Forrest with his family
(Evanston, Illinois - 2006)
Life and times of Forrest Sondahl
or "Still Crazy After All These Years"...
Forrest was born on Lopez Island, in the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington -- a fact which pleases him greatly. He grew up in a somewhat chaotic combination of Idaho and Iowa, giving him ample opportunity to appreciate the pleasures of long-distance family car travel. This happened largely because his father was a potter who sold his pottery during the summer from a little shop on Maine Street in Spirit Lake, Idaho, and his mother was becoming a Lutheran pastor, which meant attending a seminary from fall to spring in Dubuque, Iowa.
Forrest in Spirit Lake
(he liked bowties from an early age)
When Forrest was entering fifth grade, his family moved to Nezperce, Idaho, where he would attend school until he graduated in the year 2000, although they would still live up in Spirit Lake for much of the summer. Nezperce was small. Very small. You're not thinking small enough -- try to think smaller. The population of the town, in the year he graduated, was 523 people. His graduating class was roughly 16. For some reason he has difficulty remembering the exact number.
Susa and Forrest
(at a croquet event at Carleton)
After graduating high school, Forrest went on to a happy undergraduate life at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. During his time there, he enjoyed such pursuits as: playing ultimate frisbee, playing with Lego robots, playing practical jokes, playing the piano, and playing croquet. He mostly played. He also held the position "Master of All Things Wicket" of the Carleton College Croquet Society for two years. And he liked to make chocolate chip cookies, and give them out to people who weren't expecting them. And oh yes, he may have studied a little Mathematics and Computer Science in his spare time.
Forrest being a bum
(Pictured in front of Mt. Hood)
After graduating Carleton, Forrest took a pleasant year off and was a bum. Not exactly a ski bum, though he and Birrion did ski a reasonable amount. He also traveled some, visited a friend over in China, and squandered countless hours programming a virtual world on the computer.
During this year, he also applied to graduate school, and happily Northwestern accepted him. He's now been toiling away like a good little overworked grad. student for two years, and expects another two or three more before he can hope to become Dr. Stonedahl. And it only bothers him a little that Susa will (most likely) beat him to it.
WEB SITE CREATED BY FORREST AND SUSA