I retired in June of 2010 (from a 13 year stint at teaching special ed. in a high school in Los Angeles) and moved up to Oregon. Oregon is a beautiful, lush green part of the country in the summer. During its rather wet and gloomy (but mild) winters, I decided to try building a plastic model as something to do other than watching TV, reading, or cleaning my condo 
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I began by attempting to put together the USS Constitution (Revell's 1/96 kit) and found, to my dismay, that, although it gave me many, many hours of fun (and exasperation and frustration) I made lots of mistakes that I shouldn't have. Some were major, some minor. It took me about 9 months to complete including ALL the standing AND ALL the running rigging. Again, some goofs and not enough confidence to do over some of the rigging that I might now attempt were I to make the same kinds of mistakes. I now have several large plastic sailing ship kits in my stash which, I suppose, either qualifies me as someone who feels he can learn and grow to enjoy model building or someone who is a complete masochist 
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In any event, I'm currently (as of March 21, 2013 as I write this) working on the Revell 1/96 Cutty Sark.
My other interests lie in nature photography, hiking and reading.
This site is one that I check every day and often find fascinating, useful information that helps my budding plastic modeling education.