CURRENT MISSION

To enjoy the 2nd half of my life more than the 1st.

ABOUT ME

I haven't been all over the world, but I do have good stories. I am married (15 plus yrs) and have a son who is 11. I've hosted visitors before and have the space to do so, but where I live is boring. We have lots of woods and lakes, but not much else.

PHILOSOPHY

I am adventurous and intellectually curious. I always feel (and it's probably true) that I'm missing something somewhere. I'm open minded but I don't have a hole in my head. If you're paying attention you can learn from everyone. That's reason enough to respect every person you meet.

I can and do put myself in too many places at once, but what that means is that I buy tickets for shows and then go see other shows instead. A patron of the arts I am. I do NOT flake on dates I make with my friends, though. If I tell you I am going to be somewhere I will be ... but I usually will try to convince you to go along on a spontaneous harebrained adventure with me after our dinner or whatever.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Willing to show visitors around Chicago. Have done this before and like it. If you have chores that you want a responsible mature bill-paying surfer to help you with...ask me. I'll clean, write papers, garden, watch dogs, sheep, children for an evening. Think something up.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I can decide to go somewhere at the last last minute. Those trips are the most fun. Surfed a few couches in the UK and have UK refs if you want them. One is a postie, the other a teacher. I've hosted each of them in Chicago, as well. Both are musicians and are used to surfers. I'm trying to get them to join this thing.

Interests

Live music, live music, live music. I'll sleep anywhere to see bands (not with the band, though, it's not like that). I did sleep in LAX once. LGA, too. PHL and PIT (the actual airports, not just the cities they're in). I think it would be a riot to host an entire band in the big suite, but it's rented. I like camping, growing food, thrifting, reading, talking about and eating food. I like music but academic discussions about it are so not my bag. I'm kind of a dork about furniture and house parts. Spent a day in Glasgow being fascinated by vestibules and stairs. But I don't have Aspergers or anything and not every conversation I start is about house parts. Your record collection will be unharmed. Next year we are hosting a foreign student.

Maybe someday I will run a flophouse in a college town. I want to dress just like Mrs. Roper from Three's Company and sit on my tumbledown front porch in a duct-taped recliner with a black standard poodle at my feet.

• dogs
• arts
• dining
• running
• gardening
• thrifting
• clothing
• reading
• music
• live music
• camping
• teaching
• lakes

Music, Movies, and Books

I read compulsively, mostly nonfiction. True crime, medical marvels, magazines. Astrology books from the 70's, marriage manuals from the 50's, house plans from the 30's, Popular Mechanics, Paul Fussell, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Bertrand Russell. Anything, really. I can't say I ever read Ayn Rand.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Natural childbirth! Yay! Saw Prince front row for Purple Rain. Saw myself being operated on.

Teach, Learn, Share

I really hate that I have this long list of things I always wanted to do and haven't done--that makes me sound uninteresting. I want to some day keep bees. I'd like to have hens. And one nanny goat. I want to go to a totally foreign city with $1 and the clothes on my back and stay for a month making it on my wits and strength.

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