Hi, I'm Dave. I'll soon be a lawyer with an easy smile. In the meantime I'm a law student with an easy smile. I'm a competitor on the Ultimate (frisbee) field, and I love to play volleyball and other sports too. I mess around on the guitar and string bass. I feel alive outdoors hiking, camping, biking, skiing, snapping photos or just taking it all in. I like to escape into fiction, and I'm a dynamo in strategy games. I'll go out on the town or party with friends. I like to travel. I'm socially liberal and fiscally confused, but liberal. I enjoy the company of people with divergent views. I've got a supportive family that taught me about honesty, love, and adventure.

I'm finishing law school this year and will be working in litigation for a great firm in Minneapolis starting next year. On the side I'm playing and coaching Ultimate and trying to enjoy myself.

Communication, mediation, and organization. Empathy, grace under pressure, offering options. Helping a friend. Leading, competing, and telling it how it is.
I'd prefer if this section's heading were "I don't suck at" or "My strengths include," since pretty much anything you put after "I'm really good at" is going to make you sound arrogant, leading most Minnesotans to just put a non-informative one-liner quasi-joke here. But you see, I'm different. Not only have I managed to use this section to brag, I've also ranted about a minor language distinction. Go me.

It probably depends on the length of my hair. It cycles from short to curly.

Ursula LeGuin, Tolkien, J.R.R. Martin, Pat Rothfuss, Rowling, Shakespeare, Pullman, Cheeseburger Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, Ken Follett, Frank Herbert, Camus, Nietzsche (philosophy!), Fowles, Henry David Roberts, Homer, Woolf, and R. Arenas.

Willow, Wedding Crashers, High Fidelity, LOTR, The Fifth Element, Serenity (Firefly), Shawshank Redemption, Labrynth, Fight Club, American Beauty, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Star Trek, Gladiator, Twelve Monkeys, The Boonedock Saints, Almost Famous, Death to Smoochy, The NeverEnding Story, anything with elements of fantasy or science fiction, and movies that make you think.

Death Cab, The White Stripes, Foo Fighters, Soul Asylum, Flight of the Conchords, The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, Incubus, Damien Rice, Semisonic, Coldplay, Muse, Goo Goo Dolls, Collective Soul, Flogging Molly, Weezer, Jay Z, Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, Guster, Cake, Dashboard Confessionals, Green Day, Lady Gaga, System of a Down, Evanescence, Third Eye Blind. My radio is usually at 89.3 or 91.1.

I'm still on a college diet, made possible by an active lifestyle, but working on expanding my culinary abilities beyond the pizza oven.

TV: The West Wing, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Let's play a dangerous game instead. Choose your own adventure!

Beginning. You are hiking a wooded mountainside in Glacier National Park, completely lost in your thoughts. You eventually realize that your fellow adventurers are no longer in sight. Do you A) pick up the pace (go to #1); B) slow down (go to #2); or C) just keep on trucking (go to Beginning).

1. In your haste to catch up to your pals you fail to recognize the nature of the terrain and a root sends you flying off the path. The good news: a soft landing. The bad news: you landed on the back of a large, angry moose! Do you A) attempt to ride the Moose (go to #6), B) dismount quickly and slowly back away (go to #7), or C) freak out, leap off the Moose and start screaming your head off (go to #3).

2. After an hour of painfully slow walking, you begin to suspect that your buds aren't behind you after all. Do you A) pick up the pace (go to #1), B) Start yelling at the top of your lungs (go to #3), or C) back-track to make sure they aren't behind you (go to #4).

3. You shout and shout. You shout your friend's names. You shout the names of their friends too. You shout out your mother's name, then their mother's names, then expletives. You yodel a song from a Saturday morning cartoon. You beseech the gods above for guidance, and eventually announce that you'll settle for help from below. You scream for somebody, anybody. After what feels like 20 minutes of shouting, but was actually only 2, and just as you begin to curse the universe and especially that friend who convinced you to go backpacking in the woods, your friends find you - it turns out they were behind you after all having stopped to wait for you to rejoin, but when they heard the sound of your voice they surged ahead. Congrats - your friends might have heard you insulting their mothers and gods, but at least you aren't alone in the wilderness, and as an added bonus all of the potentially scary wildlife in the area has vacated the path, thanks to your verbal warning.

4. You make it back to the last resting point from which you were with your buds that morning, and, finding it deserted, realize that you almost certainly fell behind. Just as you are about to turn to leave, however, you hear a muffled whimpering sound coming from the bushes. Do you A) check it out (go to #5) B) get the hell out of there, and fast (go to #8).

5. You walk through the bushes to discover a dark lair, covered in cobwebs. You look up to find 12 large cocoons - and when you see one of them squirming, revealing your buddy's boots dangling down from the webbed mass, you know what happened to your friends. Just then, you hear the approach of many, many spindly legs and see the webs begin to shake. Luckily, not only have you read The Hobbit, but you even brought your ring of power and elven-crafted dagger. You let the ring slip onto your finger to protect yourself from any arachnid counter-strategies, and with Sting's help (the blade, not the singer) you give the giant spiders "the business." Your foes vanquished, you remember to slip off the ring before cutting down your comrades who, though greatly weakened by their former captor's paralyzing venom, will make a full recovery. What a freakin' hero!

6. The moose bucks and bucks, but you hold on tightly to its antlers with your boots pressed firmly into its sides, and you win the battle of wills. You have the moose take you up and down the path very quickly, and find your friends at the last place you rested together. They are all very impressed by your new ride, but you let your noble, um, steed, go, thanking it for all it has done for you, and thanking your lucky stars that nothing went wrong, suspecting that you dodged some mega bullets!

7. As you slowly back away, the angry moose has plenty of time to plot its offensive. It charges you. You wisely turn your back, putting your pack between those antlers and your body, and slipping your arms out just before the moose mauls your stuff. You escape as it turns your possessions into shredded decorations for its antlers. You might have lost your stuff, but you're still kicking it. Unfortunately, when you make it back to civilization, your friends are nowhere to be found . . . maybe you should have made different choices.

8. Coward! If you get your courage up, go back to #4 and try again.

You are a confident woman who takes care of herself emotionally, mentally, and physically, and appreciate that I try to do the same. Preferably you are a bit nerdy with a taste for adventure. You are ideally OK with the fact that I'm a busy guy (though I would hope to make the relationship a top priority over time). The abilities to listen, understand, and communicate are big time, especially if you can do them respectfully and honestly.