I'm an athletic, 5'10", 178 lb., salt and pepper haired, green-eyed, well educated and fairly normal guy. I'm adventurous, hard-working, curious, cynically optimistic, clean, well-traveled, responsible, relatively quiet and in fairly good shape. I live in the near-west suburbs, fairly close to where I work. Although I work hard, its not all consuming for me. I enjoy both the athletic and intellectual, as both a participant and observer. Some things I enjoy: films (prefer the cinema to DVDs), theater, travel to both the familiar and the new, the lawn at Ravinia, catching up with old friends, golf, weekend getaways, beach towns, Seinfeld, roaring fires, an evening gin and tonic, NPR, power equipment, British expressions, lazy vacations, Tarantino dialogue, the whole of the California coastline, Arlington Park, Europe. I don't have many hobbies - my dog monopolizes a good chunk of my free time, which is just fine with me.

Gee. I'd hate to think there was/is a one size fits all answer to this question. The particulars - who the date is with, what time of year it is, the circumstances under which you meet, where your date lives - all play into the answer. But generally, I would try to make it not-overwhelming.