Running

It turns out there wasn't anything to worry about. My foot problems were just some stress pains from starting to run again, and not watching my form well enough. I ran 3 miles on Friday and then 3 again on Saturday. Today I ran 5 miles in a little over 45 minutes so I am happy with that. So running is good.

I am debating with myself on whether or not to sign up for the San Francisco marathon. I really want to do it but the slots are already filling up and it will be $95 to run. By my reasoning, if I am going to run the SF marathon with it's 650' of elevation gain, this year might be the best as I will be in pretty good shape after having just run the SD marathon. It is $95 though, so I can't decide.

About the Bahamas pictures. I didn't quite get to them. I have some other pictures from Christmas, right below this post. I do have a Bahamas post started though, so maybe they will be out soon.

I spent too much time on things not related to Blogging or school work this weekend. Some of that included going to church, so, yeah for me!

More of Christmas

More Christmas pictures.


After Christmas in Vancouver we drove down HWY 1 through San Fransisco and Stanford. It was pouring rain all the way from Vancouver to SF. The drive along the California coast was terrible because it was dark and the road was not strait.













We stopped in Santa Rosa for a night and it was still raining the nest day. Someplaces were rationing water because the rivers were too turbid to filter.

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On Thursday we had a nice Christmas with the Myers. April and Chris were back from their honeymoon to Mexico and had many stories about the ship.


I've learned that it's ok to buy cloths at the GAP if they are made in Cambodia.

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Saturday we went to church and then the museums in LA. First we went to the LA County Natural History Museum where I really wanted to see Jared Diamond's exhibit Collapse. It was good but I was kind of disappointed by how simple it was.


We also saw rocks and some cool bugs there.











Then we went to LACMA for art.






These were neat. I tend to like the 3D art but Ceri doesn't care for it as much as the flat art. The Japanese paintings were really cool though.

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On Sunday, Ceri and I went climbing in Joshua Tree. We decided to take the back way out on the Geology Tour. It got dark on us but the road wasn't terrible. Towards the end we met a couple in an Acura that need a boost of confidence to drive over a washed out road. Who knew Acura made an SUV? I was actually really impressed that they made it that far. There were some tight spots in the canyon and their car was quite a bit bigger then Harriet, our jeep. We lead the way and they were so happy when we got back to the road. We were happy too because we were way late for supper.













The next day I spent about 17 hours working on my poster for the Bahamas. It was so stressful and I am thankful for Ceri's support that day. I also had to pack for three weeks of field work, go to class and print the poster.


Ok, I am working on an actual post about the Bahamas. Maybe it will be done by next weekend.

There is a new post coming this weekend. I can feel it. Ellen has requested more about the Bahamas so I'll try to oblige her.

Here is a list of what I have been working on lately.

• Review paper on ecological causes of speciation in parrots
• Analysis of parrot vocalizations from my trip to the Bahamas
  
• Setting up a Tuesday lunch Bible study
• Setting up an LLU student chapter of the American Institute of Biological Sciences
• Going to classes
• Convincing Ceri to run the San Diego Marathon
• Signing myself up for said marathon
• Beginning training for said marathon

Unfortunately, training for the marathon hasn't started out so well. I sort of hurt my foot on Tuesday and haven't wanted to run on it again. I'm going to try it out today and see if it's gotten any better.

My goals for the marathon are to run it in 4 hrs and to lose 10# (or 5% body fat) during my training.

cheerio,
bryant

"Visibility 1/4 mile"

It was warm today, in the 80's, so the smog was bad. I would sweat anytime I went outside.

















This is almost like the sunset I saw a few months ago but couldn't take a picture of. I went to Rancho Cucamonga today and had to drive into it but it was actually a pretty good day in Loma Linda.

Disfunctional Internet Browsers

The programs you use to browse the internet.

I'm terribly sorry if you couldn't access my blog for the last couple of days. After I was so impressed with the traffic I was getting by not posting I was perplexed by not getting hits after posting so many pictures and starting to share again.

The proximate cause for much of the viewing publics inability to partake in my corner of the web is that I added some special effects to my blog in the form of a Google map. The ultimate cause is that I am a firefox user (which is in my opinion far superior) and I forget about the segment of the population that insists on, or simply persists in, using Internet Explorer (IE). I didn't try to look at my blog with IE so I didn't know it wouldn't work.

It should be fixed now. My recomendation is for everyone to click here and install Firefox to browse the internet. However, if you must, there is at last a new version of IE out in beta which copies much of what is great about firefox. This is similar to how major political parties adopt some of the views of third parties when those third parties start to gain popularity.

I have given IE 7.0 beta a test drive and it is much better than the old version 6.0. They finally added tabbed browsing, a built in search box, and pop-up blocker. These have been in most of the other browsers for a long time. Other things I like about it are; the phishing filter, the zoom and print functions, and the more simple design. But it is still slower than firefox and the within page search is inconvinient. Things that mean very little to me are; RSS feeds and quick tabs (which is super slow).

Overall. IE 7.0 seems to be much better than IE 6.0. But I still think Firefox is better and will continue to use it. I will try to be sensitive to the IE users though.

Exam 1

Ok, I'm glad to be done with my first exam. It took me 2 hours and others were still working on it. I think I got a lot of the points. At least I answered all the questions. I already know I'll do better on the next exam in that class. After the exam we had another 3.5 hours of lecture finally getting out of class around 9:20 pm. That's just too much.


Time to sleep.

Avoiding my responsibilities

Hello again!

I am impressed that some people perennially check my blog even though I haven't really posted anything for months. I had 223 hits this month including someone from Bulgaria searching for Anza Barrego. Maybe you are anticipating the exciting pictures and exotic stories from my forecasted journeys. Or maybe you are just avoiding your responsibilities. Or maybe you are just clicking through to another blog. In any case I feel like there is a potential readership which longs for more Bryant stories so I may just take after Leah and resolve to publish more often.

Unfortunately, stories are going to have to wait. I do have about 7 more chapters to read before a Behavioral Ecology exam on Monday. Then I have a Genetics and Speciation exam on Thursday, along with a paper outline.

Ceri already wrote about our Christmas but she left out some pictures that I like.


These are from the April's reception.

I really like these pictures of Ceri. She was totally beautiful.

We showered April and Chris with sparkles.






After the wedding in Auburn we went to my mom's place in Vancouver.



The first thing we did when we got there was sit on the couch.




















Then we ate cookies and decorated the tree.









This is Cally the Courageous. She has breast cancer.















One day we went to Portland to do some christmas shopping and found this horse tied to the curb.














We didn't let the horse free but we did eat at the Typhoon for lunch. Yum. I had pineapple red curry tofu with grapes.

















This is Mr. B drinking from the bathroom sink.











On Christmas Eve we went to Mt Hood for some snow.

I made Ceri come and I think she had fun. She was carving up the mountain by the end of the day.

Here Bradley is taking a sweet jump.

When we got back I said, "Ceri, we need some disaster style pizza crust." And she made one up, out of her head. It was pretty awsome.


That covers about half of Christmas and I'll post more later.

Until then, here is your moment of Zen.





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Great Abaco

Hello peoples,

Sorry I haven't posted for sometime. I have been traveling a lot lately and internet hasn't always been easy to get. I am in the Bahamas right now trying to get recordings of parrots. They seem to be more illusive than I expected. Here are some pictures to hold you over until I get back to the States.