My family (me, parents, sister Hannah, brother Nathan) spent two years (my kindergarten and fourth grade) in the late great Yugoslavia, mostly in Zagreb. I used to speak Croatian fairly well, but have lost it all to my undying shame.

I attended University Elementary School in Bloomington for grades 1--3 and 5--6. As I remember, I mostly had a really great time. I was very fortunate in having an amazingly talented math teacher in sixth grade: Mary Ann DiBaggio. (I've lost track of her. If you know anything about her, please let me know (vlorbik@aol.com). I'd like to let her know I got a Ph.D. in math and she's one of the reasons.)

Somewhere in there, I started collecting comics, which became one of my defining characteristics for several years, and which I still do a certain amount of today.

I also did my first self-publishing in 6th grade (in DiBaggio's class): GLOAT magazine. My main collaborator on this project was Andrew McGarrell. I began publishing my first major solo project, The Ten Page News, in seventh grade (there was one copy of each issue).

I was much less well-adjusted during junior high (at the now defunct University JHS) and high school (at Bloomington HS North) than in elementary school but made it through somehow. Two of the major problems were my parent's divorce and my fear of girls. I learned to play some guitar and wanted to be Bob Dylan. I wrote a few songs, but they were all lousy. I graduated from BHS North with the class of '75.

I drifted around for a few years doing wage-slave jobs in Thousand Oaks California and Las Vegas Nevada and then returned to Bloomington, where I stumbled through a BA in math at IU, stopping out for a year in Indianapolis.

The best job in sight was graduate school, so I enrolled right away (IU again). I married Lisa Thomas at the end of my first year, and we were divorced around the time I finished my coursework. I wrote my thesis in algebra and got my Ph.D. in 1992.

I got a job at Ohio Dominican College and worked there for four years. I got to teach humanities four times along with all the math courses, which was a great experience since I love literature, history, and philosophy (even more than mathematics). I got fired for having opinions different from the chair's and have been un- or under-employed ever since. I sent out hundreds of copies of my vita, to colleges all over the country, but didn't even get an interview.

I've given up on finding a permanent post in academics or publishing my textbook. I'm teaching free-lance at Capital University and Columbus State Community College and trying to get organized.

I married Shauna in 1995 and we live in Columbus Ohio with our two cats, Felix and Henry. I spend a lot of time on my zines.