Watersheds

I haven't updated this for a while, so I figured I should go ahead and do it. I'm also a little bored sitting around lab right now, and will be stuck here for another 6.5 hours until seminar, so I can afford to waste a little time... =D So here you go: disconnected, stream-of-conscious rambling (Not that the streams are disconnected themselves. Think of it more as each paragraph being it's own watershed). Whee!

Do you know what my favorite thing about ducks is? I just love how they quietly quack while walking. I don't think all ducks do this. I don't believe the wood ducks I tailed last year did. But mallards definitely do. And those are the ones you're most likely to run into in a developed setting. You should definitely try it. Go to a park. One that has a lake. Most likely it will have its own little flock of mallards. Then gently herd them around a little. Don't be too obnoxious about it. You don't want to scare them into the air or the water. Just slowly walk towards them. They'll edge away from you, quacking all the while. The more ducks there are the better it is! It's so great. I wonder why they do that. (and also I wonder why we like so much to make up tenuous evolutionary stories.) Is it to warn their flock that there's some big thing looming around? Or maybe to tell us, hey! this is my spot? Hmmmm.

Don't you love the way you feel after exercising? When your whole body is tired? Well, I suppose I should qualify that... When your muscles are all pleasantly tired. Not too tired. And when you don't have to keep on doing things afterward. When you're the just-right amount of tired and you can go to bed is just great! If you're too tired or sore then it can paradoxically keep you awake, and that's clearly no good. But the just-right tiredness makes you really appreciate your bed and sleeping. I think I have a healthy appreciation of sleep. Yep. I definitely hope never to take advantage of it or (even worse) to skimp on it.

After seminar today I have to go shopping. I'm giving a presentation in Denver in a week, and I figure I should have some sort of appropriate apparel. Isn't it pathetic that I don't own a shred of "business casual" clothing? But I'd better stop right there... Otherwise you'll be stuck with my rant about how "business casual" for women is a complete hoax. I'll let you know what I end up with. John thinks I should get a skirt. I pointed out to him that that would probably not work with my lucky lobster socks...

Speaking of lucky lobsters! Bubba's luck ran out when he wandered into a trap off the coast of Nantucket. I have to say that I am fascinated by the idea of a 22lb lobster. I wish that they had released him back to the ocean, however. Sea creatures tend to contribute disproportionately more to reproduction the bigger they are. That guy could have been dominating lobster population dynamics in New England! Of course, the article indicates that it was a male lobster (I wonder if that's been verified), so perhaps he wasn't really that important after all =D.