different stages of my career: once while working at General Electric, then while teaching at Catholic Central high school, next while in graduate school at RPI, and finally while teaching at Siena. Siena was definitely the most accommodating.
5. I had wanted to be a teacher since kindergarten. Actually, there was one period of time when I wanted to be a translator, but I found out I’d have to speak to people. That would not work since I was super, super shy (hard to believe that now). I still love learning languages, and I try to learn the language of any area where I’ll be traveling. I did not do well with any of the Arabic languages, but I did learn Russian and some Swahili.
6. I love spending time in the Adirondacks. It probably started when we spent most of our summers at Cranberry Lake where my dad taught summer classes. It was so remote you had to take a boat to get there. In fact, there were no motorized vehicles, and at one point, electricity was shut off at 10:00 p.m. We lived in an open-eaved cabin, so we had lots of experience with bugs, mice, and bats, but it was so fun! Some of our favorite things to do after dinner were walking to the dump area to watch the bears paw through the garbage (sounds safe, doesn’t it?) and playing chicken with bats in the rec room (I was almost always the last to leave the room because I knew they were much more afraid of us). Perhaps it was because of these fond memories, we bought a cabin in Schroon Lake over 20 years ago and love spending time there with our family and friends. We have never seen a bear there and have only had a few run-ins with mice and bats.
7. My first memory was when I was two years old and watching Jeopardy with my dad, back when the cards being pulled from their slots to reveal the answers. I still love watching it with my family and we have all sorts of rules as to when you can call out an answer, etc. We are a bit competitive!
8. I love to dance… I’m not very good at it, but it makes me happy! One of the conferences that I bring students to, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, has a Friday night dance party for all of us. It is so much fun to have so many women out there enjoying themselves. I’ve even danced with Sally Ride (to the song Mustang Sally… think about that for a minute… part of the lyrics are “ride, Sally, ride”) and Frances Allen (first female Turing award winner considered to be the Nobel Prize of computer science).
9. I went from driving one of the largest cars on the road, a Yukon XL, to one of the smallest, a Mini. It was quite the adjustment. I also learned to drive in the parking lot behind Roger Bacon, twice. In high school, my parents taught me to drive in the RB lot ahead of my road test, and then in college, Tim taught me how to drive stick in the same open space.
10. One summer, while working at the library at Siena, I decided to read every book written by John Steinbeck. Just because. I was so excited a couple summers ago when we visited Cannery Row. Technically we were there for the Monterey Aquarium, but I loved seeing some of the things he wrote about.
