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21 August 08 True confessions: - Sometimes, when there's nothing better to do, I watch decorating shows on HGTV. Sometimes for hours. - I never liked Nine Inch Nails. - Despite wanting to save paper and not cut down trees and all that fun stuff, magazines are a guilty pleasure of mine. - I love most animals. At least most vertebrates and cephalopods. But I don't really like humans, apes or monkeys (they look too much like humans), or little dogs. - I find it hard to resist a good cupcake. 18 August 08 The date for the NOVA special about The Marine Mammal Center has been announced. Here's the official blurb: Ocean Animal Rescue(Frances is our rock star head vet; there is a handbook on marine mammal medicine, and she wrote it.) I was on camera several times during the course of the filming: assisting with an EEG, attempting an (unsuccessful) rescue at Pier 39, and just doing everyday animal care work at the Center. Let's see if I escape the cutting room floor. And just in case that wasn't enough, on September 1st, in anticipation of their grand re-opening on the 27th, the California Academy of Sciences has an ad campaign running on the MUNI bus shelters in SF. The ads will be promoting their new rain forest exhibit, and the photo they will be using is mine! I'm saving my excitement for when it actually happens, but this is high up on the list of best things that have ever happened to me :D  17 August 08 Hrm, I'm at that point again where it's been a couple of weeks since I've written anything here. Not that I'm at a loss for things to write, but rather, do I want to delve right into heavy topics without at least some sort of conversational foreplay? I've got some travelling coming up in the next few weeks, but it's not exactly the fun adventure travel we usually do. This Friday we leave for LA (ick) for a birthday celebration with a group of good friends (yay!). Then in a couple of weeks we head out to (wait for it...) lovely Boise, Idaho! Yee-haw. We're going for a family wedding, although that part of it should be fine. It's the being-in-Boise part I'm not thrilled about. The previous (and only) time I've been to Idaho was when I was about 14 and spent a week on a cousin's cattle ranch. It was wonderful. A week on a 30,000 acre ranch with no people other than various family members around. Lots of critters, and I had a horse that I got to ride whenever I wanted. The previous summer there had been a big drought and many animals perished from lack of water; riding around one afternoon I found a horse skull and a cow skull that I picked up and brought home, thus beginning my lifetime fascination with dead things. Speaking of dead things, I have an opossum skeleton and a pelican skull + neck vertebrae that I should dig up and clean off so I can add them to my collection. 3 August 08 My vacation last month seemed to cut my summer in half in a way that I didn't expect. For a month and a half, the time between school ending and me going on vacation, I was extremely busy. Just about every day I had errands to run, work to do, and various things keeping me busy; I would go a week or two without a day off. It was nice actually, doing a lot of things and feeling like I accomplished stuff. However, in the three weeks I've been back from vacation I haven't done much at all. I've been working at the Marine Mammal Center one day a week, plus I've been getting the occasional call to rescue an animal, but other than that my crazy schedule seems to have evaporated. Some lazy time is great, but after too much time with nothing to do I start feeling antsy, like I need to again accomplish things. I am getting back on a regular 3+ times a week gym schedule and that feels good. Because I'm a weirdo early riser I can usually have my workout done and be home by 10:30 or 11am, leaving me the rest of the day to do stuff. What I really need to do is make a list of all those little things I've been meaning to do but never got around to it, and get around to it. In the meantime, here are some pics of stuff around town:   24 July 08 Sleeping used to be one of my favourite activities. As a kid, I never wanted to get out of bed; on Christmas my mom would have to make me get up to open presents. Especially in my clubbing heyday, sleeping until noon was sheer luxury. Eventually that changed. I blame it on the time when we had a very uncomfortable (for me) bed - it hurt my back and I couldn't wait to get out of it in the morning. After a year or two of that I started to get used to the idea of mornings, and eventually came to love the fact that I basically had an entire day ahead of me! I could actually get a bunch of stuff done by the time I used to be getting up. Today I consider it "sleeping in" if I sleep past 8am, and I'm often up earlier than that, like it or not. Much of my travelling takes me to the sub-tropics and tropics, where the nights are almost as long as the days. The sun rises at 5:30 or 6am, and sets by 6:30pm or so. Because our vacation activities are mostly linked to daylight you tend to wake up with the sun. And it's then you begin to realize that the numbers on the clock are arbitrary; without a clock you tend to wake up not long after sunrise, and get tired and ready for bed a couple of hours after sunset. It feels very natural, and if you don't look at the clock, then you don't even realize you got up early. This message brought to you by the fact I woke up at six this morning, and much to my dismay, couldn't get back to sleep. 20 July 08 Many years ago I thought that I'd live in San Francisco for the rest of my life. Sure, I might spend some amounts of time visiting other places, but SF is, and always has been, my home. There are many reasons for this, but it comes down to a combination of San Francisco being a small big city, the attitudes here, and the proximity to the ocean - things that I have not yet seen duplicated anywhere else. However, in the last few years that has changed. Frederick and I talk about getting a house in the hills with a few acres of property "sometime in the future." Of course, we haven't yet figured out when "the future" is; is it a year from now? Five years? When we're 70? I'll always love San Francisco but I really REALLY miss seeing sunshine on a regular basis. I'd love to not be able to see my neighbors, let alone not hear them through the walls. I want lots of room, privacy, and little animals wandering through the backyard. I also want to be a short drive from SF, which will put us either in the mountains of San Mateo or Marin Counties. I'm not ready to leave yet, but someday I suppose I will. 19 July 08 Hrmpf. I've been home for one week now and the only blue skies I've seen in that time were quickly covered up by clouds blowing over them. A few weeks ago I was in a (San Francisco) restaurant and noticed a couple of corn dishes on the menu. My thought process went something like, "Hmm, corn. Gee, with these different corn dishes, you'd think it was in season or something. What month is this? June? Oh, it's summer; corn *is* in season." Seriously, something is wrong when you have no clue it is summertime because the weather outside is the same as it is during the winter. I go through this complaining every summer - someone please tell me why I still live in SF? 17 July 08 Oops, I didn't mean to wait a month between posts. I've just been very busy. One of the things that kept me busy was a dive trip to the Caribbean with a bunch of friends! Mona, Bahman, Rocky, Dan, Aneel, and Jenny joined Frederick and I for a week at CoCo View Resort on Roatan, a Honduran island in the western Caribbean. We did a lot of diving, saw sharks, and petted dolphins. There were some tasty beverages and relaxing-in-hammocks. Best of all, there was no drama and we're all still friends :)   After many years of diving I finally made my 200th dive on this trip! (My grand total to date is 211 logged dives.) My first dive was in Maui during the summer of 1991, and my 100th was in Monterey during December 2000. It took nine years for my first 100, but seven and a half for my second 100. It took such a long time for me to reach those milestones because there would be years when I didn't have anyone to dive with. Now that Frederick is certified and loving diving, I'm going more often. Since he began diving in April 2006 I have done 76 dives, yay! I've had some buoyancy issues since I've been taking my camera on dives. The camera set-up is a bit negatively buoyant, which is fine, since I prefer to be negative when taking photos, but I think it throws off my distribution of weight, which makes it more difficult to stay neutrally buoyant while in the water. Add to that the fact that my, uh, own personal buoyancy is greater than it should be and then I end up feeling less than graceful while diving with camera gear. I've already made a commitment to myself to shed some of my own excess buoyancy before my next dive trip, so hopefully I'll be doing better then.   Take a look at more diving photos, and a bunch of shark photos! | |||
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