I'll provide some background on my family since people sometimes find my family entertaining and I think it explains a lot about me:

I come from a very liberal family. My parents spent the decade of the '60s overseas and got involved in various social justice movements abroad. My siblings and I were raised in the suburbs of Washington D.C. We were raised on a macrobiotic diet and we were also raised Unitarian. I grew up attending a lot of social and political demonstrations with my parents. My parents are anti-materialist, anti-mainstream kinds of people and tried to keep us away from "mainstream culture." We did a lot of recycling, composting, camping, treading lightly on the earth, etc., growing up. My mother taught me yoga when I was in preschool and I also learned how to meditate early on. My parents were into alternative medicine, so I've always done acupuncture, massage, naturopathy, aryuveda, Alexander technique, Feldenkrais, etc. I didn't start eating meat until I was 25. My mom is into paganism, my dad considered himself a socialist. My parents are also very touchy-feely. My dad was active in the men's movement, lot's of banging on drums in the woods and connecting with his inner-whatever. A lot of talking about feelings in my family. My mother wouldn't let me join the Girl Scouts when I was a kid because she thought Girl Scouts were homophobic and corporate. Instead I had to be a "Camp Fire Girl." My parents have done past life regression therapy, as have I, and they have consulted with psychics and healers of various kinds, as have I. I got interested in Buddhism when I was in high school and started meditating and trying to have out of body experiences at that time.

My parents put their cat to sleep a few years ago and here's how that went down: They pet her and talked to her while she was being put to sleep and my mom told her to look for our dog, who died years ago, in the afterlife. After she died they immediately went to this Indian Circle Garden and sat under "the tree of life" and my mom explained that according to Black Elk, the Tree of Life grows where the path of joy and the path of sorrow cross. If we remember to water the tree, it will flourish and flower and welcome birds. The tree, Black Elk says, grows in our hearts. Then they went to this healing garden and walked this stone labyrinth and shouted out adjectives that reminded them of their cat, and then they sat in the center of the labyrinth and meditated and imagined their pets sitting in the circle with them, enjoying the breeze. They imagined their cat, said my mother, in a new dimension filled with energy and love. Then they thought of all the beings close to them who have moved on...and wondered more about that (my mother's words) "energy dimension where I believe radiance and love abound."

So this is my background, and even though I like to ridicule my parents for being so cheesy, I am very much a product of my upbringing.

I graduated from a hippy-dippy experimental college, the New College of Florida and I lived in San Francisco for 7 years, so I'm used to alternative, counter-culture environments and that's what I like. Although I don't think I particularly "look" like that type of person.

I think I give off something of a whimsical, "silly" vibe. I take things very seriously but I don't like to act serious and sense of humor is very key with me. I am very open minded and I don't think I'm easily shocked. I've been around nudists, s/m, Burning Man, hippie stuff, circus performers, drugs, weird performance art, etc., etc., at different points. I feel like I'm very interested in stuff, no matter how weird, and am open to various things in life. And I don't like just the same old, same old kind of vibe. I like things that I find interesting and weird and out there and fun.

I'm very big on sarcasm, irony, sardonicism, etc. And I tend to connect with sarcastic, witty people who have some kind of intellectual orientation and some kind of orientation toward language. Speaking it, reading it, writing it.

I have a strong spiritual bent. I've had gurus in the past and have been involved with various spiritual practices related to Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.

I thought of becoming a therapist when I was younger. I have very intense emotions and I tend to feel things very deeply, and that's just a big part of life for me.

I live in my head in a lot of ways and spend a lot of time woolgathering and pontificating, and I tend to sit around talking, emoting, watching movies, making fun of things, and eating. But I'm also very much about fun. Like most people, I love to travel, as much as possible. In fact, I pretty much like traveling better than anything else. I love action-adventury outdoorsy stuff. Hiking, camping, skiing. I'm obsessed with white water rafting and plan to learn white water kayaking this summer.

I like to be very social and try and have a lot of parties and do everything I can to keep life fun and interesting (I'm in grad school, so it's a challenge but it can be done!) I don't like sitting around being boring all the time -- I like to do things that are fun and quirky.

I love to eat. I am my mother's daughter so I'm into health food, but I'm also into food food. I bake desserts and here are some favorites: bread pudding, creme brulee, crisps, cobblers, crumbles, trifle, flan, mousse, souffles.

I love yoga. When I lived in San Francisco I took gymnastics classes and circus classes and got into something called Acro Yoga, which combines acrobatics with yoga and it's the most fun I've ever had exercising. It's amazing.

I have a blog: http://thetoeblog.blogspot.com/

It's taken me 10 years to figure out what I want to do with my life, but I finally figured it out! (I think.) I worked in social work for 5 years, and then I worked in journalism for 5 years, and then I realized that really I wanted to write. I am in my second year of a three-year MFA program in creative writing. I write creative nonfiction -- memoir and personal essays. I will apply for phd programs next year, but I don't know if I will go if I am accepted. So what comes next is up in the air, but I am committed to placing creative writing in the center of my life and I would like to teach at the university level.

Writing
Communicating, in general.
Talking
Perceiving
Eating
Running
Bending (I'm pretty flexible)

Hmmm. I really don't know!

Books:
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas
Lolita, Nabokov
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee.
Dr. Zhivago Pasternak

Movies:
Me and You and Everyone We Know, Walking and Talking, American Fabulous, You Can't Take It With You, Waking Life, The Pianist, His Girl Friday, Royal Tenenbaums, The Princess Bride, Gandhi, Babe, Punch Drunk Love, Gray's Anatomy, My Dinner with Andre, Rivers and Tides, The Cruise, Lost In Translation, The Station Agent, Touching the Void, Eternal Sunshine, Raising Victor Vargas, The Dreamlife of Angels, A Streetcar Named Desire, Before Sunset, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, Riding Giants, Lovely and Amazing, The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married

Music:
Explosions in the Sky
Eluvium
Air
Feist
Joshua Radin
Lavender Diamond
Leonard Cohen
Stars
Sigur Ros
Sufjan Stevens
Danny Elfman
Craig Armstrong
Rufus Wainwright
The Antlers
Bon Iver

Food:
I'm all about food. I loved living in San Francisco because SF is also all about food and I don't like living in Columbus because there's nothing good to eat here, although there's some amazing gourmet ice cream in Columbus that is way better than anything I ever had in San Francisco.

I like Asian food:
Japanese
Thai
Malay
Burmese
Indian
Indonesian
Vietnamese
Korean

I like some African food. And I'm pretty much up for good, gourmet food as a general rule.

My sense of humor
My memories
My ability to write
My ability to talk, and express myself
My ability to enjoy food immensely
My ability to grow emotionally/spiritually

Girly stuff. I think a lot about myself, my feelings, my relationships, my motivations, the past, the future, the things I can't figure out about how life works, growing older, etc., etc.

Doing one or more of the below:
1) studying alone, or with friends
2) drinking with friends
3) watching Mad Men DVDs, while drinking, with friends

I sound like I would be fun to talk to!