Chapter 1: Introductions

My name is Gregory Thomas. I am 29 years old and am self-employed as an electronics design engineer working out of my home in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. I do design consultation work for both oilfield and defense contractors. Business is quite good and I am able to enjoy a rather well-to-do lifestyle.

I married the girl of my dreams, my soul mate, when I was about 24. Her name was Christine and I think she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. It was literally love at first sight the day I met her at an instrumentation symposium in Dallas. She had been married before and her husband was in the Navy. He was killed in action in the Middle East after they had been married only a short time. They had only one child, a girl named Kimberly. Everybody called her Kim and she was a definite cutie even as a small child. So when Christine and I married after a whirlwind courtship I not only got a wife but I also inherited a daughter. Let me tell you, I was totally unprepared to be involved in bringing up a girl. Fortunately Christine seemed to fit well in the role of a mother.

As Kim grew up I was fascinated with watching her and she seemed to be interested in what I did for a living. Being exposed to my work in the house gave her an up close and personal view of the field of science and electronics. I almost constantly had her right at my elbow watching me like a hawk as I did my design work. Whenever I got the chance I would explain what I was doing and why I did it. She paid rapt attention to my every word and seemed to understand every concept. When she got a little older I would take her with me to visit the job sites where the equipment I designed was being installed and tested. She was quite popular with the other workers at the site since her interest in what they were doing was genuine. Kim had a knack of asking the most relevant questions and would get into some very technical discussions that amazed these technicians and even stumped some of them. Kim's brain was a virtual sponge absorbing knowledge at an alarming rate. Needless to say, the kid was smart. It was hard to believe that she was only 12 years old at that time. A couple of my customers even offered to hire her on the spot at darned near what I was making.

My wife was employed by the local school district as a science teacher and cheerleading coach. This involved quite a bit of after school cheer practice sessions so she would often arrive home just before supper time. When she got old enough, our daughter got on the JV cheerleading squad which thrilled Christine to no end. Many nights it became my responsibility to cook something for supper. I became pretty good at making a variety of healthy meals that my two girls liked a lot. When they arrived home they could easily tell that I was cooking something since the smoke alarm was going off. I became the brunt of jokes by both of them about my using the smoke alarm to announce that supper was just about ready.