Penguins

It was really distressing to read in this morning's paper about 550 penguins dying of apparent starvation off the coast of Brazil. As my younger son said to me - people have to stop eating fish - which means I have to stop eating fish, as he does not eat fish... Fish is the only animal I eat, but I guess I will have to rethink this - despite all the health benefits in seafood.

Qualifying Exam Proposal

I think that I am getting stupider rather than more articulate. I really struggled to put my thoughts together in a coherent way in my proposal for my qualifying exam paper. I looked at what I wrote a year ago or a year and a half ago, and it sounds so much better than what I could come up with now. Now that is discouraging!

As a child whose parents had Alzheimer's it makes me wonder (read "worry") whether this is the first stages of that. I am too young to have my brain not work well!

Trying to move forward

Ok, I am supposed to be moving forward with writing for my qualifying exam, but I have to admit that I am allowing myself to do everything but focus on what I need to do with this!

There are so many interesting things to do besides this! Not that I don't find my topic interesting - I do - otherwise it wouldn't be my topic. But I think one of the downsides to writing multiple papers on the subject is that I feel like I am a little too familiar with what I know and I need a new take or a new lens to jump start my process.

It's not like I have a ton of time to get refocused.