hello...

It seems that my I reflect the most upon my life when I should actually be doing something else. In other words, when I procrastinate. Recently I have been immersed in writing my MS thesis, the subject of which is the title of this blog. This involves long hours spent at the computer with tedious data management, analysis using fancy statistics and graphing programs, and of course scientific writing. What better time to start a blog?

However, I promised myself (really my faithful partner Weesa, at left) that I should probably finish my first draft before I begin blogging the world. The astute reader will then recognize that this of course means that I handed my first draft into my advisor! Essentially he'll have it for two weeks and return it to me bleeding red with edits like a stuck mock pig.

Mock pig? This leads me to another part of my life that I will invariably be talking about...food. I like to think of myself as a foodie but nothing like some of my friends who lust over $550 Shun knife sets, or have essentially lived in poverty to maintain their expensive culinary tastes in New Orleans, or those that have mastered Massaman curry recipes in Thailand. As my good friend Sean Deese says, "I think I am only friends with you because you like food so much." Thanks, love you too.

Ahem.... the mock pig? Right, well I like to call myself a vegetarian though I have been known to dabble in carnivory while intoxicated. For the technically minded folk, I like to classify my dietary habits as ovo-lacto-pescatarian. I once was a vegan for a while, but a deal with my sister and a slippery slope ended that one (more on that later). Mock pig because....well... I love mock meat. I actually do love real meat but there is a whole lot of reasons to eat less or even none of it.

That leads me to another topic of this blog, the environment. Or rather, what I study (ecology) and other things that I find interesting. I suppose you could just read the scientific literature (the means by which scientists communicate) but I can't remember the last time I saw my mom pick up the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lastly in this public diatribe of mine, I will be talking about YOU, the faithful reader. That's the people part of the blog. Because lets face it, you're really narcissistic and you want to see yourself made famous on the interweb. I know, I know, you have an illness and I've got your drug. But really, my motivation for beginning this blog is to document, to communicate, and to show embarrassing pictures of my friends.

Being a scientist, I must give credit to those who have influenced my thinking or given me ideas, in other words I have to cite others to escape being called a plagiarizer. Indeed, this blog was notably influenced by others before me (Chiaro 2004, Carson 2006).

So welcome to my blog.


Oh right, and here is a nice picture of the Bucket and Stinky Pinky.