Things I like to do:

Bicycling, backpacking, skiing, Ultimate Frisbee and other team sports, board games, running (will do half-marathon in September), swimming (recently became proficient), playing guitar and singing--may play bass in a band.

My favorite board game is Diplomacy. I started playing face-to-face with a group of friends in high school. The game was popular in the 60's and doesn't involve any dice. I found it in a bookstore and bought it because one of my friends would no longer play Risk after being the victim of some bad luck with the dice. It is often difficult to get seven friends together to play a game (and to keep the friends after the game), and some people used to (and some still do) play the game through the mail. The internet hobby is thriving now. I am archiving the moves of many of the games as they are completed. I am interested in writing computer code to play the strategy and tactics.

A goal of mine is to become fluent in German. I need a lot of practice. I am slowly reading through German children's books. This has been on hold for a while.

Two amazing things: the surface of a newly opened jar of peanut butter (they must fill it with molten peanut butter to get it so flat like that) and those vacuum-packed packages of coffee grounds whose stability is destroyed by a small leak.