Jazzmandan is a consultant to the Pharmaceutical Industry, with a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue University. I am married with four children and currently live in the suburbs of Chicago, Il, USA.

My first memory of the guitar was when I was ~10 years old.  The folks bought me a clunker of an instrument which my first guitar teacher said was "unplayable".  I could only learn the notes in the first position since the neck was so bowed that playing notes beyond these was impossible since the strings were to far from the fret board to play.  From those days I recall two things; a C chord and a C major scale which I never forgot, and I recall how much I loved walking around carrying that guitar.  That whole experience must have lasted a summer.

Flash forward 8 years and at 18 years old a friend gave me one of his guitars (that was you Lenny, remember?). When I realized I could not play it, it got passed on.

Flash forward 32 years and right around a 40th birthday I was transferred from plant manager up into the corporate offices as a Project Manager. The major change was that I went from a 16 hour work day to a straight 8:00 to 5:00 , eight hour day. What to do with all that free time? I announced to my family that I was planning on either learning to speak Japanese or taking guitar lessons. Well in the Fall of 1992 I started guitar lessons in a local Guitar shop and have not put the guitar down since.