Marie and I met in October 1994 right after I had moved back to Chicago from Rome. We were both working at Loyola--I was in Rome Center Admissions, and Marie was in Financial Aid.

We started dating in November of 1995 and in December of 2000, I asked Marie to marry me (one of the few times in my life that I've surprised her--and hoo boy did I surprise her). She said "yes," and we were married in September of 2001.

Yup, that's the whole family on a cruise for Grandma and Grandpa's 50th anniversary--that would be Christmas of 1995. From Left to right: Meredith, Kathleen (Nanny), Brian (Me), Ship's Engineer, Eric, Eileen (Mom), Iris (Grandma), and Nick (Grandpa).

This is a classic picture. My Grandfather and his brother doing one of the things that they like to do most--cooking (If I recall correctly, they were preparing to fry up some catfish). This was taken at a dinner that they threw for myself and some of my friends at Mardi Gras 1994. I had flown in from Rome for a week and my friends had driven and flown in from Chicago.

You might notice that the aprons say "Bay" and "Stinky" Eric and I gave these to Grandma and Grandpa when we were little--Bay being Grandpa's pet name for Grandma and Stinky being her pet name for him. Unbearably cute, I know.

This is my favorite picture of the two of them, and I have an 8x10 of it on the wall in my office.

We deliver software in style. LOIS is a large scale corporate banking project that we worked on for Bank One's Corporate Banking Division. From left to right, Lee "Lefty" Burgess, Me, and Karl Fogel. Coding alone took us (and the rest of our team) about 7 months. It was a total rush--we delivered it early and under budget. That's not something you see every day in the software development world. And we delivered the final version in tuxedos and tails!