Thanks for tagging me, Matt. It's a pleasure:

• I've been a hard core, diehard Beatles fan since watching A Hard Day's Night on TV at the age of ten.


• I taught myself to sing the first verse and chorus of the French national anthem in high school and still remember it ("Allons enfants de la Patrie ..."), long before I learned it was featured in Casablanca.


• My only trip overseas was two weeks in Israel.


• My first name is typed entirely with the left hand ... and I'm left-handed.


• One of my most memorable intercollegiate competitions was taking third place in the indoor 1,000 meters (timed 3:05) to earn an East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) scholar-athlete award ("mens sana in corpore sano") at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD the weekend my father died of lung cancer at the age of 47.