Dramatis Personae

To the extent any of this stuff matters, I wanted to put all of my basic information in one place. The short version is that I'm a professional lawyer, a hope-to-be professional writer, an amateur auto racer, and a very amateur musician.

And I look like this:

As you can see, I'm a bit of a soccer fan. More of that later.

My bio: I was born and raised in and around Charleston, West Virginia. I spend seven years in Morgantown, getting an undergrad degree in history (with philosophy and poli-sci minors) and my law degree. I became a member of the WV Bar in 1999. Out of law school I spent a year in the Beckley area working for what was then Appalachian Legal Services (now, after a series of mergers, WV Legal Aid), doing domestic law. It was not my thing.

After about a year of that I got a chance to jump from civil to criminal work and moved to the Kanawha County public defender office. It was there I started to do appellate work, although state appellate practice is a bit weird in WV, what without a mid-level appeals court and all. In 2002, I shifted from state work to the federal side, joining the Federal Public Defender office in Charleston as the Legal Research and Writing Specialist. My business cards say "Appellate Counsel," which is a pretty accurate description. They haven't kicked me out, yet.

I say all that not to tout my qualifications to do or say anything in particular, but so folks have some idea of where I'm coming from. As if I know myself.

I mostly write about myself (it is my blog, after all), but I'll occasionally mention some other folks.  Most important of those is The Wife The Girlfriend, aka "K", who is kind enough to put up with my nonsense.  This is she:

Before I met K, about five years ago, I was not much of an animal person. I've come around, and so sometimes I'll mention one or all of the members of K's menagerie.

There's Maia, the One-Eyed Wonder Pup:

You can read the story of how Maia came to be Maia here.


Since I shut down the last blog, Maia has been joined by an older little sister, Uzume:

Uzu is living proof of the sales power of cute.  We went to the local pet store to get something for Maia.  As on most weekends, they had a local shelter or two set up with critters for adoption.  Uzume was desperate for attention.  Once K picked her up and Uzu laid her tiny little head down on her chest, there was no question we would go home with her.


Maia and Uzume share their home with two bemused cats, Kali:

. . . and McNally:

As I said, when I'm not lawyering or hanging with K and her critters I spend some of my free time writing.  I'll write some more about that in a separate post.


I also spend some time making, as opposed to just consuming, music.  In group fashion I play clarinet in the Kanawha Valley Community Band.  As a solo artist (ha!), I've built up a fun little PC-based recording setup in my spare bedroom:

For the gear geeks out there, that's (from left to right) a Zoom R16 digital recorder, Korg M50 workstation with a Korg Kaosilator on top, a Nord Rack 2X and Alesis Micron synths sitting under an M-Audio Axiom 61 MIDI controller, and the old Gateway laptop.  For now, my tunes are posted over at ACID Planet under the name Infinity Ranch (a holdover from the old blog days).


My other big hobby is autocross, a very grassroots level form of motorsports that is, as my boss once put it, sort of like a downhill ski race, except with a car and in a parking lot.  Here's some good video evidence of what it is.  I run with the Southern WV Region of the Sports Car Club of America for the most part:

That picture, however, was taken at the Steel Cities Region's annual autocross held in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix.

That's pretty much it for me.  The basics, anyway.  Onward!