CoreBB

Yay =)

OK to answer your first questions really quickly

"Sooo AP, where do you live? Did you grow up there?

What age range are you in? Any hobbys? What(or who) do you do for a living?"

I live in Colorado Springs, conservative and religious stronghold of the west, and home to the Air Force Academy, Fort Carson, NORAD, and Schriever Air Force Base. Yup we got a lot of GI's here, which makes going to the bars and clubs... interesting to say the least. I am always mistaken for GI's since my hair is short, and the homeless people downtown often salute me, which is pretty amusing hehe.

I did grow up here =)

I am 26. My hobbies are pretty numberous, although WoW is taking up a good deal of my time. I enjoy mountain climbing, canoeing, snowboarding, computer stuff, music concerts, movies, dining out (yay for Indian food, chinese food, mexican food and vietnamese food), hiking, camping, playing football and basketball, etc.

What do I do for a living... heh.

I work in a hospital for a private company as a "Public Benefits Specialist."

Basically, our company has a contract with local hospitals to screen people that are self-pay to see if they qualify for benefits like medicaid, disability, etc... and if they do qualify, I am the case worker that gets them on those programs and follows thier case through to the end and get their hospital bill paid for. I am in charge of screening all of the psychiatric patients, so thats pretty fun hehe. Soon I will be doing my own Social Security Disability appeals with the courts by acting like an attorney, so that should be fun heheh.

Ok so lets start from the beginning lol...

I was born December 11, 1978 in Boulder, Colorado. My mom was married to my bio dad at the time.. and he was going to school to become a doctor. When I was born I only weighed 4 lbs and I had a severe case of Bronchitis. My lips were always blue and my cousins nicknamed me "ebenezer wheezer" because of the way I had to breathe lol... So anyways, I was really sick when I was a kid, all of the time. One time when I was a few months old I was really sick and my mom wanted to take me to the doctor.. well my bio dad was extremely religious at the time... so he told me mom that God would heal me... my mom said hell no, and took me to the doc.

Long story short, he cheated on my mom with my babysitter while my mom was at work... and other things... so they got divorced, thank god because I would be some religious psychopath hahahaah.. I guess one time my mom was out living with him and his parents and sister out in the sticks of eastern colorado and they were trying to get her to speak tongues.. so she said later guys hahhahaah... freaks.

So then when I was like 1 my mom met my now-step-dad, Ray, who is the MAN. He is my dad, more or less, and raised me. He taught me baseball, and took me camping and hiking as a child.

So my childhood consisted mostly of going camping, hiking the mountains of colorado, and playing baseball. I climbed my first 14,000 foot mountain when I was 6 years old, and have since climbed over 35 of the top 100 mountains in Colorado. Its really amazing and I would recommend it to anyone, the views are breathtaking.

When I was in 6th grade I decided it would be really fun to ride my bike down to the interstate (about 1/2 a mile from my house) with a 'friend' of mine and throw rocks at cars from a little cinder block fort we made... we did that for about a week... probably smashing tons of windows and what not... until we got caught. At the time my mom was really sick with an illness docs still don't know what it was... and my dad was laid off from work, so my parents were really poor (they made like 12,000 that year hahahah).... and so I had to go to court and stuff... which sucked, but made me grow up fast.

I was put on probation and had to pay like $600 bucks. It was probably the best thing to happen to me to be honest because it taught me a lot about the real world.

Then comes Jr. High... I hated Jr. High. I was kinda a dork, and made friends with a group one year older than me... these friends I still do things with everyday and we are all going to Ireland in a couple months yay. Anyways, I played D+D and played baseball for the most part... which was cool...

Then came High School... I made Varsity Baseball team as a sophomore and I also played Football... until I fractured my L5 vertabra and had to stop playing... that made me miss my jr year of baseball, and therefore miss out on a lot of scouting and what not....

I did a ton of rehab and basically had to relearn how to throw, I was a pitcher. I ended up leading my team to state playoffs my Sr. year and I played in the state all-star game.. I was offered a full ride for baseball to a jr. college but I said screw that.

I was afraid of the ladies in high school and never talked to them... I just liked to talk about how hot they were, but thats about it hahaha.

I graduated high school with a 3.75 GPA and won a academic scholarship to a local state college for full tution and I decided to go. I walked on to the baseball team and was probably going to be pretty good for them, but after realizing how stupid it would be to be red-shirted and rarely play until my senior year, I decided to say screw that and I quit. When I quit I was throwing in the high 80's... not shabby.

So instead of baseball, I decided to get involved in the Residence Hall Council.. we planned activities for the dorms... that was fun... and then my Sophomore year I got elected to the Vice Presidency of the school's residence hall association which netted me 1/2 room and board... hehe so wasn't paying for much of my schooling...

Then the second half of my sophomore year I became a Resident Assistant (dorm nazi). This was the hardest and coolest job, ever. I planned activities and talked to students constantly, and I had to enforce rules... busting people for drugs and alcohol was not fun but I had to do it.... plus all the girls knew who I was hahaha... *wink*

In college I really busted out of my shell... I went to parties, drank a lot, made a lot of friends, and gained confidence in the dating realm.

I majored in Counseling Psychology and really enjoyed that. I did an internship at the local psych hospital, and learned a lot about those nut jobs... which was fun =)

After I got my BA, I went straight into grad school at the Univeristy of Colorado. Long story short, I got my MA in Clinical Psychology from there.. and wrote a very long and probably boring thesis, where I created and validated my own screening instrument to detect anxiety in elderly individuals.

So, now I am a working man, not working in my field (yet)... I looked for a job for 6 months after graduating before finally taking this job a year and a half ago.

I am looking to get a job doing more things in my field.. just gotta find one first

Whew... sorry it was so long hahah.

I dunno what else to say, so I will just say thank you Riko =)

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