CURRENT MISSION

To see every place there is.

ABOUT ME

I am the kind of person who agonizes over online profiles.

I spent three and a half years working in an office. I never want to do it again. (And if the job market doesn't improve, I never will.) I'm travelling around Latin America--and, hopefully, eventually, Africa and the Middle East. I'm hoping to come home with a few new languages and a resume that will qualify me for more than paralegal and drifter.

I read constantly. I´m fascinated by new people. I love animals and small children. I walk everywhere. I love sweets. I have a good ear for languages and no ear for music. I´ve become infatuated with every city I´ve been to.

PHILOSOPHY

I´m reading this amazing book called The Fountainhead...

Wait, wait, come back! Seriously, though, I´m not sure I have one yet. "Don´t be a complete choad?" The Golden Rule? Be kind and generous? I´ve spent a great deal of time around people who had very strong ideologies right in the foreground and many of them are...a little intimidating. I come from a place where it´s very easy to be good in very minor ways, and a class full of people taught to ethically manage an unjust system. I think that´s how my compass is set, for better or worse. This grand tour might change me.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

So far, I haven't contributed anywhere near as much as I've received. I hope to remedy that, now that I'll have a place of my own. CS has been an amazing part of my life for these past few years, and I want to repay all the people who have helped me. I´m not an axe murderer, and I flatter myself that I´m pretty good company, so I hope to make San Francisco (or Chicago or Beijing or Osaka or wherever I end up) a friendlier, more feasible place for fellow surfers.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Best of my whole life.

Interests

Reading, difficult languages, dead crafts, drunk´n´pierce, fiber arts, volunteering, Project Open Hand, free stuff, long walks, post-impressionism, disability studies, artisan chocolate, fried dough, the ugly dog pageant, book collections, police procedurals, follies, cloisters, epidemics, expensive paper, bike tours, medieval blues.

• animals
• dogs
• arts
• books
• impressionism
• chocolate
• cheese
• crafts
• reading
• traveling
• painting
• music
• blues
• cycling
• emergency services
• languages
• volunteering
• tours

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Sweet Smell of Success, Red Gold, Thin Blue Line, Galaxy Quest, Postcards from America, Diabolique, Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany´s, The Women, Let´s Get Lost, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mr. Arkadin.

Music: Nina Simone, Tom Waits, Art Pepper, Rufus Wainwright

Ministry of Special Cases, The Girl with Glass Feet, White People, Plays Well with Others, The Diary of a Good Neighbor, The Practical Heart, The Lemon Table, Bad Dirt, Tripmaster Monkey, Yankee Dawg You Die, Blood Meridian (but I had to be drunk to finish it), The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, Barbarians at the Gates, Still Life, Babel Tower, Sugar and Other Stories, Oscar and Lucinda, Jack Maggs, Theft: A Love Story, The Unconsoled, A Suitable Boy, A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road, Whipping Girl.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

On a century bike ride in Napa County, I crossed a freeway and missed a car by a tenth of a second--the rearview mirror bruised my shoulder, but I stayed on my bike. All I remember is a flash of light.

I was in Rome one day, hot and dusty. I stumbled into San Luigi Francesi completely by accident, and found the Capella San Marco with its three Caravaggio masterworks.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can give lessons in linear perspective? Show you how to do a decent wet-into-wet sky wash? Explain why you should never buy student-grade art supplies? Make homemade egg tempura paint with only one or two lumps? My dad has a cheese souffle recipe that I keep meaning to poach. Is there anyone out there who can´t bake cookies? I can do that.

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