My sense of humor is bone dry. I like art and have a good eye -- I can't draw, but take care of my creative needs with photography, gardening, and needlework. Prefer cats to dogs, Stones to Beatles, beach to mountains. Politically liberal, "spiritual but not religious."

Easy-going and tolerant, but at the same time incredibly opinionated. I manage (for the most part) to keep my bossiness in check, because hey, it's your life, but if you ask my advice I'll give it to you.

Low-maintenance and infinitely able to keep myself amused.

Freelance writer/editor of nonfiction, mostly things that help people live in ways that will help themselves and others (gardening, sustainability, education, etc.). In my down time, I try to balance spending time with friends and spending time keeping myself nurtured -- books, music, movies.

I play way too much Scrabble online.

Communicating clearly. Honesty. Appreciating (and creating) beauty. Listening. Providing a new perspective. Organizing ideas. Slashing word counts to create prose that gets to the point quickly and vividly.

Actually, I try to not make a dramatic first impression. My appearance is understated (I'm the complete opposite of the high-heels-and-makeup type), as is my demeanor (I'm a listener, not a talker). If you're looking carefully, you'll probably notice my smile; if you're listening, you'll notice that my comments are spot-on and extremely funny without being mean-spirited.

Books: I read a lot of nonfiction (natural history, gardening, books about language, social sciences -- and anything else that captures my imagination). Favorite authors of nonfiction include David Quammen (whose "Song of the Dodo" is amazing) and Michael Pollan. Loved "Guns, Germs, and Steel," but thought "Collapse" should have been edited ruthlessly. Fiction -- I read virtually no genre fiction anymore, and not all that much other fiction. Prefer novels to short stories, and long novels to short ones. Vargas-Llosa's "Way to Paradise" blew me away; also liked Kim Stanley Robinson's "Years of Rice and Salt" and David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas." Mark Helprin's "Soldier of the Great War" fell apart in the last hundred pages, dammit.

Movies: I like to be entertained when I see a movie, so I prefer musicals and comedies, though since most of the movies I see are at the Ritz, I see more than my share of grim and depressing flicks. As an information junkie, I also like documentaries. Happy that "good movie" season has started up, and have been on a movie-going kick recently: "Capitalism: A Love Story" was disappointing, but I liked "(500) Days of Summer" quite a bit. Didn't even bother to try to find a companion for "The September Issue" (I'm a longtime "Vogue" subscriber, believe it or not) or "Coco Before Chanel" -- which indicates, I guess, that despite my fondness for chick flicks I don't impose them on the unwilling.

Seen on DVD recently and liked: "Lars and the Real Girl," "He Loves Me ... He Loves Me Not," "The Duchess." My Christmas present to myself last year: a six-disc Busby Berkeley set. All-time favorite musical: Tie between "Top Hat" and "All That Jazz," with "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" getting an honorable mention. All-time favorite comedy: "The Producers" (original version, not the musical).

Watch very little TV any more (don't have cable), but am a sucker for a good reality show, especially "Amazing Race"; also like "Cold Case" and "NCIS." Given my love of musicals, Fox's double-header of "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Glee" strikes me as a delightful evening's entertainment. I'm a recent convert to TV on DVDs -- I was distraught to get to the end of the second season of "Carnivale" and discover the next four seasons will never be made. Just started the second season of "Mad Men." If you're reading favorites sections for ideas, check out "Murder One," the first season of which I consider The Best TV Drama Ever.

Music: Have a thing about people who listen to nothing but "oldies" (classic rock). I'm not the same person I was 30 years ago, why on earth would I still be listening to the same music? I listen to a lot of African music, more jazz (esp. Cuban) with every passing year. Stan Getz's "Night and Day" with Kenny Barron is the most perfect imaginable version of my all-time favorite song.

Most recent discovery: Andrew Bird. I prefer his recent "love child of David Byrne and Laurie Anderson" stuff to the older "wishes he could sit in with Django" stuff, though the latter is completely listenable (and has some very clever lyrics).

See a fair number of concerts at the Keswick, including (in the last year or so) Derek Trucks, B.B. King, Planet Drum, Jean-Luc Ponty/Al DiMeola/Stanley Clark. Other good concerts in '08: Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi at Longwood (I took my BIL for his birthday and we were smack dab in the middle of the front row -- that was a hell of an evening); Ravi Shankar at the Kimmel Center; David Byrne at the Tower Theater.

In in general I listen to more stuff sung in languages I don't speak than in English. I'd list some favorite artists, but (**snobbery alert**) the names probably wouldn't mean much to you. Okay -- you want specifics? Habib Koite, Orchestra Baobab, and Frank Emilio Flynn are all pretty well known -- but my favorite sax player is Momo Wandel Soumah, and I recently found the Bembeya Jazz National CDs I'd thought I'd lost -- yay!

Of course, as Oscar Wilde observed, consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative -- so the soundtrack to "Once" spent almost a year in the CD player after I saw (and loved) the movie.

The only kind of music I really, really don't want to listen to is -- nope, not rap -- smooth jazz. I start obsessing about whether the musicians like/are proud of the drek coming out of their horns or whether they wish they could play real music instead of something that they can sell to dentists' offices and purveyors of muzak.

Food: Favorite is Mexican, but also like Italian food, seafood; don't eat too much red meat any more, but there's something very satisfying about a nice rare steak. Not a big fan of Chinese, Thai, etc., and can't conceptually deal with the whole "raw fish" thing so eschew sushi. Competent cook but get no pleasure from it; I'm a pretty good baker, though.

Artists: It's all about color, so Gauguin, Matisse, Hockney. Of current artists, I like Walton Ford.

Editors

• xylu

At least one really hearty laugh a day (and god bless Jon Stewart for taking care of that four days a week). Curiosity. Hand lotion. A stack of books in my "to be read" queue, plus a couple of magazines with great visuals and interesting articles. Just got a Kindle and although it's not yet on my "can't do without" list it's a damned cool gadget. High thread count sheets and good pillows. Chocolate. Irony. Flowers. Parentheses (and dashes -- oh, and ellipses...).

Reading glasses. About a half dozen pairs randomly scattered all over my house, at work, in my purse -- in addition to the pair that's either on my nose, on top of my head, or tucked into the neck of my shirt.

Yes, I can count -- but questions with clearly defined answers are relatively uninteresting to me.

My to-do list. I usually have a bunch of stuff I haven't quite gotten around to, and feel so much more on top of things if I at least write them down. Looking at the current version, it's a mix of professional and personal -- everything from "finish article for sustainability mag" to "order flea drops for Zebulon and Jezebel" (my Most Excellent Kitties) to "lay out afghan [current knitting project] to see where I am with it" to "respond to Donna's email!!!!!" to "return books to library, see if next two disks of 'Big Love' are in."

Miscellaneous "big picture" questions, like the role/importance of ornamental (non-edible) gardening in habitat maintenance. Or the evolution of language. What's going to happen now that Obama is in office -- I cried during his acceptance speech, did you?

That and language -- I enjoy making up little word-manipulation puzzles for myself (and occasionally for others).

And then back to my to-do list.

Editors

• LiteTouch

Vegging at home, wondering why they no longer run good TV shows on Friday nights. Remember when "Homicide" and "Picket Fences" were on? Home and vegging, though, reading a magazine, or BSing with a friend on IM. In any case, I want to recover from the week and savor the fact that the weekend has started, not go out and socialize.

I'm allergic to shrimp.

You're confident and interesting.