I was born on August 27, 1978 in Manchester, New Hampshire, and I grew up in a lovely little New England town named Fremont, located about twenty-five miles inland from the coastline. Growing up in the beautiful state of New Hampshire, my two younger brothers and I quickly came to enjoy hiking in the White Mountains, ice skating on the rivers, and swimming in the crystalline lakes. My father, an electrical engineer, and my mother, a registered nurse, always encouraged us to be curious and to explore and learn about the world around us. My brothers and I had many happy times building interesting contraptions in my father's garage/machine shop.
When I was seven, my parents took me to the SEE Science Center in Manchester, NH, where I saw many physics demonstrations. I was fascinated by everything that I saw. The physicists could answer so many of my questions. I had always wanted to know how things worked, and these people got to figure out how things work for their careers! And they clearly got to have the coolest toys. So I decided that someday, I wanted to be a physicist.
 When I finished high school in 1996, I went to study physics and mathematics as an undergraduate at Mississippi State University. While I was at MSU, I not only had a great time learning all about physics and astronomy, but I also studied ballet, pointe, fencing, and photography. I also spent a lot of wonderful time in the music department as one of the University Madrigal singers and working on my skills as a pianist and an organist. I had been involved with an experiment that the MSU nuclear physics group had using Gammasphere when it was located at Argonne National Lab, but after being a summer student at Jefferson Lab, Virginia, in the summer of 1998, I decided that I was very interested in the strange-quark investigations that were going on there. I also really enjoyed the international community there, and made many friends with physics students from all over the world.
 In 2000, I graduated and went on to pursue graduate studies at The College of William and Mary. I received my Master's degree in 2002, and am currently writing my dissertation to hopefully receive my PhD by the end of this year. For my thesis, I have been working on the forward-angle measurement of the G-zero experiment that ran last year in Jefferson Lab's Hall C. This experiment measured parity-violating asymmetries in elastic electron-proton scattering, from which the contribution of the strange quark to the charge and magnetic properties of the proton will be determined.
Since coming to Virginia, I have been learning Argentine tango, which is absolutely marvelous, as well as other dance styles like waltz. I also play floor hockey with some of the other graduate students at W&M. I love cooking, especially trying out new cuisines and old family recipes that have been passed down through the years. I am still very involved in music, hiking, reading, and photography, and recently I bought a bicycle and am having a grand time learning to bike around.
This year should be a very exciting year for me as I finish my analysis, write my thesis, and find a job. With any luck, all the adventure that I have in accomplishing this will be fun to read about in this web diary!
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