]3/15/2010: New Project: Mike v 3.0. I'm now trying to see how good of shape I can be in by the time I hit 30. My physical version 1.0 was that of emaciated famine victim, lasting until about the age of 24-25. Version 2.0 was more slender than skinny (though still underweight). The ideal version 3.0 will end up with a diver's build. Follow my progress and give me feedback/criticism/advice at http://mikev3.blogspot.com.

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There's always been some weirdness of my being affiliated with a site involving the word Jock. For the majority of my life, I've not been considered one at all. I've been active in at least some sport pretty much my whole life -- a whole slew of them in middle school, tennis and wrestling (!) for my high school, the college fencing team (whoo! I was captain of Men's Foil at a school with an incredibly strong NCAA record. Granted, the fencing team wasn't a varsity sport there, but we'll gloss over that...), volleyball and frisbee intramural teams in grad school. I also started lifting weights in the summer of 2005, which has really paid off a lot more than I expected it to. At the time, I was 24 years old, 6 footish, and 135 pounds. These days, at 29, I'm around 155. Not surprisingly, my height hasn't changed substantially.

As for who I am these days, I'm a PhD student at MSU, studying evolutionary biology. I'm a nerd who reads a lot, but I'm also something of an athlete. I'm sarcastic and irreverent while also being a rather wholesome optimist. I know nothing about fashion nor pop culture, but I do like show tunes (blame the years of choir training for that). I play several sports, but I don't like watching other people do so, except during the Olympics when I'll watch anything. I've got a weekly night of board/card games with friends that competes with the night of pickup volleyball as my highlight of most weeks. I fit extremely few stereotypes.

At my first grad school, my professor referred to me as "the lab jock" because I was frequently trying to get him to play volleyball with my friends and me. He was 6'7", so even if he was an out of shape professor, he'd still have been useful. I also figured some of the thought of me as the lab jock was due to the fact that I was in my early-to-mid 20s, and all the other grad students and postdocs were women over 30, so it's not like there was much competition for the title -- no Dara Torres types amongst them. Since the developments which came about from lifting weights, though, one of my friends says you can now draw a line at my neck; jock below, nerd above. I kind of like that. I'm naturally very thin, in terms of skeletal frame even moreso than in terms of body fat, and I know this will have a major influence on my build for a long time. Honestly, I don't even want to look like a bodybuilder--not my taste at all. Ideally, I'd love to get to the build of a diver. I think these days I'm more along the lines of the build of a runner, but that's still a lot better than the old position of build of an animated skeleton/emaciated famine victim. But beyond the health benefits that come with fitness, I'm just hoping to get to a point where my appearance can hold a guy's attention for long enough for my personality to have a chance.

I'm looking for a kind guy with a brain, preferably housed in a nice frame. One who doesn't let his orientation define his personality, and has interests other than celebrity gossip and pop culture. And hopefully capable of thinking with the head above his shoulders. And who can look past the fact that this paragraph is composed almost entirely of fragments, despite the fact that I typically speak and write in grammatically-correct full sentences. ;)