Born and raised in sunny Southern California, I left the smogging crowds for the green foothills of Boulder, Colorado, in pursuit of higher education and a smaller community. I was dragged back to California six years later, this time to the San Francisco Bay Area, because my advisor took a job at Stanford. There I found I had a penchant for writing. I spent a summer in Princeton, New Jersey, where the lightning bugs mesmerized me. I spent another year in Santa Cruz, California, in UCSC's science writing program before I ended up at the INEEL (now the INL) in Idaho Falls -- for a six-month internship in summer 1998. I stayed, at least for a little while.

Then a job at a national lab brought me to southeast Washington state in 2008. But now I am officially back in the freelance game -- in 2018. (Hmmm, that's a lot of 8s. I should remember that for the lottery.)