Michelangelo, Franklin Pierce and culinary school

It is said that on his deathbed Michelangelo stated I'm still learning. I've always thought that was a wonderful last statement and one that I hope I can make when my time comes many many years from now. I've always had a love of learning and have often been told when an occasion has a arose for me to teach something to a friend or colleague that I should do more teaching because apparently, I'm good at it.

The only thing I can attribute that ability to is the many years that I've spent in school. After High School, I spent a couple of years in the U.S. Army where I learned all about being a soldier and how to drive an Abrams tank and how to count the days toward the end of my Enlistment. After the army, I enrolled at Penn State University where I spent four years earning a Bachelor's Science in the Administration of Justice. I spent a couple of years working after graduating from Penn State and then I enrolled in law school. I attended Franklin Pierce College Law which was a private school at that time but it is now the University of New Hampshire School of Law. During the three-year Jurist Doctorate program, I also earned a master's degree in intellectual property law.

It occurred to me while I was in law school and has proven true since that law school really is an exercise in learning how to think in a fashion that facilitates problem-solving through factual analysis relative to laws and societal norms.

For various reasons after 14 years working as a lawyer I had had enough of the so-called profession and when the option of leaving everything I knew behind with the aim of moving to Niceville, Florida so I could once again after 3 years of divorce be very near my daughter I did just that very thing. In the divorce, my ex won the right to decide the geographic location where my daughter would live. At the time my ex was in the US Air Force as a emergency medicine doctor and had been assigned to Eglin Air Force base so that is where my daughter lived during the school year. I decided to return to NYC where we had last lived as a family before the divorce. That worked only sporadically from the outset primarily because my ex would not then nor has she since ever attempted to co-parent in a manner that would benefit our daughter. In her defense, she wasn't taught better by her Mom so she did what she knew.

I have lived in the panhandle of Florida for about 7 years now. It is when I made the move here that I decided not to continue working as a lawyer. I had worked during college as a cook for 3 of the 4 years. I had seriously considered going to culinary school after college but since I didn't I took the opportunity to return to cooking when it presented itself here in Florida in the form of a job as a prep cook for Olive Garden where I learned such things as how to make their Zupa Tuscana in 50-gallon batches.

Shortly after I moved here I recognized that while I lived just a couple of miles from the Gulf of Mexico I seldom made it to the beach. So I bought a 30-foot cabin cruiser that needed a little work and moved aboard. A year later a friend called and told me about a 38-foot sailboat that was available and within a couple of weeks, I had found a new home for the cabin cruiser and moved aboard the sailboat. No, I had never been on a sailboat before let alone owned one. I followed what I had been taught and would learn as I went.