Greetings all fellow students,
Has it really been 13 years? Sometimes it feels like yesterday,
other times it feels like a lifetime ago...
Like most, I left the island after
graduation, enticed (or so I thought) by a partial scholarship to a school
in New Jersey (near Carey Jay, who, for some reason, I never visited!).
Unlike most of you though, the cold of the mainland
was a shock to this island-borne body, and I returned home to the island as
often as I could - I managed to pull that off until my mother got sick of
the heat and moved to the mainland in 1993.
One of those summers, when I was making my summer living as a bartender
at Mona's Mexican Restaurant in Fajardo, I ran into Mary Ann Steinacker, got
along pretty well with her (read: she put up with me), and married her after
I graduated in 1995.
I wholeheartedly expected to get hired on to the State Department and serve
overseas as a Foreign Service Officer, but found that difficult to do since
they kept canceling the Foreign Service Exam. So I did what I vowed I
would never do: I joined the Army.
What the hell, right? They'll pay me well (I was mistaken), and it's
go to be an easier job than just trying to hold down three part-time jobs at
once (that was kind of true). We got the chance to live
in beautiful and expensive Monterey, California while I attended language
school. Then the Army thought it would be fun to send our
“warm weather” loving family to Ft. Drum, NY where it snows from October
to April. It should be obvious to say that I
understood perfectly when my daughter and wife escaped to Puerto Rico for a
month in 1998 - although at the time the green-eyed monster of envy nearly
consumed me. Thank God for the snow - otherwise I'd probably have spontaneously
combusted!
The last time I saw Puerto Rico was
when I went back to bury my grandfather in 1996 and was surprised to see how
the island had changed in just a year. Our next trip was
planned for the summer of 2004, but work really complicated travel dates and
the trip has been postponed.
I bounced around the Army for a while, doing time in other places like
Texas, Arizona, Spain, and South America. Along the way we had a
little girl, Mari-Carmen, who is about as tall as Mary Ann and reads better
than the two of us combined at her age of 7. Our little
pack (pride???) also contains a kick ass cat and two very large dogs that
are convinced they are humans. Or, so my wife thinks, as
she babies them horribly. I had to do something to stop
her cuddling them so. It wasn’t terrible until she began comparing the cat
features to me. My evil plan worked! We
are having a son in May - let's see the cat receive as much
attention then!
After I finished my time with the army, I got a job in Maryland working for
a Defense Contractor, hated it, resigned, and joined the Army again, finally
becoming an Officer. Unfortunately, my last day with the Army was
while I was deployed to Iraq. I am now working in DC, and absolutely love
what I do.
Mary, Mari, (?), and I welcome your emails.
John