Wow. I took most of the day off, and it felt really, really good.

Women have become abstract yet again.

playing with geoff nuttall, dec 2000

Geoff called me this morning and asked, “hey… do you still have your cello?”

He wants me to read the Arensky two-cello quartet (Op. 35) with him, Chris, and Leslie tomorrow, and I am just short of being terrified because it’s been so long since I’ve played music.

I spoke with Alissa yesterday about the effects of constant travel on friendships and home life. Both of us had just gotten home after extended travels, and despite the tremendous fortune of being able to travel so much, we are both going through similar feelings of uncertainty because of the effect it has on relationships here at home. An equally regrettable effect has been my inability to continue playing music. I still feel like a musician because so many of my friends are musicians, but I know that my connection to music as a player is slipping away slowly, and I’m not sure what I can do about it short of staying in town more and getting back into it actively.

Decisions, decisions. My pursuits have been evolving organically over the past four years, but at some point I will have to decide where my life is going. (read more »)

I’m sitting at the corner coffee shop / cafe, and I feel like an outsider even though I’ve been coming here when I’m in town for nearly two years now. At least the others in my building get to say hi to me every day, even though I’m always out of town; they’ve been calling Greg by my name since I moved in. :)

Maybe I should move back to San Francisco.

Note to self: don’t watch anymore Wong Kar-Wai while travelling alone.

All this laying around (recovering from the flu) has kicked off another bout of fantasizing about settling down — you know, meeting a nice girl and having a “normal” home life.

Grass is always greener, folks.

I’m away so much that I no longer know what to do when I’m home and alone. Normally, when I return from extended absence, I spend my time struggling to catch up, seeing friends and going through the huge piles of stuff waiting for me. And then, I leave again.

I’m half way through my two weeks at home — my longest period here in the Bay Area since October, and I still think I’m going to leave a lot of unfinished business when I leave again on the 4th. The TODO list is growing faster than I can get through it, and it gets worse every day.

But really, I just feel like taking a break — a break without feeling guilty about not catching up. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

It’s nice sometimes to talk with people who are on a similar schedule. I just got an email from Alissa: “I am in Eastern Chad at the moment and will be available on a local cell for the next three days, then I’m off to Uganda to do a story on mountain gorillas!” (read more »)

I often imagine MIT as an institution walled-off from the norms of Western social etiquette. You know, Western social etiquette being the norm because we’re in the States and all.

In case you can’t tell, I’m on the verge of another private work rant.

I’m no longer young.

I just stapled a stack of paper in the upper, right-hand corner.

I hope it’s just a symptom of sleep deprivation, and not a sign of things to come… ;)

Will you be my valentine?

Just kidding. (read more »)

I have achieved chromatic nirvana. I don’t even know why I tried for so long with any sort of LCD display. (read more »)

For a long time now, I’ve been trying to figure out the latin-rooted word for “shark-like.” Out of desperation, I sent an e-mail to my shark scientist friend Dr. Samuel H Gruber, who replied that he knew of no such word, but that we should just invent one:

Lupine is to wolf as Squaline is to shark

“Squaline” is not to be confused with “squalene,” which is defined: “an acyclic hydrocarbon C30H50 that is widely distributed in nature (as a major component of sebum and in shark-liver oils) and is a precursor of sterols (as cholesterol).”

Both words come from the latin squalus, a sea fish. In Italian, the word for shark is squalo, but according to a dictionary I found online, the latin word for shark is pistris. Unfortunately, making an -ine adjective from pistris just doesn’t seem to be as appropriate.

A big fish, showing a rather squaline look.

What are you doing? How are you doing? Do you have any plans for the future you’d like to share with me? Please? ;)

I like the travelling part, but I don’t like the alone part so much.

I’m not really a digital artist type, but the other night I was inspired at 4am to sit in front of my computer for awhile. (read more »)

I forgot to mention that the restaurant yesterday had “Uteri” on the menu, but none of us were brave enough to eat it.

Speaking of internal body parts, my heart and stomach are tingling with mild stress. There’s also a compressor pulsing periodically across the street, which isn’t helping, and the people working on the house seem to think that the middle of the street is the perfect place stand around and yell. (read more »)

Do males get nesting instinct? Cuz I think I’m getting it. Well, not the part about the kids, but maybe the part about someone to share the nest with. (And an unrelated question: how many fragments can I use in one post?)

But it’s not really worth thinking about until I stop travelling so much.

It’s been nice to be back, even though I’ve been at work constantly on my computer since returning. I took a break yesterday and saw the very hilarous Shrek 2 with my sister. I love laughing, and the movie made me laugh the whole way through.

Elliot forced me to blow up the inflatable mattress yesterday, so I will get to sleep in luxury for the next week. What a nice friend. :) Also, Adam posted some photos of us hanging out the other day.

How is it that my personal website gets more visitors than does Wetpixel.com, a site considered one of the premiere sites in its (very narrow) industry? It’s upsetting. Perhaps I should invest some of the (very little) income I’m getting from Wetpixel back into its own marketing. Thus far, we have grown — through word of mouth — into a site that gets nearly 30,000 unique visits per month. But my site here is getting around 35,000 uniques a month.

I recognize that our readership at Wetpixel is valuable because it is extremely targeted. Most people who visit the site are loyal, returning day after day. But collecting a tiny sliver of a huge “market” seems to work better than getting a larger share of a tiny market. I really wonder how many digital underwater photographers there are out there in the world. Probably not many. Oh well; at last I have fun running the site — most of the time. :)