ME, ME, ME....

Hello! Thanks for stopping in. Pull up a red velvet wing-backed chair and pour yourself another generous snifter of brandy, while I bore you to death with the details of my long, sad life. My full name is Michael Robert Gillham, and I was born in 1983 in a tiny shit-kicking outpost in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. My father was a fly-by-nighter whose name I don't know and face I'd never recognize. My mother came from hearty frontier stock and had a passion for cross-stitching, Christianity, chores, and the actor stylings of the late Michael Landon. Not long after my birth, my mother met and married a diminutive yet highly efficient civil servant named Larry Gillham (hereafter referred to as "Dad"), whose name I share. They had one son, who is my half-brother a bespectacled, energetic little hobbit named Jason. And we were accompanied by my half-sister, Sheila, who was from an earlier marriage of my mother's and was several years my senior.
Early in my life, my mother contracted cervical cancer and we had to move to the bustling metropolis of Salt Lake City, Utah (where I still live) so that she could receive the care she needed. Sadly, she passed away from her illness in the fall of 1988, and only a matter of weeks later, Sheila was killed in a tragic shooting accident. This left Mr. Gillham with the burden of raising Jason and I by himself and with very little help.
My dad is an extraordinary parent by any measure. My brother and I ripped each other apart when we were kids and he gave us a very nice home and managed to send us both to a bizarre social experiment that masqueraded as a private high school. On the surface, this school appeared to be a good environment for teenagers; small class sizes, open teaching styles, and strong academics were at all times visible. But, bubbling just beneath the surface, was a conspiracy formulated by the teachers and administration to kill us by subjecting us to backpacking, white-water rafting, and rock climbing in such exotic and dangerous locales as Vietnam, Costa Rica, and Mexico. I was lucky to escape with my life. Others have been less fortunate.
From 2003 to 2007 I attended the University of Utah where I graduated with a BA in English with a minor in keg-stands, football stadium vandalism, plagiarism, and napping. That same year I married a smart and sassy lady named Amanda McFarland and we now live near downtown Salt Lake City in our shoebox apartment with a muskrat/chinaman/dog hybrid named Frida Kahlo. I am a devoted libertarian, an atheist, a vegan, an avid swimmer and runner, a man of letters, and a gentleman and PATRIOT, to the last. I like reading, watching TV, wine, beer, sex, profanity, sleeping, and maybe writing if there's still time.