About Us

Here's a quick personal intro:

Me: I was born in the coal regions of Eastern PA and went to college on North Carolina's Coastal Plains at East Carolina University (ECU). I'm a technical writer working at Lucent Technologies, Washington Redskins nut, an avid vinyl music collector, a Shakespeare play goer, and a novelist wannabe. My friends will tell you that once I get my shoes on, I'm unstoppable. I'm fine art and a cold glass of beer. I'm an ENTP on the Meyers-Briggs test for anyone into psychoanalysis.

Lynne: She's was born a Jersey girl, reared in Indiana, grown in Allentown, PA and later educated at ECU. Lynne's a registered dietitian turned Aetna health insurance specialist with a real penchant for gourmet foods and a keen fashion sensibility. She's basically the French Bordeaux to my Budweiser. She's heavy into travel planning, home decorating ideas, and loves cats. She's an ISFJ on the Meyers-Briggs test, so she's totally the opposite of me. She's the bizzarro Tom.

Lynne and I are still chuggin' along steadily into the future, heading into our seventh year together. We attribute most of our continued success in our relationship to our like tastes, our opposite personalities, our ability to communicate, our undying loyalty to each other, and possibly to our karmic Taurus/Pisces connection. The power struggle keeps things interesting.
 

Here's some family background:

Me: I was the youngest in a family of eight children-- four boys, four girls. My father spent most of his life as a railroad man, finishing his working life as a towerman for Conrail. My mom spent nearly 20 years working at AT&T/Lucent Technologies' Allentown fab on Union Boulevard where the first transistor was born in the 50s. My oldest sister Carla owns her own law practice with her husband Bruce in Easton. My sister Cheri works in the admissions office at NCCC and my brother Jim works as a machinist for a satellite company of Bethlehem Steel in Buffalo, NY. I have 11 nieces and nephews in all, seven living in the Lehigh Valley and four by my sister Colleen, who lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

With the help of a distant cousin, William A. Brobst, the curator of the Brobst Family Historical Registry in Kitty Hawk, NC, I have my roots traced back to Hans Probst, born in 1531 in Kanton Berne, Switzerland. Bill has also determined that my friend Eddy Brobst (Edgar Allen III) and I our distant cousins, sharing the same great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Johann Michael Probst (1701-1771). I descend from his son Mathias George (1736-1792) and Eddy descends from his younger brother George Michael "Jurg" (1740-1795).  Explore the storied past of the Brobst/Probst family history on Bill's Brobstology site.

Lynne: She was the elder of two children, she and her brother Jeff. Both of her parents chose careers in education and got their Masters degrees at Indiana University, with her father going on to get his Phd. at Indiana in Mathematics. Her father teaches higher mathematics at Kutztown University and her mother taught at Raub Middle School in Allentown and is now retired. Her brother Jeff is a software engineer at StorageTek, Inc. in Boulder, CO. Her brother's wife Amy is currently expecting, so the Fithian clan is expanding. There is a ton of information about Lynne's family available on the Fithian Web site built and maintained by her father.
 

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