Chris grew up in Locust Grove, Georgia, roughly 40 miles from Atlanta. He is an only child. He spent much of his childhood playing outside with his cousins and friends, fishing, spending time outdoors, farming, and flying with his dad, travelling with his mom, and being a general mess.

Later on he'd discover computers, video games, and cars which would consume most of his teens and twenties.

These days Chris tries to spend his free time by:

• Cooking and grilling
• Hiking and urban walks
• Traveling and experiencing new food
• Weight training
• Visiting his friends and family back east (Hi Mom! Love you Pop-Pop!)
• Trying new beers (3000+ unique to date!)
• Watching MLS, Cheering for the Sounders and ATLUD, and the USMNT
• Word games: Crosswords before bed with Melissa, NYT Spelling Bee, and Wordle with friends
• Giving love to Einstein (sorry Uncle Joel) - and petting any random animals that he can.

Some infrequent and previous pastimes/interests/hobbies include: cycling, pickling/fermenting, barbequing/smoking, brewing beer (w/ friends), sailing (with Joel), shooting trap/skeet (or melons), endurance racing (Le Mans; He's been to the 12 Hours of Sebring eight times and hopes to go to the 24 heures du mans someday), sitting around a good fire, fishing, photography (flowers, landscapes, animals, motorsports), chili cook offs, and video games.

He also enjoys an engaging tv show, book, or movie, a variety of music, science, any form of informational or educational media, and documentaries/docudramas. He loves a good game night with friends or family. And a particular fondness for any food/travel related content (Bourdain [♥], Pepin, J. Kenji, Babish, Favreau, Rosenthal, Matheson, etc).

Chris used to be an active car enthusiest. He's hands off these days, as he hasn't owned a vehicle since 2018. It started with go-karts and four wheelers in his teens, and eventually moved into cars. He's torn down and rebuilt engines, replaced transmissions, performed engine swaps, "made a convertible", and just about everything else. As a result he got into metal fabrication and has modified subframes, made custom engine mounts, welded custom exhaust, created gifts/art, and made various one-off pieces for his projects.

Chris was introduced to computers around 1994. He built and ran several websites from 1998 to 2004 that were popular among his peers at school (mostly curated content from places like newgrounds, ebaums, etc; and eventually producing some of his own content and hosting other students' content as well). He started to learn to program around 2000 (C++, Java, & Python), and he has been writing software ever since.

In his professional career Chris has held several differnt roles related to software engineering and cloud computing. Currently he works at Datadog.

Melissa grew up in Warwick, NY, approximately 60 miles northwest of New York City. She is the youngest of three girls. As a kid she spent most of her time on various school, local, and travel sports teams, making home videos for her VHS collection, and procrastinating ALL the tasks. She went to James Madison University in Virginia and graduated with a BBA in Marketing in 2003.

In more recent years Melissa has enjoyed:

• Being a plant mom
• Playing co-ed intramural sports
  • My Salsa (softball), Bottom of the Fifth (kickball)
• DIY projects
• Hiking (mountains as well as urban)
• Traveling to new places
• Attending live music shows (not lately)

She’s been known to do an organized, or not so organized, polar plunge. She loves game nights, attending the annual tulip festival, photography, and dance parties.

In her professional career Melissa has held several project coordinator roles and assistant jobs (administrative/executive/personal). Currently she is in the process of launching her own organizing business, Neat Melissa.

The building which now houses Fremont Foundry Events was opened in 1981 as a hub for Fremont's eclectic artist community and played a special part in Seattle's art focused counterculture as some of Seattle's most famous (and infamous) statues were brought to life here.

This is where the Jimi Hendrix statue was created by Daryl Smith in 1997 before being moved to Capitol Hill, and Fremont's continually controversial Vladimir Lenin statue, brought from Slovakia in 1989, was actually reconstructed. The building morphed with the times and people who lived, worked and created public, private and communal art within the artist colony that spanned over three decades.