I fall in love with life all over again on a regular basis. The world is wild, weird and constantly in flux. I'm neither naïve nor jaded. I have experienced the sacred and the profane, the numinous and the goofy. I think they're all the same thing. But for all of that, I am far more likely to ponder than to pontificate, because there's so much more to see than I have already. I think every day gives us opportunities to smash our own assumptions against the rocks of the unknown and find something unexpectedly beautiful in the remains.

I like rock climbing, bicycling, motorcycling, playing music, reading books for hours, having fascinating conversations with switched-on people, doing math, cooking breakfast foods, and petting cats. I am passionate about social justice, and try to subvert race and class privilege, sexism and heteronormativity wherever I find it - with good cheer and compassion whenever I can muster, and with stern resolve when I can't. I don't always succeed at this, or catch everything, but it feels worth trying.

My amazing and wonderful life partner mortalgeek and I have recently spawned a tiny dictator. She and I are both queer, radical, goth-tinged-punk riot nrrrrds, and the sproglet makes us both make happy sounds and lose lots of sleep.

To pay the bills, I am a mechanical engineer. To stay sane and keep my heart & soul healthy, I am a musician. I sing, play lots of instruments, and of late am doing a live-looping solo project. If you're interested, I have some tracks here:

http://www.soundcloud.com/phenonate

I bike to work and try to get to the climbing gym at least three times a week. Sometimes that works out better than others. Heh. I've ridden in AIDS Life/Cycle a couple of times and that made me fall in love with distance cycling, but it's been a while since I got out there and did that. Want to go for a ride sometime?

math, waffles, cuddling, winkling the juicy bits out of complex
conceptual problems and talking about them at length, and being
unexpectedly surreal.

A quote from VoxExMachina: "phenonate is a bit of a triple threat. He's funny, smart, and hot/musical (Ok, possibly a quadruple threat.) He's also incredibly compassionate and wise, so if you're going to go out with him, just be prepared for that. It can be a little disorienting if you're not used to it, but trust me, you'll like it."

depend highly on context, but most often it's my sense of humor.

Books:
Gravity's Rainbow, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, House of Leaves, the Dark Tower cycle, Anathem, the collected works of Charles Stross, Neal Asher and Iain (M.) Banks, Time on Two Crosses, Invisible Man, the autobiography of Malcolm X, Where the Wild Things Are, The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes, and so, so many more.

Movies: (there are so many, I am just going to list the ones that come to mind right off)
Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Coraline, Hedwig & the Angry Inch, Shortbus, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Let the Right One In, the original cut of A Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, But I'm A Cheerleader, Dune, Lawrence of Arabia, Annie, Alien, City of Lost Children, Pan's Labyrinth, The Taqwacores...

Shows: (I really don't watch TV, but this is what gets Netflix't):
Buffy, Firefly, Torchwood, Archer

Music: (again, seriously short version of a LONG list)
Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, the Pixies, Primus, Mogwai, Goonies Never Say Die, Muse, Massive Attack, Clutch, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Björk, Sleater-Kinney, Mastodon, High on Fire, Team Dresch, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, REM, Soundgarden, Melvins, the pAper chAse, Buke and Gase, Zoe Keating...

Food:
Almost anything from India - rice and daal is the acme of comfort food for me. Homemade from-scratch hash browns. Waffles (sweet or savory (yes, you can do that, it's actually really good)). Crepes. Also, I am a dyed-in-the-wool whisky nerd.

Coffee
Unexpected moments of joy
Cuddles
Playing music
Intellectual stimulation
The ability to be really, really silly

peace, social justice, gender identity and its evolution in the modern world, achieving a sustainable society in both the material and social/ethical spheres, kissing, and how good it feels to finally sneeze after you've been thinking you had to forEVER but can't. quite. do it. (And other such oddities.)

hanging with friends, out for a show, or occasionally just collapsing at home in a satisfied heap, glad the week is done.

I get terribly shy in large groups of people where the majority are people I don't know.

you're interested in starting a conversation that might lead to getting together to meet in person and see if we click.