My buddy Tom

Here are some other pictures of my buddy Tom. (Click on the pictures to see larger versions.)

At MDP, we used to tease our friend Matt Power about never hanging anything on the walls in his office. Finally, Tom took matters into his own hands and "decorated" the office himself. Matt is a city boy and got quite a surprise with Tom's piece of rural Maryland.

As Ashley mentioned, Tom and I played golf very frequently. He was tons of fun on the course always bringing TONS of clubs, drinks, and snacks. He liked to use this funky driver - "the pod" - to throw off people, but he could hit it very far (see pic below from June 2003 in Ocean City).

One of my favorite golfing stories with Tom occurred in the very early spring one year. You see, Tom and I are both from Southern California where there is no such thing as golfing "season", so we would get antsy in late winter and would get out as soon as the weather cleared up. On this particular day, we were playing Francis Scott Key golf Course in weather in the low 50s. We arrived at a par 3 where the green is elevated and tucked into a semi-circle of tall trees. We were frustrated that the group in front of us (of which there were very few on that cold day) failed to replace the flag in the hole. Nevertheless, we both hit - and did very well landing in the middle of the green. When we got up the hill, we saw why the flag was not in the hole; the entire green was covered in a sheet of ice and snow, more than 4 inches thick in some places. Some people think that being Californians would make us more hesitant to go out in the cold, when in fact, we had the mindset that we would never allow the weather to dictate when we could play.

This is a picture of Tom on his motorcycle. When he purchased it, I was afraid he would hurt himself, but now I am glad he found something he enjoyed so much.

Here is video of Tom from our first MML Convention in Ocean City. Tom, myself, Aaron Tomarchio and Steve Hershey got a 2 BR condo together, saving the agency a few hundred dollars from the traditional separate hotel rooms. Tom did the dishes, but could not find dishwashing liquid, so he use dish soap in the dishwasher. The result was quite bubbly.