My title is the way I have been described. I see life as something to experience with passion. I want to taste it, smell it, feel it and see everything I can. I am insanely curious and want to know it all. The first part of my life has been an interesting adventure and I fully expect the second half to be even more so.

I am looking for an confident man who is smart and funny and can keep up with me. I like intellectual and physical challenges, discussions about current events, exploring hole-in-the-wall restaurants where we may be the only ones who speak English, or jumping in the car and going some place we have never been before just to see what is there.

I love to see live bands in small venues and like going to the movies and discussing them afterward. I do like to relax and hang out at home with a glass of wine and the TV or a DVD but if you are "laid back" to the extent that I have to put a mirror under your nose to see if you are still breathing, there is going to be a huge disconnect.

I am more of a city person - operas, theater, shopping, dining...so if your idea of a good time is camping and hunting, I am not the one. I would take you on in a game of paintball, though.

I am smart (if I say it then it must be true, right?), funny - well at least I amuse myself and if others are amused - bonus!, outgoing, can be both high energy and laid back. If you know the Myers-Briggs, I am an ENTJ. I am very creative and just can't shut it off. I have had a couple of unusual careers and have great stories to tell.

I don't smoke and drink little. Actually, I am a cheap date. My limit is about two glasses of wine and it doesn't take much food to fill me up. The movie theater down the street from me shows two buck movies (half price on Tuesdays).

I am very good with people and despite being energetic and adventurous, I am a kind person who thinks of others and takes their feelings into consideration. I don't make a big deal about little things and have learned to choose my battles.

I am making a career change and am in a fast-track master's program to become a special education teacher. I like the emotionally/behaviorally disturbed junior high kids. Yeah, hormonally charged little smart asses who hate authority...I can relate.

I have a high need for excitement and have always had jobs that have had an element of danger to them. I am planning on teaching in the inner-city. The kids that no one else wants.

I have to be creative and special education is a place where I can do that. My brain never stops. I can always think of a new and different way.

Grace under pressure

Fitting in anywhere...from a biker wedding (now, that's a story) to eating at a very posh restaurant (I do know what all those utensils are for).

Being up for a new adventure

Debating current events...I may not agree with you and will think you are hopelessly misguided, but I'll be cool about it.

New ideas, new ways to do something, fun things to do.

Men compliment me on my puffy lips, women have told me they really like how I dress.

I love movies...anything from foreign with subtitles to indie to blockbusters. I do have a lifetime ban on Will Farrell movies, however.

One of my favorite things to do is to see live bands in small venues like the Vic, the Metro, the Congress. I like rock, metal, alt country/alt rock, blues and singer-songwriters most haven't heard of, yet still manage to keep putting out albums. I still go to concerts with mosh pits with my teenage concert-going posse who are too young to drive ( i.e. my son Angstboy and his buddies). Chicago has some great local bands that are on the rise who are great to see very cheaply.

I really like to read, but lately it has been textbooks (yawn). If I could read anything I wanted I would be reading novels, mysteries, biographies and books about current events. If I have the time I can read a book in a couple of days.

I like a lot of different kinds of food...Chicago is a great place to eat. From Pizza to Mexican, Asian, and everything in between. Plus there is all that great cheese from Wisconsin. The only ethnic foods I have ever tried that I didn't like were Ethiopian and Polish/Eastern European.

My son, "Angstboy"...who can play any musical instrument he picks up. He is like a 15 year-old Dave Grohl.

A good working brain (because how else am I going to keep you on your toes)?

The ability to laugh and see humor in the absurd and the mundane (I almost always have a comedy playing in my head).

Health (I have been sick and I have been well and being healthy is definitely better).

And because I color outside the lines, you only get four. Remember, I told you I have issues with authority. I just am not going to do what I'm told. OKC is not the boss of me.

Men are such foreign creatures, will I ever truly understand how you work?

My personal "board of directors" who are a radically different group of friends who give me advice, tell me the male perspective, let me whine and stomp my feet when I need to and tell me when I am full of it.

I am passionate about kids and animals. They have no voice of their own and need us. How can I help?

With my personality will I be able to navigate the extremely conservative education system?

Writing a paper or a project that is due on Monday.

Sitting here looking around to see who is on OKC.

Chatting with friends.

Seeing a band.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college I worked in a slaughterhouse. I made chitterlings. Yeah, my job was to stretch out the guts so they could be rinsed out.

If you are:
- smart
- funny (in an intellectual way, not the fart-jokes-that-crack-the-guys-up way)
- educated
- taller than me
- self-confident and self assured
- professional career
- up for adventures of various kinds
- not intimidated by smarty-pants women
- have good emotional intelligence
- can write and know that "your" is not a substitute for "you're"
- emotionally mature and self-sufficient (i.e. you don't live in grandma's basement)

If I haven't scared you off
You didn't like something I commented on
You did like something I commented on
You want to say "hi"
I do write back (mama taught me right)