CURRENT MISSION

Happiness: live music in the foreground, ocean waves in the background and friends to chat over a drink.

ABOUT ME

I love anything new, exciting and different. I really love food. I love to cook it. I love to eat it. I love to smell it. And I love the feeling it gives me. Ditto for art.

PHILOSOPHY

"You can deprive me of anything you like except coffee, cigarettes & figs"

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I just found out about this web site and think it's amazing! So many times when I was traveling, I found myself wanting to get an insiders perspective and not entirely sure how to do that... I am from Kansas City and can't imagine what a guide book would tell you to do here, but it is a really great town: art, food, live music, friendly people. I love the idea of showing people what my city is really like. Some day I will have a couch for surfers, in hopes that they will be able to bring the world to me, when I am not in a position to travel myself.

Interests

Cooking, eating, drinking, working, laughing, hoping, dreaming, traveling, reading, pacing, gardening, drawing, diving, plotting, listening, talking and crosswords... the usual.

• arts
• books
• dining
• cooking
• coffee
• drinking
• gardening
• reading
• traveling
• drawing
• music
• live music
• scuba diving
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Love em all! Foreign art house to slapstick comedy, mindless action to old film noir. The exceptions would be horror and drama, they give me nightmares.

Music: It's good for the soul. A sampling of my all time favorite songs... Susan When She Tried- Elvis; A History of Lovers- Calexico / Iron & Wine; O Nome Dela- Arto Lindsay; Sweet Lorraine- Nat King Cole; A Luta Continua- Miriam Makeba; Copacabana- Barry Manilow. Stuff I have been fond of for some time... Tim Easton, Billy Bragg & Wilco, Django Reinhardt, Roy Ayers, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, The Specials, The Ramones, The Gypsy Kings... And stuff I have been listening to lately... Stars, Andrew Bird, The Dirtbombs, M. Ward, Otros Aires, Fratellis, The National...

And Books: A more all consuming passion than travel (though I blame Hemingway and Maugham for sending me abroad in the first place); In the Skin of a Lion, Franny & Zoey, Guns, Germs & Steele: The Fates of Human Societies, Confederacy of Dunces, I, Claudis, Arctic Dreams or Of Wolves & Men, Anything by Jane Austin, Anything by Graham Greene, Balthasar & Blimunda, Snow, Hell's Angles, The Glass Palace, All Quiet on the Western Front, Complications: A Surgeons Notes on an Imperfect Science, Shipping News, Botany of Desire, The Campaign, A Peoples History of the United States, Siddhartha, Smila's Sense of Snow, I Married a Communist, Evidence of Things Unseen, Perfume, The Power of One, The Book of Illusions, The Oaxaca Journal

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Portugal, Thailand, Uruguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Japan, Spain, United States