About Me

My name's Jess. I'm a 29 year old chickie from Colorado. By day, I'm a Construction Resource Admin for a small contracting firm in my home city, which is basically a cop-out on a title because you can't define what it is that I do. It involves programming, at least some of the time. I earned my programming stripes in Vanderbilt University's School of Engineering, where I got my BS in Computer Science in 2002.

VUSE is also where I met the charming fellow who is my husband. Matt and I were married in August, 2002 and I swear I love him a little more every day. He's a wonderful husband and truly tmy best friend. He used to co-author this blog with me, but as he was a very reluctant and infrequent contributor, in this new incarnation of Jesser (2.0), we have opted to leave the blogging to me (and Loki). He is also responsible for purchasing this domain for me while we were still dating (2000, maybe??).

After graduation and the wedding, we took two year stint in the land of cows and frigid temperatures, Wisconsin. While we made the best of our time there (we played loads of DDR, went to the farmer's market, and day-tripped to Ikea), WI just wasn't for us. We were lucky enough to be able to move back to Colorful Colorado in 2004. Where we bought our first house and have lived ever since.

In 2005, after the death of our longtime canine companion, May, we adopted a small, black and white ball of energy (who since then has grown into a somewhat larger black and white ball of energy) who we call Loki. As we got him from a shelter, we can only guess as to his age (probably around 1 when we got him) and breed (we think 2 parts black lab, 2 parts border collie and 1 part crack hound). Hyper as he is, he's an incredibly sweet and gentle dog who nonetheless has quite the penchant for mischief. He is named after the norse god of mischief, so this is apropos. Of course maybe we sealed his fate when we named him.

Our newest addition, while a bit more noisy, is far less hairy and hyper than Loki. We welcomed Miss Tabitha in March, 2007. I was lucky to have a very supportive husband and a fairly uneventful pregnancy. Tabby is a very happy and fun baby - and it goes without saying that I think her absolutely brilliant! Every day it feels like more and more of a joy to be her mommy and I truly strive to make an excellent life for her.

When I'm not involved with work or family and friends, I enjoy a variety of "leisure" activities. It's hard to pick a favorite, but currently I think cooking and photography rank near the top. I also enjoy being outdoors, making stuff, traveling, and programming (this can be a hobby, right??). I also occasionally find a free moment to read or play a video game.

About the Blog

I started this blog while we lived in Wisconsin as a way to keep in touch with out-of-town friends and family (everyone was out of town in those days!). That is still a definite perk of having the site, but now I also view it as a record of our lives and a way to record and remember the things that matter and some of the things that don't. Making some wonderful bloggy friends is also a lovely side effect.

I programmed, styled, and designed it all by myself (OK PHP, mySQL, Dreamweaver, Firefox and Photoshop helped a bit) rather than using any blogging engine (such as blogger or wordpress or whatever). What can I say? I'm a control-freak. Version 2.0 was born out of a desire to 1) streamline old code and do-away with junk that was outdated (a digital housecleaning of sorts) and 2) get away from the table layout of the old site into a more flexible CSS styled site.