Just what you wanted - more about me!

It's been a while since I've added anything, so I thought I'd write a few lines about the ways I like to spend my time - since I'm ideally looking for an ongoing not exclusively sexual relationship it occurs to me this might be useful information to anybody potentially interested.


Reading is historically one of my main pleasures, though it does tend to wax and wane periodically - for the last couple of months I've not been that into it. I read quite widely, but it's not hard to categorize my interests: on the fiction side I like science fiction and fantasy, some thrillers and anything funny (which is harder to find than it seems it should be), though I have also read quite a bit of general fiction and even the odd literary work. Oh, and my guilty pleasure, alternate history books - most of which are pretty bad so I've waded through a lot of dross to find a few I enjoyed. On the non-fiction side my main love is history, pretty much any period or geographic scope; and politics to some degree (I am very into politics, but don't find most books on the topic very interesting). To give a small sample, recently I've been finishing off Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona fantasy series, the latest in Martha Well's Murderbot SF series, and am rereading Manchester's life of Winston Churchill (which is a fantastic series, not so much because of Churchill though he was a very interesting figure, but more for the innumerable asides on so many facets of life and society during his long lifetime).


Politics - I won't say much about this, except that it's one of my strongest interests, I lean strongly to the left, and I love discussing pretty much anything on the topic. I don't need you to share my views, as long as you can be respectful of them. I also don't need you to be interested at all in the topic, as most people aren't and I can get my fix elsewhere.


I realize I didn't mention TV in my profile - probably because it's a mixed bag for me. I find it hard to get interested in watching if I'm alone, but do happily watch in company. My tastes aren't very highbrow here - I like comedies and thrillers mostly, and definitely nothing too dark or depressing. TV seems to be much more focused on escapism for me than reading is. As a not completely representative sample, I recently finished the Danish series The Rain (absurd but enjoyable), gave up halfway through the movie Don't Look Up (satire rarely works for me), and loved Sex Education.


Another strong interest is playing games - board and video both. Not a lot to be said on this probably - on the boardgame front I'll play most things but haven't done any roleplaying (though I did do some LARPing long ago, which was fun but confirmed my suspicion I wasn't born to be an actor); as for videogames I'm not a twitch player, largely because I've never been any good at it, and mostly prefer strategy titles.


I enjoy travel and have done a fair amount of it - recently got back from a trip to Costa Rica for example. I'm also a big fan of road trips - my longest was to Detroit and back, but most recently drove to northern Arkansas, and have had plenty of enjoyable trips within Texas.


For exercise my favourite is cycling, which however is another activity that goes through cycles (sorry) of activity. I'm not a big hiker, strangely - I find cycling scratches the itch to be active and see the countryside much better for me. As an aside, I love animals and nature in general - when I moved to Texas and saw hummingbirds for the first time it felt like a miracle, and one of my favourite memories is of the years when armadillos made their burrow under my deck and I had baby dillos in the yard all year. I do also like swimming, and just generally being in the water, a lot. And ice-skating, though it's been so long since I last did any that I'd probably be starting from scratch (not that I was ever a paradigm of grace on the ice).


Rereading this I'm not sure how useful it is, but I've got this far...

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