a busload of adorable 6/7 year olds on their way to the Royal Ontario Museum

“Hi!!!”

“Take a picture of us!”

“We’re going to the ROM”

“Where are you going?”

The chorus of children’s voices – I can’t think of many other sounds that can compete with the aesthetic appeal of such a symphony.

We chit-chatted while we waited for the red light to turn green – and then they waved enthusiastically at me until I disappeared from the field of vision.

The romantic in me celebrated the innocence of those adorable children – to have no restraints in engaging a stranger on her bike in conversation.

It also reminded me of this favorite children’s show of mine….

Dear world,

I hope that whoever and wherever you are out there – that you are having just as amazing a morning as me!

<3

it’s crazy how fast time flies in retrospect – time is a fascinating concept – but i’ll leave that essay for another time

i am sure that i have oversold my fear of aging in birthdays past, but this year, my perceptions have somehow shifted with the changing tides in my life

@ 27 years young perhaps i have finally reached a level of maturity in thinking that has evaded my being and kept me “innocent” for better or worse through the 26 years prior

it is an enlightening feeling – now if only i can reach the same level of maturity in doing, my life will be complete, ha!

along with my newfound maturity has been a desire to keep things low-key and mellow – while i still hummed and huhhed about whether i should throw that “let’s go to a dive bar, listen to jukebox tunes, and down a couple shots of tequila” – the inner voice advised me against that notion and i cancelled that Facebook invite before it was too late – for that, i must thank the fate-keepers

instead, i awoke Friday morning to a weather forecast that was quite contrary to that originally predicted (24 degrees and sunny as opposed to thunderstorms) and decided on the spur of the moment that a pseudo birthday picnic was what my heart truly desired

a short message to those nearest and dearest to me later, i was formulating menu plans for an evening picnic dinner @ Dufferin Grove Park

of course, my original lofty picnic goals were brought down to common ground by a lack of time – but, i couldn’t have asked for a better outcome

we had a wonderful time, yummy food, and for myself – i now have a wonderful 27th birthday memoir

But…I have, as of yet, no solid clue as to what I want to devote the rest of my academic career (read: the next 80 years of my life) to.

My passion for my work stems from a love of knowledge/truth in general, and an adoration of animals in particular.

Like all young bucks (or does, I guess if we want to get gender specific) I started off thinking that I would go out and save our furry compatriots from extinction, only to be dissuaded by the corruption and not very scientific ways of conservation biology.

However, if not for an evolution seminar I took in my senior year I would still be an ecologist I guess. Instead I now hungrily study evolutionary genetics, about the dullest thing I could have imagined back in my panda-hugging days, but the most mentally stimulating thing to my mind these days.

I do think that ultimately I want my love for evolutionary genetics to blend back in with my desire to save my favorite animals though – so I’ve been contemplating the evolutionary genetics of conservation recently. Specifically, what factors promote adaptation to novel environments and what factors accelerate extinction.

Between running experiments, analyzing data, writing papers, preparing for conferences and my administrative duties for the grad students union it’s hard to imagine when I’ll have time to paint a pretty research plan. Moreover, there’s the usual extracurricular stuff that seems to pile up as though out of thin air sometimes. Like last Saturday I hopped around to four different parties in one night. And although my agenda was nearly blank on Sunday, it is now completely full with promises of beer and fun times or non-evolutionary academic adventures.

In my wildest dreams I’ll have an entire week to sit outside in the sunshine with birds chirping, cups of tea, and a notebook to think with no other distractions. Reality is another matter I think – and sadly the truth of the matter. Now that I have NSERC though maybe I’ll feel more encouraged to take some time off.

Futility – it seems that that word pops into my mind vocabulary occasionally these days, and just appearing at all is more than I would like. In a perfect world I would slash that word and banish it from existence. In the meantime I’ll do what I always do – which can only be best summarized by this picture I leave you with below…

Spring is almost here – thank goodness.

After a week of being completely spoiled in Portland (weather spoiled, parent spoiled) I have reluctantly resumed my adult life in the T-dot. I almost got detained in the US though – since although no one detected that my passport had expired leaving Canada, they caught this malfunction on my way back. Sadly they decided I could come back home rather than paying for me to live in Portland forever.

Did I mention I changed careers and have become a professional cake decorator? Not to fear cake connoisseurs, I merely was too cheap to pay for a professionally decorated cake for the departmental Darwin Day celebration and so decided to do the honors myself. Here is my rendition of the Galapagos Islands in memory of my good friend Charles.

I realize I haven’t really spewed anything intelligent on this thing in several months so I’ll try to get on that soon. In the meantime I suggest that everyone read this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8537856.stm

it’s so urban chic (you know i don’t have a clue as to what that really entails)

i’m tired of winter

and clearly am procrastinating at work … see below for evidence

but seriously, I want to go to Madagascar real bad

now help me get there so that I can pet an Indri!

Since I am also busy getting caught up on a variety of other things this inagural post will be kept short, entirely random and hopefully sweet.

What I’ve been up to:

- getting significant and exciting results from my experiment (that entirely make up for the shittiness of the life-consuming grunge work of the experiment)

- pouring drinks and uncapping beer bottles at the Mercer Union’s Winter Show Opening and tearing through my wardrobe worrying about looking too bland and then too artsy

- climbing again, yay! but getting stuck on 5.9 climbs with giant boulders

- having fun with friends, tequila, and dance floors

- planning my next, next and next experiment (that’s right I have three experiments in the work – see you soon completed PhD thesis, goodbye Toronto, hello postdoc somewhere warmer)

- planning escapist trips in February and in the summer

- listening to music (Wilco, Owen Pallett, Yeasayers, Stereolab, TV on the Radio, etc…)

- playing my new cello

- wearing ornaments in my hair

- dancing in showers to this song and many others

I like 2010 so far.

Knowing this about myself, I thought that not going home for the holidays this year was going to be, if not a piece of cake, but at least, not the end of the world. I had an experiment I really wanted to start and finish ASAP and so I decided to make the sacrifice of missing out on Christmas in the hopes of getting another paper soon. Big mistake.

I have NEVER not gone home for the holidays and Christmas has always been special in my family. I soon realized that nothing in the world could make me not feel family-lonely during the most family oriented period of the year.

It didn’t matter that I got my experiment done smoothly, spent any time I could spare with friends, and baked dozens of cookies.

I still found myself tearing up to heart-warming stories on CBC radio and This American Life Podcasts, smiling creepily at random happy looking families on the street, and consuming dozens of cookies.

On the plus side, I spent some of my time volunteering at a soup kitchen and that was probably the nicest thing I have done in a long time. Also, any non-personally consumed cookies were distributed heartily among friends.

So in short, while I have no doubts that everyone will survive a family-free Christmas, my recommendation would be to avoid it if at all possible.

This morning I stumbled upon one more reason to love the BBC – there is apparently a BBC Ethical Man (how this escaped my attention is beyond me, or an indication of the fact that I am not the world’s most observant person)! The focus of this year’s ethical dilemma is, no surprise, climate change.

As part of the ethical challenge, him and his family spent a year trying to cut their carbon emissions and in today’s article he writes about how cutting out meat from our diets is something many of us believe that we should do but never get around to actually doing. See link to his article below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/12/think_before_you_carve.html

He points out several important issues in support of becoming vegetarian (or at the minimum substantially cutting down on the amount of meat in your diet), not least of which is the global food crisis. I’m not sure whether the average person is aware, but the global food crisis stems not from an inability on the earth’s part to grow enough food to feed the global population, but rather from the fact that so much of the food that is produced is not actually consumed by humans but are used to fatten up the animals that we feed on.

As a recent vegetarian convert (but one who has debated the issue for years), I myself wonder why something that should be relatively simple (as long as we are still eating something we won’t starve) is something that so many people have a moral/ethical dilemma with?

Of course, I understand that meat can be delicious, but really so are vegetables and fruits. And plain laziness is just not a good excuse. So what else is stopping us?

On my own part, I guess I thought that switching from an omnivore to a herbivore was against human nature, but really when I think about it, humans, just like every other animal are constantly evolving so just because our ancestors survived on one strategy doesn’t mean that that is the currently most fit strategy. In fact, if remaining omnivorous leads to climate change and the ultimate demise of the planet, then this is actually an evolutionary dead-end!

For others, it might be a cultural thing. But again, cultural shifts are both natural and expected. Furthermore, if all of us reduced our meat intake, then we could still retain those special holidays for feasting on special meat fare.

It’s funny because I’ve found that many people seem concerned for my health when I tell them that I have recently gone vegetarian. Frankly, as long as you are conscious of what foods you need to replace the protein and other nutrients normally found in meat its perfectly fine. In fact, I really haven’t found it to be so difficult at all!