[Mark Worthington]

I've been in love with airplanes since I was a little kid. I've been into RC airplanes since I was a teenager. I haven't done much building or flying in the last couple years, and I probably won't until I finish my '40, but I'll always return to and derive satisfaction from building and flying model airplanes.

A couple years ago I bought a couple guns and along with my kids learned how to safely handle and shoot firearms. I now have six handguns, a shotgun, and several rifles in various stages of construction. I especially appreciate the hand-fit-and-finished craftsmanship that is evident in the Smith & Wesson revolvers that were made in the Connecticut River Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm almost done building my first AR-15, and I have a few nice Yugoslavian and Hungarian AK-47 variants that I bought as de-milled parts kits that I'm building into functioning (and legal) semi-automatic rifles. I figured I had to exercise my second amendment rights while they still exist here in Massachusetts.

I enjoy landscaping and home renovation stuff (carpentry, plumbing, wiring, etc.) but as I get older it seems like more of a chore and less of a pastime. I nearly pursued a career in photography until I realized I felt the same way about darkroom work. I used to like to build and mess around with computers until it just got to be too much work keeping up with the technology and I started treating computers like the tools they are. I also enjoyed playing online computer games but I finally realized that all they do is suck time out of your life.

I really enjoy baseball; I help coach my kid's little league team, and I usually watch more Red Sox games than I miss. I'm now one of those baseball nerds that you'll see making notes on a scorecard at a ball game.

There's also cooking, building and programming Lego Mindstorm robots, amateur astronomy and telescope making, and of course reading.