I'm interested in things. That's the only way I can describe it. A few of them? Music, language, bodies of water, photography, walking, physical fitness, beer, architecture, NPR, Magic: the Gathering, webcomics, coffee, exploration, cities, public transportation, baseball, St. Louis Cardinals, maps, found items, China, healthy eating, vegetarian food, cooking, record shops, scarves, bees, proper newspapers, satire, cultural relativism, technology, Anglophilia, travel, reading, writing, weather.

I am tenacious, soulful, and strange.

A few of the things I do: Writing album reviews for a local magazine; listening to massive amounts of music; taking pictures of things; playing Magic: Online; walking everywhere (to everyone's constant bemusement); running/lifting at the gym; working large numbers of Simpsons quotes into everyday conversations; taking way too long to pick out beer (at the pub & at the supermarket); surveying the world via Google Maps, picking up things found on the sidewalk; geeking out over the fact that my iPhone is basically a fully realized artifact from an imagined future; missing and subsequently waiting for trains.

I work for a non-profit doing database + applications programming, along with data quality/analysis. I'm great at what I do, I work my butt off, and I have a fierce work ethic, although my job is emphatically not my life. It pays the bills so I can do the things I am passionate about. Music, writing, travel & photography are what feed my soul, I do what I do professionally so I have time/mental juice to do what feeds my soul. A perfect weekend generally involves grabbing my camera, exploring the city, taking a billion photos, great coffee & beer, a chance to run/work out, and some chill time for music and working on an record review.

Listening; problem solving; learning foreign languages; data mining; writing/editing; being empathetic; exploring and learning new environments.

My enthusiasm; the way I kind of walk on my tip-toes; weird badges on my jacket/man bag.

Books: Douglas Adams, George Orwell, Nick Hornby, Kurt Vonnegut, The New York Times, "Great Apes", Irvine Welsh, "Dodger Dogs To Fenway Franks", (web)comics collections, all things "Calvin and Hobbes", "The Buddha of Suburbia", National Geographic, "Wonder Boys", the Cambridge Encyclopedias of English and of Language, lots of other nonfiction, especially stuff about the developing world, linguistics, architecture, and urban planning. James Kochalka's "American Elf" series stands as a testament to the inherent beauty & joy of the rhythm of life. Even the bad days.

Movies: Kicking & Screaming (the Noah Baumbach one, the good one), The Squid & The Whale, Annie Hall, The Shawshank Redemption, The Meaning Of Life, High Fidelity, Wonder Boys, Rushmore, Trainspotting, Shakma, The Big Lebowski, Cane Toads, Full Metal Jacket, St. Elmo's Fire, American Beauty, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Lost In Translation, Back To The Future, Barcelona, Clerks, Ghost World, The Ice Storm, Roger and Me, Manhattan, Scenes From A Marriage.

TV Shows: The Simpsons, Big Love, Law & Order, House, Seinfeld, The Office, Mad Men, Dexter, Star Trek DS9, Enterprise, Mission Hill, Cardinals games, The State, Firefly, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Scrubs, Freaks And Geeks, Undeclared, Futurama, Roseanne, Quantum Leap, How I Met Your Mother, Community, Flight of the Conchords, 30 Rock, The Weather Channel.

Music: Marillion, The Smiths, Morrissey, Matthew Good, R.E.M., Ted Leo, Idlewild, The Replacements, Paul Westerberg, Bright Eyes, James, The Clash, Paul Simon, The Beatles, Pet Shop Boys, The Hold Steady, Ryan Adams, Elton John, Manic Street Preachers, Jarvis Cocker, Pulp, Freedy Johnston, Blur, David Gray, Neko Case, Northern soul, Kings Of Convenience, Trash Can Sinatras, Talking Heads, Loudon Wainwright III, Bob Dylan, The Shins, Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, The Church, Peter Gabriel, Arcade Fire, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt, The Jam, Talk Talk, Neil Finn, Crowded House, Orbital, Radiohead, The Divine Comedy, Mansun, Spock's Beard, Emmylou Harris, The Blue Nile, Rush, Pixies, The Who, Randy Newman, They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds, Elvis Costello, Calexico, Joni Mitchell, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Josh Rouse, Sufjan Stevens, Clarence Carter, Billy Joel, Primal Scream, IQ, Green Day, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Mark Kozelek, Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon, Tom Petty, Elbow, Porcupine Tree, Yes, Belle And Sebastian, M83, Robbie Fulks, Legião Urbana, Leonard Cohen, The Kinks, Gram Parsons, Jens Lekman, Counting Crows, David Bowie, Coldplay, Bloc Party, The National, Vampire Weekend, The Gaslight Anthem, and many, many more.

Food: Vegetarian. Indian (nothing like a properly radioactive curry). As close to authentic as possible Chinese. Falafel, hummus, and pitas + a crisp pint of ale. Tom yum soup and spring rolls. Vietnamese. A well crafted veggie burger. Every couple of months, I treat myself to a high quality seafood dinner or a sushi feast.

My iPhone. Cardinals baseball. Ale. My family and close friends. My iTunes library (all 30,000+ songs of it). Opportunities to learn.

Music. Travel. Language. Interpersonal communication. How a great deal of the world's problems could be solved with a liberal application of logic and common sense.

Most of the time I'm cooking a meal, then chilling out with a quality pint of beer and a CD changer full of choice tuneage. Now and then I head out for dinner with friends. I tend to dig a quieter Friday night to recover from the working week, and to get a little more energy intensive on Saturday night. But it's not a hard & fast rule, sometimes Friday night absolutely requires wandering out and about into the city and blowing off some steam.

My life is a constant battle to outwit my own overthinking brain.

If you think I sound cool and if you're cool.