Chambana Dad to Know: Jason Brechin

Growing up I always wanted to be in the kitchen at the big family gatherings we had at my grandmother’s house.  My grandmother loved to cook and she taught my mom a lot of tricks.  It was through them that I learned to love food not just for nutrition, but for bringing people together and making people happy.  That said, I didn’t really cook much until I started living in an apartment with my girlfriend (now my wife).  I tried a lot of things and frequently made some pretty bad food, but I learned a lot from that experience.  I also read a lot about food and cooking in cookbooks and on websites.  I even learned some things watching select Food Network programs.  I am still learning more about food all the time, and through my blog and other outlets I hope that I can share my knowledge with more people.  We all need to eat, so why not make it something good?

I first came to Chambana to go to school at the university.  Though I was interested in computer science, my degree ended up being in Linguistics.  In my Junior year I started working as a student employee at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).  Things blossomed from there into a full-time position.  During my Senior year, I got married to Megan, my wonderful, smart wife.  We had our first daughter soon after that, then my wife went back to get a Master’s degree.

We really grew to love this town.  We are both from the Chicago suburbs, so our families are just a few hours away.  Now we both work for the University, and assuming that continues to work out (cue link to state budget, furlough days, layoffs), we are staying put.  While there isn’t quite the variety that you’d have if you were in the Chicago area, we do have an excellent selection of restaurants, performance venues, and cultural opportunities that you’d be hard-pressed to find in any other place surrounded by this much corn.

We have our almost-7-year-old, Amelie, and our 18-month-old, Olivia.  My wife and I secretly only wanted to have two girls, so we are pretty happy.  I really didn’t know at all what to expect when I became a father.  I was young and had never been around babies much.  If you know me, you know that I’m not so much into the stereotypical boy things, so having two girls was just fine with me.  I love just seeing what they are interested in and the amazing things they accomplish.  Watching them do things that I can’t do, like swimming, makes me want to strive for more in my own life.  I never thought I would be so amazed, inspired, or surprised by my two little girls.

I work at the university, as I mentioned earlier.  My day job includes a variety of different tasks, and changes frequently.  I do some programming, mostly in interpreted languages like Perl, along with some systems administration of various types of resources.  I usually have some type of web development project going all the time, from simple sprucing up of wiki pages or developing a slick interactive AJAX web app.  Since I’ve done a variety of things I tend to be the go-to guy when a problem needs to be solved.

Be a good husband–the more you can work as a team the better it will be for everyone.  Don’t ever say “that’s woman’s work” or “I don’t do that” (e.g. diapering, bathing, cooking, shopping, laundry, etc.).  Give yourself up to your kids as much as you can; there’s no better feeling than the love your kids will show you in return.