danruff.com
 Hi I'm Dan Ruff, and this is my biography page. Rather than put a bunch of dry facts up here, I figured I could just show you where I have lived. I've gathered a lot of aerial photos of most of the places I have lived, so here they are. I was born in Ithaca, and lived there for a year or two. I don't know what my address in Ithaca was, so I never did find an aerial photo of our home. I assume it was a low-rise style apartment building, not too far from Cornell, where my Dad worked. When I was a toddler, my family (Mom, Dad, Joseph, and I) moved to Lewiston, Maine. My Dad had gotten a job at Bates College, and we stayed in Maine for the birth of my sister Susan and brother Arthur. Then my dad got tenure at Bates and he went on sabbatical at the University of Arizona. So we headed to Tucson for a year. That was a great year. We drove across the country there and back, and saw lots of cool places. We lived in Lewiston until our next sabbatical, when my Dad got a research gig at Albert-Ludwigs Universitat, so we moved to Frieburg, West Germany for a year. That gave us the chance to see much of Europe. We returned to Lewiston again, and I stayed there until it was time to head off for college. We got a big townhouse in Merzhausen just on the edge of Freiburg. I went to Connecticut College, in New London. It's a nice place, and I met a bunch of great people there. Can't really say that I've stayed in touch with any of them though. I lived in Morrison dorm my freshman year. Then I spent the summer in Aldenville, PA, living at the Lake and the house with my grandfather. Sophomore year, I moved a few rooms down the hall in Morrison dorm. People gave "the Plex" a bad rap because it was ugly, but it was spacious. Went to Windham dorm my fall semester of my junior year. Then I went back to Freiburg to study for a semester. This time, I was a student at Albert-Ludwigs Universitat, through IES, which is a great study abroad program. They put me up in a really cool apartment building called Rislerhof. I've kept in touch with more people from that program than from any other walk of my life. I went back to Conn College, and lived in Knowlton dorm, the international/foreign language dorm. After graduation, my dad went on another sabbatical. This time it was University of Virginia. The point was, my parents rented out our Lewiston house to visiting Bates professor so they wouldn't have to pay double rent. I probably would have ended up moving back home and living in the basement, but I couldn't because there were strangers living in my house. So I found a basement in Arlington Virginia. I moved in with a buddy from college, and hung out with a bunch of friends from college for a few years. Later, we moved into a big townhouse together, also in Arlington, and I lived there for 2 years. My friends slowly scattered, and I met my wife, Karen. Maybe you know her. She's nice. Karen and I got an apartment together for almost a year. Our landlords were a nice young couple who were actually trying to sell the place, so they bent over backwards to find us a new apartment nearby. We lived in the new place for several years. Friends of ours shocked us by buying a house. We didn't realize that that was an option, we had been renting for so long, so we bought a house too. We've been in our house for 7-8 years now, and love it. We've had two wonderful kids, a boy and a girl. So we are just hanging out, doing the family thing in our nice neighborhood. I always thought Arlington was a temporary home, but we have really put down some deep roots here. If you have Google Earth installed on your computer (and you should!), I will give you some place marks so you can really see where I have lived. Go ahead and click on them, you can trust me. Lewiston, Maine Lewiston image Lewiston (Google Earth placemark) Lewiston (Google Earth high resolution overlay) Tucson Arizona image of Apartment H-11 in the Broadmore Apartments complex Tucson (Google Earth placemark) There is grass between the apartments in this image, but there was gravel between them back in 1976. Au, a village in the hills outside Freiburg. Hotel Adlerberg (Google Earth placemark) We stayed in this "hotel" for a month while we waited for a townhouse to be vacated for us. Merzhausen/Freiburg, West Germany. Merzhausen image Merzhausen (Google Earth placemark) Merzhausen (Google Earth high resolution overlay) Connecticut College Image of Conn College Morrison 301 - Freshman (Google Earth placemark) Morrison 310 - Sophomore (Google Earth placemark) Windham - Fall Junior year (Google Earth placemark) Knowlton - Senior year (Google Earth placemark) Summer after Freshman year, in Aldenville, PA Lake image Lake (Google Earth placemark) Aldenville House (Google Earth placemark) Freiburg, West Germany. Junior semester abroad. Rislerhof student housing complex downtown. Awesome place Rislerhof image Rislerhof (Google Earth placemark) Rislerhof (Google Earth high resolution overlay) Arlington Virginia Image of the basement apartment I shared with Paul. The building is the one on the far right. N. Ode St. Apartment (Google Earth placemark) The house I lived in has been torn down, so there are just townhouses in this image. But that tree was there when I lived there. White picket fence too. Image of the townhouse I shared with a bunch of friends. N.Utah St. townhouse (Google Earth placemark) Image of the apartments I shared with Karen (The two on the left.) N. Troy St. Apartment (Google Earth placemark) N. Key Blvd. Apartment (Google Earth placemark) We finally bought a house. image of our house Our house (Google Earth placemark) | ||
