not work

My life out­side of work is also pret­ty great. I am active in music—I have voice lessons with a fan­tas­tic teacher, and I sing with the Utah Sym­pho­ny Cho­rus and a church choir. I’m the can­tor at my church (a posi­tion that is not tra­di­tion­al in Luther­an church­es but was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for me). My pri­ma­ry instru­ment in col­lege was dou­ble bass, but I pull that out only once or twice a year, unfor­tu­nate­ly. I play piano near­ly every day, and I’m some­times coerced into play­ing flute for things. Music has been very impor­tant in my life for a very long time. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, I did audio and video edit­ing for vir­tu­al choirs for church, schools, and myself.

If you want to hear me sing, my YouTube chan­nel is here, and my Sound­Cloud is here. If you want to see and hear some of my singing that isn’t on my YouTube chan­nel, there are just a cou­ple places:

We have a gluten-free house, and I’m fair­ly adven­tur­ous in the kitchen, which can make for some extra­or­di­nary (or extra­or­di­nar­i­ly ter­ri­ble) meals. When I throw a par­ty, I tend to go all out, espe­cial­ly with food and drink. While oth­ers took up sour­dough dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, I took up smok­ing meats and grilling. I’ve also gar­dened some.

I love knit­ting. I find that I real­ly enjoy myself when I’m work­ing on a project, and I can get lost in it for hours. If I can be even less mod­est than I already am on this page (and this whole van­i­ty site thing), I’ve won rib­bons at the Utah State Fair for my knit­ting. The odd­est blue rib­bon was for duck sweaters… mean­ing sweaters made for ducks. I’m a fowl fash­ion­ista.

If you want to see my knit­ting, my Rav­el­ry site is here.

I also love to play board games. We have a decent col­lec­tion of games, and I get togeth­er with friends at least a cou­ple times a month to play games for an evening (or longer). I attend a con­fer­ence annu­al­ly where we judge games and award a spe­cial seal. It’s fun to try new games and see old friends. I pre­fer Euro (strat­e­gy) games, but I enjoy par­ty games and lighter games as well.

I am the lead­er­ship devel­op­ment com­mit­tee chair for Amer­i­can Men­sa. In this role, I make sure Men­sans are pre­pared to lead their local groups, and my pet project has been let­ting Men­sans learn lead­er­ship skills at the hands of experts that ben­e­fit them in their every­day lives as well. It’s a ful­fill­ing role, one that I’ve had since 2021. The “Lev­el Up” pro­gram (my pet project) has been active since 2023 and is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing a bit of trans­for­ma­tion as we move online instead of in-per­son at the Annu­al Gath­er­ing.

I served one term on the board of Amer­i­can Men­sa as well. I was the Region­al Vice Chair for the Far West, which includes the South­west and Hawaii. This was a large role that takes up a lot of my time, but I find it ful­fill­ing most of the time. I believe that Men­sa should be a wel­com­ing place where peo­ple can dis­agree, but do so agree­ably, and where kind­ness is over­whelm­ing.

One thing that I’ve become pub­lic about is that I’m polyamorous. I have mul­ti­ple lov­ing, ful­fill­ing rela­tion­ships, and I’ve loved being able to explore and express this side of myself.