Just who is this Schick anyway?

I'm Brian Christopher Schick (but I prefer just "Schick") and I'm originally from Saline, which is just outside Ann Arbor, in southeast Michigan. Saline is a small town (population 8,704) but is close enough to cities like Ann Arbor and Detroit not to feel isolated. I lived there on two different occasions: from birth (April 14, 1983) until I moved to California in 1989, then again from 1998 until 2006. My stint in California was due to my dad being transferred to his company's corporate office and we lived in Saratoga, just outside San Jose in the Bay Area. When a new president took over in 1998, he moved the office to Ann Arbor and we moved back to Saline. Currently, I'm living in our new house in Pittsfield Township with my wife Tracy and our two cats.

I graduated from the University of Michigan in May 2005 with a degree in history. Michigan was always my first choice and I've been a true Wolverine since the day I was born (seriously, I was born at U-M hospital). The streak continues, as I was hired as a full-time employee at U-M in April 2006. My official title is "Documentation Specialist Intermediate," which is a fancy term for technical writer. Basically I write procedure-based documentation for internal usage, as well as update the division's intranet pages. The work isn't as boring as it sounds and I really like my co-workers. I 'm also in the middle of working on my Master's degree from Eastern Michigan in Written Communication.

While at Michigan, I was a sports writer for the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. I wrote a column senior year titled "Schick Happens," and I've kept the name for both my website and blog. I covered a bunch of small sports, as well as the ice hockey and men's basketball teams. Check out the Links page for my archive of Daily stories. It was being a sports writer at the Daily that started my love of road trips. Since our paper was too poor to fly us to events, we had to travel by car everywhere the team was playing. So I've seen nearly every city in the Big Ten, and some of my fondest memories from the Daily were with my fellow beatmates traveling across the midwest covering Michigan sports.

Naturally, I am a big sports fan, with my favorites being my Wolverines and the San Jose Sharks. As I said earlier, I have been a Wolverine fan since birth, and I've also followed the Sharks since the franchise was created back in 1991. I also enjoy all sorts of movies and I'm an avid James Bond fan. I pretend to be a bit of a movie expert since my first job was at Blockbuster back in high school. I also seem to be a repository of useless trivia, especially random Seinfeld lines. A quick rundown of some favorites:

Movies: Blues Brothers, Shawshank Redemption, Dr. Stangelove, Casablanca, Snatch, The Godfather, From Russia with Love, Slap Shot, The Sting, 40 Year-Old Virgin, Manchurian Candidate, American Beauty, Pleasantville, Juno, 12 Angry Men
TV shows: Seinfeld, West Wing, 24, Scrubs, Sports Night, Chapelle Show, My Name is Earl, The Soup, The Amazing Race, Arrested Development, The Wire, The Big Bang Theory
Books: Catcher in the Rye, Blue Ice, Fail-Safe, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Angels & Demons and almost any biography
Music: I'm open to pretty much anything, but I tend to lean more towards oldies and classic rock. Some of my favorite artists are: The Who, AC/DC, The Beach Boys, Green Day, The Police, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Boston, The Clash, Weezer, The Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters and fight songs.

If you'd like to know more about the random thoughts that pop into my head, you should check out my blog, which I update pretty regularly.