About me...

last updated 7/13/06

[As of 7/13/06] I'm 42 years old and I'm a stay-at-home Mom with two children, ages thirteen and eleven (the ones in the photo)

I love music, especially classical; I play the piano and violin and used to play in a community orchestra until I got too busy with the children. My children are learning piano and violin; they're both very musical although they don't always enjoy practising! (They have professional music teachers but I help them practise between lessons). My childrens' involvement with music gives me some opportunities to play: I sometimes accompany other students of their violin teacher on the piano (their own accompaniments are getting too hard for me!) and I'm a member of the string ensemble run by their violin teacher.

Other things I love: mountains, lakes, waterfalls, reading, cats, people who are relaxed and can see the humorous side of life.

You would know if you heard me talk...that I was born and grew up in England. I moved to the Midwest with my husband Steve, after graduating from college (I like it here except that it is sooooo flat!). My Dad is British; my Mom is American (first generation; her parents are German Jews who left Germany and settled in the US in the early 30s).

By profession, I'm a qualified actuary (no, it's not a home for dead actors! - it's a professional who uses statistics to estimate the risk of future events). That means I took even more exams than accountants have to and now I have the letters F.S.A after my name (but this is of limited use in my current homemaker position :)!) Before I had children I worked full-time for six years for a consulting firm, working out how much money our client companies needed to put in their pension plans to keep them legal and helping the clients make design changes to their plans, when they wanted to or were forced to by tax law changes. If I do go back to work at some point, I'm not sure I'd want to return to actuarial work. I'd rather do something more 'people-oriented' - although I have no training in that type of work.

Early this year (2006) I ran across the website for Off The Map, an organization whose mission is 'helping Christians become normal". I'm currently hosting a discussion blog on their site called Conversation at the Edge - a conversation between people with and without beliefs.

I was a committed Bible-believing Christian from young adulthood until recently. I began to have serious doubts about my faith about five years ago and as a result I'm not currently actively involved in any church or Bible study groups. You can read more about this in the article I wrote for the Wednesday Journal: Why I don't go to Church Anymore.