I was born in New York, raised in the suburbs (in Rockland County, aka The Forgotten Suburb), went to college near Philadelphia, and then ended up back in New York by accident after college. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else. I love the city, and try to take advantage of all it has to offer.

Here are a bunch of random things about me: I always carry a book and a puzzle magazine in my bag, so I can entertain myself if the need should arise. I occasionally get together with friends to sing rounds, and I can sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat backwards. I have three computers in my apartment, each of which serves a different and useful purpose. I've traveled much more extensively within the US than outside it, but I've recently developed an appreciation for travel abroad, and hope to do more of it. I prefer winter to summer, and being too cold to being too hot: it's much easier to warm up when you're cold than to cool off when you're hot. I know a rhyme for "orange".

I am one of those most fortunate of people: I have a job where I get to spend most of my time doing fun things that I really enjoy doing, working with great, smart, friendly people, all in the name of a cause I believe in. What is this fantasy job, you may ask? I'm a technical development lead on a team creating and maintaining internal-use applications for an education-oriented non-profit. I've been there for several years, and it's easily the best job I've ever had.

But there is more to one's life than work, of course, and I've been seeking out more new and fun things to do in my spare time. To name a few: I've taken up biking recently, and I've been loving it. I'm riding regularly, and have done a bunch of organized rides of various levels of insanity. I play various sports in leagues in the city: volleyball, softball, bowling, kickball, dodgeball (yes, really, kickball and dodgeball!). I like to eat good food, and have enjoyed some recent food festivals in the city. I cook and bake regularly, often using my coworkers as guinea pigs when I find new recipes. In the last week, I have cooked sweet and sour meatballs, matzah ball soup, sea salt caramel brownies, and maple bacon cookies. And I love living in a city that provides innumerable cultural opportunities, and find myself attending a variety of museums, shows, talks, and other interesting events lately.

My most recent trip was a fabulous two-week visit to France. A few highlights of that trip: Biking 85 miles through the Loire Valley over 4 days, seeing castles and vineyards along the way; walking up the Eiffel Tower because the line for the elevator was too long; eating more delicious food every day than I usually have in a week; the Rodin museum, which reinforced my belief that sculpture is my favorite of the visual arts; walking through the Bois du Boulogne, which is just like Central Park, except bigger and Frencher; going not once, not twice, but three times to Cafe Angelina, which had the most luxuriously delicious hot chocolate I have ever tasted; a bazillion other things, which I can't even begin to enumerate here.

I have an odd affinity for numbers. I can look at a list of numbers, and add them up pretty quickly. I can remember phone numbers easily, and lots of others as well. (Weirdest number I still remember: the barcode from the library card I had when I was growing up.) As a kid, I always loved playing around with numbers in my head, and that has stuck with me ever since.

I'm also really good at doing something once I make my mind up to do it. It may take me a while to decide, but once I do, I'm gonna get it done, come hell or high water.

And I'm great at keeping a level head in a crisis. I learned long ago that panicking doesn't help anything, and just stopped doing it. I can't claim that I'm always going to figure out the right thing to do, but I won't act out of fear and insanity.

I dunno, you'd have to ask them.

There are far too many good options to list everything here, so I'm just going to throw together a list of whatever comes to mind at this moment.

Books: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman; Good Omens; pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman; Founding Brothers; The Plot Against America; Foundation; The Cartoon History of the Universe; A Treasury of Jewish Folklore; Where the Sidewalk Ends; Ender's Game; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Movies: Star Wars, of course. I mean, seriously, isn't that at the top of anyone's list? What? No? It isn't? I see… Lots of other things too, of course. The Court Jester; Fantasia; Young Frankenstein; Inception; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

TV shows: The Daily Show; Arrested Development; The West Wing; Sports Night; Twin Peaks; How I Met Your Mother; Babylon 5; Battlestar Galactica; Modern Family; Carnivale; Monty Python's Flying Circus; The Smurfs (OK, I haven't actually watched the Smurfs in well over 20 years, but I really loved it once upon a time…)

Music: My musical tastes are odd and varied. Let's just leave it at that for the moment, shall we?

1) Humor
2) Garlic
3) Snow
4) Numbered Lists
5) Books
6) You

If tin whistles are made of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

I had a dream last night that through some unlikely plot contrivances, I won an Olympic medal, and one of the things that excited me most about it was that I could put it on my OKCupid profile.

...if you found yourself thinking, "Yeah, me too!" to anything you read in my profile.
...if your profile does not contain the phrase "partner in crime".
...if it just seems silly to you not to message me.