Other Things I Do

I have a variety of hobbies, and some of them might be interesting to you. Besides speaking a little bit of Mandarin Chinese, and playing some bad guitar (and I don't mean the good kind of bad!) I like to hike, I like to read, I lift weights with my wife, and I like to cook. The last one leads me to what most people consider my most interesting hobby...

Chocolate

I am an amateur chocolatier. That is, I create molded confections and truffles (I do not roast and grind the beans). I got into doing chocolate when we did more dinner parties. I often was tasked with dessert, and people love chocolate. I took some classes, bought some tools (like chocolate molds), and started practicing. Many years later, people tell me I make good chocolates.

This is likely something I will do for a living (or semi-living) once I am retired. I currently make chocolates around the winter holidays, and produce between 1500 and 3000 pieces each year. About half of that is molded chocolates and about half is truffles (with white chocolate pretzels filling in the rest). I enjoy my hobby and have gotten quite creative with flavors over the years (for example, I did an apple flavored filling one year).

You can see what I did this year (in terms of the molded pieces) here.

Games

I play a game called Ars Magica. It is a historically based role-playing game where the history alters just enough to accomodate the existence of magic. The campaign setting is currently southern France (near the Pyrenees) during the reign of Charlemagne. It is a fun outlet (we play about once a month), and feeds both my creativity and my yen for history.

I have played in various settings for about 15 or 18 years. The focus is on storytelling (something that is quickly becoming a lost art) and on the interactions between personalities. There is enough action to keep it from being boring, but the real fun is in trying on a new hat, being something you are bad at, and seeing how you can grow and expand.