It’s Time. Actually, It’s Past Time.

Twenty-seven years of a website, a divorce, a car, a dive, and a second chance at everything.

You know that feeling when you open the refrigerator, spot a jar you vaguely remember buying, check the expiration date — and realize it went bad years ago? That’s where I am with this website. It’s time. Actually, it’s past that time.

I’ve managed my own corner of the web for about 27 years now. What started in 1999 as a modest game review site for a mod I was passionate about eventually sprawled into something I could never have predicted: online radio shows, fantasy football (both NFL and English Premier League varieties), running, ultra-marathon training, lifestyle overhauls, and amateur radio. The site grew with me, mirroring whatever stage of life I happened to be in.

Then 2021 arrived, and it hit like a bolt of lightning.

• • •

The site went stagnant. Life had forced a reckoning — a long-overdue divorce from my wife of 16 years. The marriage ending wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was what came after: a stretch of time spent moving through friends’ couches, Airbnbs, hotels, motels, and eventually settling into something nobody plans for. I was sleeping in my car. At work.

For about three years, that was my life. I showered at work, used the employee kitchen to cook simple meals with a rice maker and a pressure cooker, and ate out far more than I should have. Mexican food and pizza topped the rotation — conveniently co-located at the two Oakland breweries that became my unofficial living room: Ghost Town Brewing and Original Pattern Brewing Company. Was it ideal? Hell no. But it was mine, and I made it work.

“Creating a routine in my car, while living out of it at work — it was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in life. But the divorce? That was long overdue.”

• • •

While all of this was unfolding, I kept myself moving. I threw myself into my local church, became an adult leader with the Boy Scouts of America, and picked up scuba diving — spending many weekends in Monterey off San Carlos Beach, breathing underwater and leaving the surface problems behind. Overtime at work? I took every shift I could. Easy money. Never pass that up.

And then, a 50-year friendship rewrote everything.

Back in the mid-1960s, our parents — both sets — were roommates in Chicago. The men were training as pilots for United Airlines; the women were becoming stewardesses (nobody said “flight attendants” back then). They stood in for one another at their respective weddings. Each couple had a child. That other child was a daughter named Anna, exactly one month older than me.

Anna and I had orbited each other for decades through social media — watching each other grow up, survive first marriages, raise sons. The mothers had always tried to get us together when we were young. It never happened. Until it did.

• • •

In 2021, I reached out. I was planning a diving weekend in Monterey and suggested dinner on the Friday beforehand. We met at Firestone Walker, she came straight from work, and we spent the evening catching up on a lifetime of missed time. I never did make it to Monterey that weekend.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to 2026: Anna and I have been together for five years. I’ve retired — and before anyone repeats the framing my ex-wife’s attorney keeps promoting, no, it was neither “voluntary” nor “early” in the way those words are being used. We live together in Paso Robles, a part of California I’d barely visited before but have come to genuinely love. That said, I still can’t wait to leave the state.

Life here has taken on a different rhythm. I’ve been cooking — really cooking — and the garden I’d been dreaming about for years is finally built and producing. We have vegetables actually coming to fruit. Anna’s mother lives in Washington, where I’m writing this from, while I work on getting back into amateur radio and contesting — something I hadn’t touched in 12 years and have missed enormously.

• • •

So. What happens next with The 6th Floor?

Cooking. Homebrewing. Gardening. Amateur radio. International travel and, eventually, relocation. I don’t know exactly where the writing will go — but then again, I never have. The site has always reflected wherever I am in life, for better and for worse.

Come along. Enjoy the stories. I’ve got a few to tell.