Sure, I’m in.
I’m a 34 year old male, who lives in the garden spot of the world: Brooklyn, USA. I’m married and have three children, ages 10, 8 and 7. We recently bought a house (also in Brooklyn) and are looking forward to moving in shortly. The only thing stopping us: our contractor who moves slower than molasses… in winter… stored at the North Pole… of Neptue. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The carpets are going in Friday, a couch we bought is going in tomorrow and we’ll soon be in.
I am an Orthodox Jew, which means that I keep the 613 commandments in the Torah. So, for example, I only eat kosher food, keep the Sabbath, pray each day, study Torah each day, etc. For the past 16 years I have been the regular Torah reader at my synagouge; a position that I am going to have to give up once I move; but one that I have enjoyed fulfilling during all those years.
I did most of my growing up in Brooklyn. My parents split up when I was nine, a move that affected me greatly. Due to a combination of factors, I was estranged from my father for three years. We reconciled upon his remarriage when I was 16. I deeply regret that part of my life and wish I could take it back. While my father and I have a good relationship now, I cannot help but think that it could have been all the more better had I not cut him out of my life for so long. The enormity of what I’d done became all the more clearer to me when I became a parent myself.
I am a database developer/administrator for an electronics company in New York City. Until recently I worked in downtown Manhattan, but now work in Queens (my company moved my job from the store location to the warehouse facility). I graduated with a degree from Brooklyn College in Television and Radio production… so of course, I ended up in computers.
I am also a big New York Yankees fan and a big baseball fan in general. I am the comissioner of one of the fantasy leagues as well as the commissioner of the Unofficial SDMB Out of the Park Baseball League.
For most of my adult life I was fairly fat. In July 2002, I went on Weight Watchers and lost 95 pounds in the span of 11 months. However, many people were telling me that I looked too thin, so I put back about 10-15 pounds.
Like most families, we have our traditions. One tradition that we seem to have developed and which I’ve shared with the SDMB is our annual hamantaschen baking. Each year I take pictures of the kids making hamantaschen and then post a link to it here on the boards. The pictures from can be found here: 2002, 2003, 2004.
We currently have two hamsters. While I would love to have dogs (I grew up with two dogs), there are two things that are stopping us: (1) Our current landlord doesn’t allow pets [although this problem will dissappear when we move] and (2) my sister and some of her kids are highly allergic to dogs and their fur. It was a choice between having dogs or having my sister’s family over once in a while. We chose the latter.
I am a voracious reader and do so whenever I get a chance to. The main topics that I read about (in no particular order) are: Judaism, Torah, Talmud, history, science, science fiction, fantasy and alternate history. My favorite authors in the last few fields are George R. R. Martin, Harry Turtledove and David Eddings (Belgariad/Malloreon).
One of my favorite hobbies is game creation. I currently have two games that I created and am working on a third. Oddly enough, I have no real interest in marketing them – I just enjoy the creative process. I play them with family and friends.
My oldest son is named Avraham. He’s 10 and a real bright kid. Ever since he was a baby he’s just had this thirst to know everything. Heaven forbid I tell him that I don’t know the answer to a question - he STILL wants to know. This was the kid who floored his kindergarten teacher at age five by telling her that the windpipe was called the trachea and the “food pipe” was called the esophogus. (My wife was there when that happened. She said that the teacher’s jaw just dropped.) He has a big love of animals. He keeps saying that he wants to be farmer when he gets older – not because he has any particular love of farming – but because of the farm animals. I think he’d make a great veterinarian, marine biologist (he also loves sea animals especially), or zoologist. One of his favorite games, in fact, is Microsoft Zoo Tycoon, which he can spend hours playing.
Avaraham inherited from both his mother and myself a very healthy reading habit. He has been known to spend hours reading in bed after we sent him to sleep (something both my wife and myself used to do as kids).
My middle son is named Chaim. He’s 8 and he is probably (in my very humble and biased opinion) the sweetest kid on the face of the earth. In all that he does, he exhibits a caring of how what he does will affect other people. He’s the type of kid who would give up his own candy to make sure that others got if they would feel bad about not getting any. He is also, as a result, the most sensative of my children. While I know that I can kid around with any of them, I have to be most careful with him.
Chaim is also extremely bright. Ever since infancy, he’s had a fascination with letters and numbers. He took to a wooden ABC puzzle that we had at a very early age and could identify all the letters (capital and lowercase) at an extremely early age. In fact, he was able to read shortly after turning three. While he is a reader as well, he doesn’t “consume” books at the rate that his brother does. He enjoys drawing and creating cards.
He’s also the one who loves jokes. I know that if I have a really bad joke, I have an audience with Chaim. He loves to make jokes and tell riddles.
Another aspect of Chaim is that he loves to teach. He picked up from me a habit of not directly giving facts, but of giving clues or asking questions so that they should figure it out by themselves. He now does this (sometimes annoyingly) with my wife and myself. He also uses this with his younger sister. In fact, he taught her how to read! I can easily picture him as a teacher when he grows up.
Tzivya is now 7 years old. She, in some ways, is a combination of her two brothers but yet, is also very different from them. She too is a reader, but not like Avraham. She loves playing with her Barbie dolls (what little girl doesn’t?) and with her brothers. At school, she is a social butterfly, easy to make friends (which both my boys are not). She also enjoys playing on the computer at home and also has an interest in animals.
Tzivya is the kid that I can “tease” more than any of my other kids. I have several long-running jokes with Tzivya. One is that we are going to go to court and have her name changed to “Hossenpfeffer.” Another is that the new house has an alligator and that it is her job to feed the alligator (or be fed to it…). I even doctored up a photo of a room in the new house and put a picture of an alligator in it and showed it to her. The fact that her closet in the new house has a small (non-functioning) door in it helped out as well (that’s the alligator’s door). I even set up an email account on my domain as “The Alligator” and occasionally send her email from it. 
I have one sister, who has five kids, the youngest being a month old today. I try to be my nieces’ and nephews’ favorite uncle. I enjoy spending time with them and my kids. Last year, for example, I took all seven of them (the youngest wasn’t around then) to the aquarium by myself. My wife and my sister thought I was nuts for doing so, but we all had a great time and I look forward to doing it again with them. My brother in law is, in many ways, the brother I never had as a child. He has similar interests, a similarly weird sense of humor and, like me, enjoys teasing his kids.
I’m sure that I could keep going on, but I think that that’ll be enough for now.
Zev Steinhardt
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My fiancee has the Thundercats logo (is it a logo??) on his left shoulder.