Let Me Introduce Myself

Hi, I'm Desmond Jones; welcome to my new blog

Since I'm new to Blogworld, let me tell you a few things about myself. Hopefully, these will provide some background for you on who I am; in the fullness of time, most of them will provide fodder for blogging:

- I turned 50 this past winter

- My wife Molly and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last summer

- We are the parents of eight children

- Our oldest daughter is 24, our youngest son is 4

- I make my bread as an engineer

- I was adopted as an infant

- My adoptive mother left my Dad when I was nine; she sent me a birthday card every year until I was 13, and then I lost track of her

- Dad remarried about a year later, when I was ten

- My stepmother had three children from her previous marriage, so we went from a family with two kids to five kids (spanning less than three years in age) literally overnight

- I've never called my stepmother 'stepmother'; she's always just been 'Mom'

- Mom and Dad had two boys together, so we ended up with seven kids in our 'yours-mine-and-ours' blended family

- I was eventually reunited with my adoptive mother, after not hearing from her for almost 20 years

- She had stopped writing when she remarried; she'd never told her new husband that she'd had kids

- I've searched for and met both of my birth-parents

- I met my birth-mother when I was 33; we have a close relationship, and my kids call her 'Grandma'

- I've been married longer than my birth-mother has; I like to tease her husband that, unbeknownst to either of them, she was already a grandmother when they got married

- So Molly has three - count 'em, three - mothers-in-law

- I met my birth-father about a year after I met my birth-mother; we have a good relationship, but we're not real close

- He has two daughters - my half-sisters; I've met both of them, and we've enjoyed the times we've spent together

- I'm fairly musical - I started taking piano lessons when I was five

- I sang in the church choir when I was in high school

- I taught myself to play guitar when I was in high school; chicks dig guys who play the guitar. At least, that was the theory

- I can do a semi-passable rendition of 'Stairway to Heaven'

- I sang and played keyboards in a band while I was in college; we got a few gigs playing for friends' weddings (free beer!)

- No, Molly never did 'sing in the band'; sorry

- I've been what I call a serious Christian since I was in high school (God only knows how 'serious' I've really been; Lord, have mercy)

- In high school, I was a good, old-fashioned Jesus-freak, complete with shoulder-length hair

- When I was in college, I became Catholic

- Molly and I met when we were in college - we were part of the same Christian community on campus

- We were good friends for three years before either of us thought of the other as potentially more than that (Molly probably thought of me as a potential husband a while before I caught on, but she was very patient with me)

- I've been overweight my whole adult life

- In the last four months, I've lost 67 pounds; I'm almost back to what I weighed when I was in college (which was still 50 pounds more than I weighed in high school; I've got a ways to go yet)

- It's all because Molly really loves me, and wants to keep me around a while longer (at least until the kids are grown; after that, all bets are off ;) ). She did all the research, she's doing all the shopping and cooking to make me eat (and live) healthy


OK, that's enough for now. In the fullness of time, I'll probably develop some of these into full-blown posts. Hopefully, we can have some interesting discussions over them. I like to tell stories, and I'll post some of them, too. I've enjoyed lurking and commenting on several of your blogs, and I feel like I've already made a friend or two. So if a few of you find me here, we can carry things forward, get to know each other a little better, and maybe even have a little fun together. See ya 'round!