I'm happiest with a cup of coffee in my hand and someone to banter with who can keep up and make me laugh and smile, while I'm doing my best to make them grin in return. You're likely to find me with a camera or two, hiking someplace really cool in time to catch the light, spending time with family (who mean the world to me), or wandering through bookstores, neighborhoods, or anyplace else my fancy takes me. I'm a Daily Show "news" junkie, love reruns of the Addams Family or Whose line is it Anyway?, any of Mel Brooks' early stuff (Blucher!), really good cake, a good red wine (in moderation), snuggling under the comforter on a cold wet evening, talking, laughing and just enjoying life.

I work for a a big ol' company making sure we keep the things that could destroy us from happening. That is, I'm a risk manager. I am a coach, an analyst, a teacher, and the devil's inquisitor, asking "but what if we're wrong?" when we're sure we are right. My friends call what I do being one of the "risk illuminati," but I haven't read that book yet, so I just smile. I'm active with my alumni association (Go Bears!), I serve at the pleasure of the Governator on a State Board ("I'll be back..."), and I've just gotten back into improvisational theatre class, just because it's fun ("yes, and...").

The coffee cup and the grin (or, if there is no coffee cup, the vaguely desperate look).

Favorite books: oh dear, let's see, in the fantasy world, all of the Harry Potter books (Azkaban is still my favorite), Tanya Huff's Keeper Chronicles, Pratchett's Discworld, Rob Thurman's Nightlife, and on and on and on. Other fiction...hmmm, Leo Rosten's H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N books, Samuel Shem's House of God, and Tony Hillerman's southwestern mysteries. In the world of non-fiction, Godel Escher Bach was life-changing, Molly Ivins always made me think, Dave Barry makes me laugh, and Snow on Cholera got me into epidemiology forever...

Favorite movies: The original Casino Royale with David Niven as Bond and Woody Allen as the villain, Murder by Death, Airplane, almost anything Mel Brooks, Dr. Strangelove, Outbreak and the Andromeda Strain.

Favorite music: at the moment, Elliot Minor, Fratellis, Wombats, Kooks, Take That, Mika, Gaelic Storm, Dire Straits, Green Day, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Shania Twain, Poogy, Sistah Robi and Willie K. Not all at the same time, don't get me wrong.

Favorite foods and restaurants: see above (good cake, good red wine, etc.), Slanted Door, Tadich's, Ajanta, Cesar, OSHA, Fenton's for a Black and Tan..., oh hell, I'll eat almost anywhere. Really good fish-and-chips (unfortunately the Chippie in mum's home-town is just too far away). Thanksgiving dinner is my favorite meal of the year. And have I mentioned coffee?

A 35mm camera, family & friends, Peets, a computer of some sort, my library.

Flopped on the couch with a beverage wondering what the hell just happened.

any of this made you smile...