"About me." What a loaded subject! Either keep it short and meaningless enough that people will actually read it, or else blather on endlessly about the "real you". Of course, that's a straw man argument, and if Bush and his cronies have taught us anything over the past eight years, it's how to spot a straw man argument! Thus, I'll try to strike a balance of short and meaningful.

The brief CV: U.W. graduate, 1995. Went to Microsoft straight after graduation. Married, two kids, no pets, with a mortgage in the suburbs. Having discovered in 2005 that what I really want to be when I grow up is an author, I left Microsoft this past February to pursue a career in writing and publishing. Now I'm starting a publishing house (www.longtalepress.com) with a couple of writing buddies of mine. I've been active in local politics for close to 10 years now, first as a lowly campaign donor and occasional letter-to-the-editor writer, but lately as my neighborhood's PCO, as a blogger and policy analyst for the Northwest Progressive Institute (www.nwprogressive.org); NPI is a progressive think tank (isn't it about time the Left had some of those) and local activism center that is advancing progressive framing of issues that matter, advocating for progressive legislation in Olympia (we regularly testify before the legislature) and running the Permanent Defense program to oppose the abuses of Washington's ballot initiative process (Tim Eyman, anyone?)

But what makes me tick? Knowing what's going on. Being involved. Working to make a difference, however small, in the future world that my kids will have to live in. Frankly, it terrifies me to think what will happen if we don't attack the three major crises looming on our horizon: the climate crisis, which threatens to make the world too hot and creating a water crisis with it; the food crisis, which arises from having built a just-in-time delivery system for food that we ship all around the world, and that has the potential to collapse both regionally and worldwide as a result of economic problems, climate problems, or natural disasters; and the energy crisis, which threatens to undermine the very foundation of our civilization unless we can find safe and sufficient sources of energy to power mankind's growing needs. Those three crises are very real, and very imminent. What makes me tick is doing my part to combat them, so we can avert those crises and I won't have to explain to my kids, when they grow up, why they have to live in a "Mad-Max" style dystopia. That's a dramatic way of putting it, but seriously. Think about it. Make the world hot, take away the water, take away the food, and take away the readily available energy, and Mad Max is what you're left with.