CURRENT MISSION

I'm between missions. Right now, just looking for some kind of purpose in life.

ABOUT ME

I'm just hoping this web site will prove to be a way to meet interesting people in out-of-the-way places...with emphasis on the out-of-the-way part. I love travelling by car down back roads & through small towns.

Anybody who wants to know the idiosyncratic way my mind works (or doesn't, as the case may be) can read some of the entries in my local (San Antonio and South Texas) blog, The Curmudgeon-About-Town

http://www.thecurmudgeoncomments.blogspot.com/

or my more wide-ranging blog, The Other Curmudgeon

http://durmudgeon.blogspot.com/

(note the misspelling).

PHILOSOPHY

Not all who wander are lost.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Many years ago I met a guy from England who was backpacking across the US. He ended up staying on my couch for the night before moving on to the west. I don't remember his name now, and only vaguely recall what he looked like; all I remember is how interesting it was to meet someone like that.

Nowadays, I travel back roads on the spur of the moment; every intersection is an opportunity to change my route. So it's hard for me to predict where I'll be come nightfall, and therefore hard to correspond with potential hosts in time to make any kind of arrangement. Add to that the fact that I prefer staying away from large cities -- where the vast majority of CouchSurfing members are -- and you can see why it's so far been impossible for me to meet up with any CouchSurfers. But I keep trying.

Interests

Lots of things: history, architecture, gardening, insects, local customs, food, current events.... I get a kick out of hearing local accents & noticing the way words are used in different places; I like popular music but also a lot of other kinds (e.g., classical, fado, jazz) & music sung in languages other than English; art; ceramics; art glass; stained glass; and probably anything else you can name, except maybe medicine.

• insects
• arts
• architecture
• dining
• cooking
• gardening
• traveling
• pottery
• blogging
• woodworking
• music
• jazz
• backpacking
• camping
• history
• languages
• medicine

Music, Movies, and Books

easier to say what I DON'T like: horror-slasher movies, and very long, very dull psych-studies (e.g., "Leaving Las Vegas"). Oh, and drily-written histories.

In the last year I've read probably 30 books, about half of them history, not quite half fiction, and the rest a mix of everything else. And now that I've found a friend who's free to see films during the day, I've rediscovered the insides of the local movie houses, and have seen more movies in the last six months than in the previous 20 years combined: Julie and Julia; Star Trek; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; District 9; Confessions of a Shop-a-holic (or something like that); I Love You, Man (my favourite of all the recent films); X-Men Origins: Wolverine (my friend wanted to see that one; I didn't; yet I enjoyed it more than he did); Up; Inglorious Basterds; The Hangover; probably some others, but I forget. And I've enjoyed them all, even the simplistic ones.

I live in a big city that is a cinematic desert; only Major Motion Pictures make it to the theaters here, so I never get the chance to see any of those interesting small films that I hear about on the radio.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I saw satellites crossing the night sky while camping with my son.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'd like to learn better techniques for building stained-glass windows; I'd like to learn more about woodworking, esp. furniture-making; and I'd like to learn to cook better. These are all things I've dabbled with for years, in a dilletante way...although stained glass has become something more than a hobby lately; see
http://picasaweb.google.com/passepartout22/StainedGlassFromPassepartout22#

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Moldova, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States