Fall Quarter

I've been back in California for a week now. I had started writing a post about that time but it ended up just sitting in my draft box and now is out dated. So I'll try again.

Ohio was very pleasant. I’m glad I was able to bring some things back to California for Ceri because that means she is coming out here. I was 12 pounds over the limit for checked bags but the ticket guy let me through.


In my draft I started talking about the nastiness of Southern California and it's resemblance to an armpit. I still believe that but the business of the last week has diluted the effect. At the time, the contrast between where I had been and where I had come too was depressing and almost intolerable. In reality there are many parts of California that are beautiful and can be fun. Those places just happen to be to far from where I live to be accessible. I already spend about 25-30% of my income on gas. The penalty for being poor I guess.


“Being poor is a crime and the punishment is death.” If you haven’t listened to This American Life in the last month I highly recommend episodes 296 and 297.


I worked on Camp Pendleton again this weekend. At $10/hour it actually pays less than staying at school and studying for my assistantship. But it is extra money on top of my assistantship and it is about the only time I can afford to see the ocean.

School started out pretty well. My classes are interesting; Philosophy of Science, Biodiversity and Conservation, and Research Methods and Design. There will be a lot of reading and required work. At first I was concerned about the amount of religion slipping into my science classes. But I think it will be tolerable and even interesting. It certainly has a place in the philosophy class, western science having been born from a desire to understand God and the laws of nature that allowed creation. I’ll keep you posted about that and if you aren’t not interested than you don’t have to read it.


I finally finished and developed a roll of film, the contents of which, I discovered, span an entire year. I think I can almost afford one roll of film per year in my budget although, at $26 for development and $4 for a roll of film, it is still an open question. I’ve decided to renew my search for a digital camera, motivated more by economics than the immediate gratification which images stored as electrons can supply.


How is my research going? Yeah, well, my proposal isn’t done yet and I don’t really want to measure more birds until it is. I still have the 7 pages of garbled words that I did when I left Ohio. It might come to a point were I need to just write it and let people read it to get more feedback. Actually, that might be the only way to get my advisor’s attention. He doesn’t seem to respond to verbal communication all that well.
“Hey Bill, I have a question”
“Can you email that to me?”


Ok, I told you I had developed some pictures and I’m running out of time for tonight. So, here they are in a totally random order. Briefly, they are pictures from the Alcazar in Segovia in December; Sunny, Bradley, and Ma in a grassy park in Madrid; Bryant and Ceri last August sometime, somewhere we don't know; some pictures from Salton Sea birding with Stacy Davis and my advisor Bill in January; and Bradley and Sunny at the Getty in Santa Monica this August.