I'm a tallship sailor who works as an engineer to pay the bills. I work nights and weekends all summer on a ship as the first mate - I'm hoping to get my 100 ton captain's license this fall. I'm a runner, a sometimes martial artist, a reader, a shy person who manages to overcome it, someone who is more comfortable in small groups than large crowds, and enjoys people who don't just talk but act with their lives. Spending time with people is necessary and fun, but I need to recharge after too much social time - either alone of with just one or two people that I can relax with and trust, or I need to get on the water out of sight of land and feel a weight lift off my shoulders as we clear the docklines. I have an itch to travel again, but I'm committed to staying here for awhile at least. I was born in the midwest and plan to stay here for good, but there will be periods of long travel. I haven't sailed around the world yet.

I'm currently splitting between two career paths - working as both engineer and sailor and pursuing both my professional engineering cert and my 100 ton captains license. Working on boats 9 months a year and taking the rest of the time to explore the rest of life is one of my goals. I can see the way there, it will just take some patience.

Updated: I win! I passed my 8 hr Professional Engineering Licensing exam and can now stamp plans and get sued if things fall down. (4/15) Have now also managed to pass the LEED exam. I wonder how many letters I need to acrew up my business cards... Now for my Captain's license.

Stepping back from a situation to evaluate it. As a kid, I felt far too much. When I grew up I didn't stop feeling, but I learned to step back to see a larger picture. I'm the sort of person that feels pain inside but is willing to allow someone the freedom to make a choice that I know will hurt them if I've done my best to warn them. I had too many choices made for me early on to want to remove the choice from someone else now. How can you remove either the choice or consequence of that choice from someone else and still claim to respect them as an independent person?

That said, I will accept choosing to give me the choice and run with it.

My eyes. Kind of a trite answer, but it's what I've been hearing since I was about 4 years old. I once complained to one of my best female friends about how my eyelashes kept hitting my glasses and she laughed at me and told me never to complain to another woman about that or I would get hit. Hard.

This was left blank long enough that I'll list a few, and occasionally add as it occurs to me to update it:

books: Infinite Jest, Omnivore's Dilemma, Collapse, A Book of Five Rings, Art of Strategy, The Truth Machine, The Demolished Man, Cryptonomicon, Code, Blindness, In Conquest Born, The Watchmen, Chekhov's plays, Fight Club, Filth, Middlesex, Altered Carbon, The Economist (the magazine), Hyperspace, Fair Wind and Plenty of it, Rough Waters, The Rigger's Apprentice (need to review it more often), The Metamorphosis (both Ovid and Kafka), Kipling's poems, The Republic, The Hobbit (because the ambition is to live well and see the world, not take it over or remake it in your image)

Movies: Usual Suspects, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Spanish Prisoner, Igby Goes Down, The Deerhunter

Music: Dresden Dolls, Flogging Molly, Rage Against the Machine, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Dropkick Murphys, Gogol Bordello, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, NIN, The Pogues, Rusted Root, Slow Gherkin, Squirrel Nut Zippers, System of A Down, Psikotic, Thelonious Monk

Food: Truffles, red meat done black and blue, fresh bread, good wine, garlic, mushrooms, scallops, fresh fish, honey, good cheeses (my younger brother is a professional cheesemaker)

coffee, sex, interesting food, thought/debate/discussion, the distance off shore on the water, contact with good people (friends and new people alike)

How to arrange my life in such a way that I'm given enough money to live my life the way that I want in return for doing things that I enjoy. Working on a boat in summers in Chicago is a solid step in that direction. It's going to require some travel to someplace warm for at least a couple of months every winter though, or at least a place where you can more easily play in the snow.

Women. It's funny how much I enjoy getting a smile from winking at a pretty girl walking across the street in the other direction, or having a good conversation on the L without ever bothering to exchange names, just the pleasure of company, flirting or no.

What I want/need in my life that I'm not getting at any time when I don't feel happy or content. Someone to debate with on philosophy or art or politics? More exercise? More sleep? An opponent to help me grow? Travel? A chance to work hard to help someone? A chance to spend time with one of the friends that will never be shocked at what I might say/think no matter how dark? A visit home to my parents and a home-cooked meal? Some time playing around with a happy dog? I miss having a dog, but I can't the way my life is right now, and probably for some time to come. I wish that I had a pretty, smart, fun, lesbian (so I don't do anything dumb) next door neighbor with a golden retriever who liked to cook dinner together. Sometimes you just want that without the overhead of the sexuality, as much fun as that aspect is.

I like rope. When I'm off the water in the winter I enjoy practicing knots with friends. I'm considering putting fix points in my ceiling.

In the summer I'm likely to be sailing on Red Witch with about 40 people on a "whale watch" (read "happy hour sail"), in the winter someplace warm and comfortable with either someone to talk to or a new book to delve into. I like finding a coffeehouse with a fireplace to read in front of with a drink and the opportunity to meet people passing by.

I have a dark sense of humor that I worry about scaring people with if it's not introduced slowly, and I'm not sure that I see the world through the same lens as other people.

You like sailors, are interested in finding someone to spend time with and maybe make a good friend or better. As much as I may look for fun romantic entanglements, I'm also always looking for friends. Real friends are much harder to come by.

I'm currently involved with --cara-- (don't ask me about the distance, it's insane, and we are aware of it. Insanity can be fun!) but still always interested in new friends and interesting people. If you are looking for someone around my age and of the male persuasion, I do have a couple of excellent prospects as friends, depending on who you are looking for. For that matter, female friends as well, mostly of the astonishingly sexy, smart, and sometimes rather aggressive nature.