I graduated from Drew University in 1993 with a BA in Computer Science. I have worked as a programmer specializing in C, Unix, Perl, and databases (Sybase, Oracle, MySQL, Netezza, and probably some others I'm forgetting) ever since.
On June 19, 1999, I married the best guy in the world. Ray Semiraglio and I met at Drew, where we were classmates, friends, and fellow employees in the computer center, but we didn't start going out until two years after graduation when we met again at some friends' wedding in 1995. Our wedding was on the MV Zenith, and we highly recommend a wedding on a cruise ship as a wonderful, inexpensive (really!) alternative to the traditional church-and-reception-hall thing. The folks from Celebrity Cruises were very good to us during the wedding in New York and the honeymoon cruise to Bermuda. A Wedding For You handled the ceremony and reception details. For pictures of our wedding, and the story of how we came to get married on a cruise ship, check out our wedding page.
And no, I didn't change my name when we got married. It's not because I'm a feminist (though I am, and not ashamed of it) -- to paraphrase Roseanne, either way you get a man's name, so you might as well pick the one you like best. I didn't want a last name with a silent 'g' in it. If his name had been "Smith" or something, I'd have changed in a heartbeat.
Ray and I are childfree. That means we don't have kids, nor do we want 'em. One of my pet peeves is people who try to convince me how "it's different when they're your own" -- i.e., that not being fond of other people's kids doesn't matter because creating them somehow magically makes you love them...the thousands (millions?) of abused and neglected kids in the world seem to be pretty conclusive proof that giving birth to another human being does not necessarily make them the center of your universe. Not that I could ever abuse a child, but you'd think that people would commend the childfree for knowing our own minds and temperaments, and for not having kids just because "that's what you do" or because you want someone to take care of you in your old age (a selfish reason if I ever heard one!). The human race is in no danger of dying out just because I have chosen not to reproduce. Anyway, if my decision turns out to be something I regret later in life, I would still rather regret not having kids than having them. (However, I'm now in my late 30s with not a glimmer of maternal longing, so I suspect I'm safe.)
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Email comments to tina_mancuso [at] yahoo [dot] com.
