Bio

   I opened my eyes to this world on September 24, 1949, in the old Army hospital at Ft. Ord, California, the

   oldest child of M/Sgt Michael and Mrs. Harriet Hofer.  My dad was the first American-born son of 

   Croatian immigrants, and my mother was the granddaughter of Prussian farmers.

   In 1967 I graduated from Seaside High School, Seaside, California, and in 1977 I received an Associate

   Degree in Nursing (RN) from El Paso Community College (now called Pikes Peak CC) in Colorado

   Springs.  I also attended Västmanlands Läns Landstings Vårdskolan (nursing school)  in Västerås,

   Sweden, for a year.  (Yes, I can speak Swedish, although I'm a bit rusty.  I could speak some Hausa at one

   time, too, but all that's left of that is a couple stains on my tongue.)  My nursing shoes sprinted down the

   long corridors of a county jail, a renal-diabetic unit, two AIDS units and two long-term care facilities.

   They tiptoed between patients lying on the floors of two over-crowded Nigerian hospitals and stood for

    hours squelching in the heat of a Nigerian OR.  For the last few years of my nursing career I was

    HIV/AIDS certified.  I retired in 2012.

   While an Army brat I lived in (besides Ft. Ord) Hawai, Ohio, California, Virginia, and Germany.  When

    no longer "Army" I nested briefly in Colorado, Sweden, Nigeria, and several towns in California.

    As you can guess, all that moving around has put me in a constant state of homesickness:  I always long

    to be somewhere else.

   I currently call Colorado home.  I share my space with a monster cat named Grey Bear and his two pet

   parakeets, Blue Bird and Sapphire.

   Right now it's freezing here in Colorado even though I'm talking to Go Daddy and it's 70 in Arizona.  Sometimes it's a real drag living in the Rockies--time for another log on the fire.

A thought:

  Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous.  You get knocked

  down by traffic from both sides.

                                                                         -----Margaret Thatcher

Current reads:

   *Frankenstein, by Mary W. Shelley (fiction)

  *Prison Poems, by Mahvash Sabet

   *Longing:  Stories of Racial Healing, by Phyllis & Eugene Unterschuetz 

                        (memoir)

   *Islam in Tropical Africa, edited by L. M. Lewis (sociology)

   *Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin (memoir)

   *From Copper to Gold, by Dorothy Freeman Gilstrap (biography)

   *The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson (fiction)