Happy New Years & a few things you didn’t know about me

Steve Matthews tagged me with the ‘five things you didn’t know about me.’ I’m pretty dull so I’ve only got a few.

• We have five teenagers. Well, at least through yesterday. Our oldest son Colin, who pitches in around LexBlog during college breaks, is 20 today. Ainsley is 17, Molly is 16, and the twin boys, Conner and Eamon, are 13.
• Despite my present ‘computer monitor physique,’ I’m a veteran of about 50 marathons with a best of 2:37. Started running after college to lose weight, keep my sanity, and to give me the energy to maintain a ‘driven’ life cycle. Needing all three again, I am going for it once more in this my 51st year. Joined the health club for the treadmill during our wet and dark Seattle winter and am scouting out a half marathon for mid year and marathon for the fall. I’ll keep you updated.
• My wife, Jill, is a saint. I mean it. I work too much and began my career with the roller coaster salary of a plaintiffs trial lawyer. At age 40 I asked her blessing to start my own law firm. That lasted a couple years when I tore her from a very large Wisconsin family (10 siblings) and a 100 year old victorian home we resored to move the family 2,000 miles to Seattle to start an Internet company. Rode the dotcom roller coaster for a year, including having Jill move the car when GMAC was coming to repossess it when we were out of money just before the sale to LexisNexis. And not screaming ‘No Mas’ when I came out of my garage office to the dinner table in December ’03 telling the family we were going to start a company doing lawyer blogs. Three or four second mortgages later and surviving way too many private struggles to document here, Jill and I will be married 27 years this July.

No time to think of others to tag. Need to run to get News Year Eve’s dinner of crab & shrimp and a new mail box.

From the LexBlog and O’Keefe families, have a wonderful and prosperous New Years!