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THE TACO BELLE

I was born at the uncivilized hour of 4:16 am on October 14, 1965. I also had the ill grace to be born in Williams A.F.B, a town in Arizona which no longer exists. (That's ill grace only so far as the Government is concerned. They don't like it when I put my place of birth on one of their multitudinous forms, since the place doesn't even exist anymore.)

Luckily I became civilized as I grew older (though I remain a "morning person"), and the ill grace turned, I hope, into something resembling good grace.

My father, Paul A. Nafziger, was born in Hopedale, Illinois. He grew up on a farm, and then ended up becoming a Test Pilot for the United States Air Force.

My mother, Gloria M. Nafziger, was born in Fisher, Illinois. She ended up going into design, architecture, construction and real estate. Whew!

They are the best parents in existence.

I have one brother, Brett, who currently lives in Chicago, and who is married (to his lovely wife, Michelle) and who has four children, Meghan, Caitlin, Peter, and Matthew.

I was an Air Force brat, I spent my childhood in various places -- California, Ohio, Alabama, Delaware, Maryland, Oklahoma -- and learned to pick up and move at the drop of a hat. But I finally got tired of moving, so I stopped dropping hats!

I lived in Ohio for a bit, and that's where I met Devora Jacobs (then Devora Miller), who became my best friend. That was way back in 7th grade when we were both 12 years old, and look at us now! Devora is married and gave birth to her first child, Miranda Quinn, in January 1997! (That's Miranda at left.) Some times I can barely believe it, but most times I'm just tickled coral. (I don't look good in pink.)

However, despite all that moving, I ended up spending most of my formative years living at Edwards A.F.B. in California, and I, like, totally, consider myself to be a "California Girl." While at Edwards, I attended Desert High School, which was a fairly good place to be, even though I didn't enjoy high school that much.

I went to school at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I was enrolled in the unique program, the College of Creative Studies, and where I received my B.A. degree in Literature in 1988. I think that the College of Creative Studies provides a fantastic opportunity to create and to discover. I highly recommend it to people who are very self-motivated and who want to write, paint, compose music, pursue physics, calculate math, program computers, pursue biology, or concoct chemestry.

For my graduate education, I switched from literature to computer science, and received my M.S. degree in 1990 from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. My emphasis was in computer graphics, and papers from my thesis were accepted at the 1991 SIAM conference on Computational Geometry and at the 1992 5th International Conference on Engineering Computer Graphics and Descriptive Geometry.

After finishing school, I moved out to California and accepted a position with the University of California as a computer scientist working on scientific data visualization. I have also managed to become something of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) expert, and that's lots of fun.

I attend St. Augustine Catholic Church, where I sing as a soprano in the choir! Don sings with me as well, and we really enjoy our ministry there.

On my birthday in 1996, the greatest (and only) love of my life, Don Roberts, proposed to me! We married in November 1997. Life since then has carried the normal ups and downs, but despite some of the downs, it's been the best time of my life. I can't imagine not having Don with me, and I can't wait to see how wonderful life will be after we've been married for 50 years!

I have the honor of being wed to my most wonderful husband, Don Roberts, and we do all kinds of fun things together. I'm also very close to my folks, and I try to visit them a couple times a year.

In Memory

On May 13, 1998 in the afternoon, Grandma Tomye Pi Juan, Don's paternal grandmother, died following a surgery for bladder cancer. While the surgery itself proved highly successful, the medicine for Grandma's emphysema caused pulmonary complications, and she died from a cardiac arrest. Don and I are blessed that we spent the evening prior to her surgery with her. We are also saddened. Despite her age, Grandma Tomye still seemed very full of life, and none of us feel that it was really her time.

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