So, what's up with the name?

You may be wondering what's up with my blog name. First, let me clear something up. I am not currently, nor have I ever been, an end-zone season ticket holder at The Ohio State University. Nor do I work on a zoning commission.

For those who don't know, a buckeye is a shiny, brown, poisonous nut-like seed from a buckeye tree, apparently a type of chestnut tree. Somehow, it has become associated with the hardiness of Ohioans, and therefore any native or resident of Ohio is referred to as a "Buckeye" (not just Ohio State... oops, I mean, The Ohio State... alumni). Since I have now been in Ohio for over 5 years now, I guess that makes me a Buckeye; a useless nut ;-).

As to the Zonie, well, that is a reference to my origins, so to speak. I was born and raised in Arizona; the Phoenix area, to be more precise. I went to college at a small, at-the-time-Southern-Baptist, liberal arts college in Phoenix called Grand Canyon Univeristy. I then went to medical school at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, now one of several colleges of the A.T. Still University of Health Sciences, based in Kirksville, Missouri. Anyway, a "zonie" is a native or resident of Arizona. Not sure where exactly that came from, but I tend to agree with one site's thoughts on the origins; "zonie" was always used by the local paper in reference to travel by Arizonans to San Diego to escape the heat.

So that's me. An Arizona native who lived there for 22 years, and now I reside and work (and love) Ohio. More on that later.