One of the greatest things about Greg was his love of variety. He  was an Engineer turned English major who still worked with AutoCAD, a sports loving musician who loved adventures, a quiet leader who led by example, a goofy, fun-loving gambler who was known to rock out to music in the back of a car while discussing everything from movies, to family to life and love and the state of the world. Everyone who met Greg loved him and I think that was, at least in part, due to the fact he was interested in so many different things that he always could find common ground with the people around him.

I love Greg with all of my heart. I know that I will always carry a part of him with me because without him, I wouldn't be me. But I don't want to forget I don't want to forget anything about him, his laugh, the sound of his voice, his beautiful green/blue/brown eyes that were always changing color. I don't want to forget a single moment we shared together. I don't want to forget all the ways he impacted my life so dramatically. So, here is my attempt at beginning to write some of these memories down.

One of his most excited moments...

Greg loved math, numbers, probabilities and all things challenging. Whenever driving he would add up the numbers on the license plates of cars around him to determine which were divisible by 9. He also had the amazing ability to multiply two double digit numbers in his head. His love of stats even came into play during NCAA tournament time when he would keep track of everyone's brackets with a very complex, mathematical system he came up with that involved giving people more points for choosing underdog teams to win than it did picking the obvious choices. I believe it was Greg's love of numbers that inspired him to become a bit of a poker fanatic.

I have so many amazing memories of us playing poker together Greg loved playing poker with his family, with the Kraft interns, for pennies with his trombone friends, on partypoker.com, and he loved the challenge of playing poker in Vegas. I can recall several times all of us sitting around the Vasich dining room table playing poker. Greg would get a sly smile on his face and say "Nothing's wild except the dealer" (something, I believe, he learned from his Grandpa) as he would deal cards around the table single handed using only his thumb to push the cards off of the top of the deck.

But, I think perhaps my greatest poker memory comes from the poker tournament Greg and I played in last winter. For a very long time Greg was trying to convince me to go play poker with him and his poker buddies down in Champaign. After much convincing, I finally agreed to play in a tournament with him. I was pretty nervous since I had only played with friends for fun before and I knew these people took their poker very seriously, but Greg kept reassuring me that I was honestly a really good player and that I had good instincts and he was sure I could handle it and would do really well. When the tournament started, there were 78 people and Greg and I were not sitting at the same table. I was nervous. During the first break I remember Greg coming up to me so excited, loving every minute of this experience. He had the amazing ability to recall nearly all of the hands that had gone around his table and what his reaction to the hands had been. I had been doing pretty well in the tournament and when Greg saw how many chips I had in front of me he looked so happy for me and so proud of me. I realize that this sounds a bit silly when we are talking about poker, but Greg always made me feel so special no matter what we were doing.  Anyways, the tournament went on and eventually, out of the 78 people starting in the tournament Greg and I both ended up in the top the final table. Pretty unbelievable. I ended up being the 8th person out, but Greg was still going. By this time probably about 6 or 7 hours of hard core poker playing had passed, but Greg was still extremely focused on what he was doing. Eventually Greg was down to the final two. Greg had only about 1/3 of the chips on the table and the other guy had 2/3 of the chips. Even so, Greg remained determined. He got some lucky hands, made some smart moves, went all-in several times and eventually his opponents chip pile started dwindling while the number of chips in front of Greg kept growing. It was only a matter of time before Greg won the whole thing. I was so excited for him, and I remember being able to see the thrill in Greg's eyes. However, because the person who had just lost was sitting right next to him, Greg kept his excitement limited to the huge grin planted on his face. But, the very second we walked out the door of this house, Greg let out a huge scream, picked me up, twirled me around and proceeded to run, jump and spin all the way to the car. As soon as we pulled away Greg grabbed his cell phone and called his parents to share the news with them. I think this was one of the most excited moments I ever shared with Greg. And I don't think it was the money that excited Greg (which amounted to over $900). It was the thrill of the game and the excitement of an adventure.