My brother has been trying to get me to play chess online for a while now. I don't like playing lengthy games online because I don't like feeling tied to a computer until the game is over.

Well, we finally found a site that works for us. It is http://www.redhotpawn.com/. I'm going to assume that the name is an intentionally sordid pun. The game is web-based and you have days to make your next move. When a move is made an e-mail is sent to your inbox.

Anyway, feel free to sign up and send me a challenge. My name on there is skjonas.

Maybe I should pack some bbq sauce

I'm traveling to Sacramento today, and thinking ahead, I bought snacks for the trip down last night at Fred Meyer. Today though, I brought the food items to work today and have been depleting my stores as the day goes on. If I keep consuming at this rate, Justin, my trusty navigator will arrive at California's capitol without a leg.

It is official.

I am now an Oregon Zooguide. My talk on Naked Mole Rats was successful (described as 'perfect' by one veteran zooguide). I received my red shirt and got a place on the photo committee. Since it is always about ten degrees cooler up at the zoo, I'll probably be spending many a free hour up there until this heat wave passes. Now I just need to get a TB shot before I kill all of the orangutans.

When things aren't working...

I've decided to change course on this blog. I want to make it more personal and less focused. My initial feeling is that I wanted it to cover science-related news, but with my job and lack of internet access at home, I wasn't able to do the proper research that would allow me to put up well-informed posts. Maybe in time I'll be able to fulfill that purpose sometime in the future, but in the meantime, I think it is more important for me to write on a regular basis.

It starts...

Well, this is the first post. What is appropriate for a first post? Perhaps it would some sort of mission statement of what this blog is going to be about or explore. Or maybe it should explain what led to its creation. In any case, I think that I place too much significance on the ‘first’s of anything. This inflated sense of significance calls for a higher level of perfection and it is there that I screw up. I know that anything that I attempt will be less than perfect, and instead of being mature and accepting that as part of the process of creation, I defer to fear and decide to prefer that the object of perfection continues to live on untarnished in that Platonic plane of ideal forms.

The enemy here is that concept of ‘the best.’ I like to pretend that I can learn from my past mistakes. So here it is, my first post in its refreshingly, for me at least, imperfect form.

___________

I’m glad that I got that over with.