hey, why not?

Day 26/365 2.23.09

2009-02-23T20:41:00.001-05:00

Day 25/365 2.22.09

2009-02-22T20:39:00.000-05:00

Day 24/365 2.21.09

2009-02-21T20:38:00.000-05:00

Day 23/365 2.20.09

2009-02-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

Day 22/365 2.19.09

2009-02-19T20:35:00.000-05:00

Day 21/365 2.18.09

2009-02-18T20:30:00.000-05:00

Day 20/365 2.17.09

2009-02-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

Day 19/365 2.16.09

2009-02-16T20:26:00.000-05:00

Day 18/365 2.15.09

2009-02-15T20:20:00.000-05:00

Day 17/365 2.14.09

2009-02-14T20:19:00.001-05:00

Day 16/365 2.13.09

2009-02-13T20:14:00.000-05:00

Day 15/365 2.12.09

2009-02-12T20:09:00.000-05:00

Day 14/365 2.11.09

2009-02-11T20:53:00.000-05:00

Day 13/365 2.10.09

2009-02-10T21:54:00.001-05:00

Day 13/365 2.10.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

the building i work in all decked out for valentine's day. our rushing rivers institute office is on the second floor above the silverscape jewelry shop

Day 12/365 2.9.09

2009-02-09T20:17:00.000-05:00

Day 12/365 2.9.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

a yummy, healthy-ish, and colorful monday night dinner!

Day 11/365 2.8.09

2009-02-08T20:15:00.000-05:00

Day 11/365 2.8.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

my favorite glasses: electric blue dkny

Day 10/365 2.7.09

2009-02-07T19:32:00.000-05:00

Day 10/365 2.7.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

beware: playing in the snow can be dangerous! tori and andrew with a bloody lip

Day 9/365 2.6.09

2009-02-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

Day 9/365 2.6.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

Curtis Clark, jazz pianist

Day 8/365 2.5.09

2009-02-05T19:30:00.001-05:00

Day 8/365 2.5.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

today i discovered exercise tv. i'm going to get in shape!

Day 7/365 2.4.09

2009-02-04T19:30:00.000-05:00

Day 7/365 2.4.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

i'm a sucker for sprinkles

Day 6/356 2.3.09

2009-02-03T19:28:00.002-05:00

Day 6/356 2.3.09
Originally uploaded by bamuller

my current favorite song: daylight by matt and kim

365 days project: days 1-5

2009-02-03T18:59:00.001-05:00

here is the moment you've been waiting for: pictures! woo! okay, contain your excitement and check out the photos. if you click on them they link back to my flickr photo page where you can view them larger and check out lots of other photos i've taken.

day 5 - 2.2.09

day 4 - 2.1.09

day 3 - 1.31.09

day 2 - 1.30.09

day 1 - 1.29.09

new things i've read section

2009-01-27T11:27:00.008-05:00

i added a new section to my little side bar; a list of all the books i have read in 2009. hopefully with the books i'm reading listed for the public, i will have more motivation to read more and actually think critically about what i'm reading.

so the first book i read this year was called Philosophy Made Simple by
Robert Hellenga. it is a novel about a 50 something widower named rudy who leaves chicago to start a new life as an avocado rancher. i chose the book in attempt to pick up a few tidbits about philosophy while still getting the entertainment of a fictional story. the book turned out to have less about philosophy than i expected; rudy just carries around a philosophy book that was a gift from one of his three daughters. overall, i still enjoyed the book; it was definitley a romantic book (which i wasn't expecting) but the ending wasn't predictable or fairytail-ish.

right now i'm almost halfway through Deception by Ziyad Marar. so far i'm enjoying it, but more on that after i'm finished with it!

new goals: teach english abroad and photography

2009-01-15T14:53:00.005-05:00

what happened to 2008? i feel like september - november inched by and now suddenly it is half way through january.

work is going well. i'm pretty settled into the office. sitting in an office is not terribly exciting, but if i have to be in one, this is the place for me. our office is complete with a fish tank of native fish and two snails named speedy gonzalez and speed racer. their little mouths are pretty awesome to watch.

i've made some pretty big decisions lately. 1)i am not going to grad school this fall 2)i'm not taking the job i was originally offered here at horizons for homeless children. as a result of these decisions i am now job searching (again) for a second part time job in western mass starting soon/now as well as a full time job somewhere outside the usa starting in the fall. i'm currently hoping to teach english as a foreign language somewhere like thailand, turkey, or the czech republic but i'm really quite open about the location.

i've also decided to try to really improve my photography skills. i'm planning on forcing myself to do this by joining in on the many 365 projects common to flickr. i myself will be attempting to take one photo every day during my 23 year of life which starts on January 29. this is also a good excuse for my birthday present to myself to be a new lens :-D

in other news, i have begun listening to the scientific american podcasts and man am i learning a lot. my favorite is the "totally bogus" section.

new title and... kissing?!

2008-12-11T09:04:00.008-05:00

i have (another) job! a real one that both utilizes my college education and involves both doing something that i enjoy and doing something i feel is useful/helpful to the rest of the world. well maybe not the whole world, but at least to all the little animals and the environment in new england! i am the new research editor for rushing rivers institute, a nonprofit involved with river ecology and conservation.

and now for something probably more interesting to the general public. the next time you readers are sharing some smooches, think about this girl and beware!

movin on up...

2008-11-21T16:51:00.002-05:00

but not quite to a "deluxe apartment in the sky."

instead, to one of 5 possible apartments in holyoke, massachusetts. i got a part time job working for horizons for homeless children and i can't wait. my own place, a job, a real winter complete with snow, being less than 3 hours from NYC where my two best friends live. hooray!

i officially accepted the offer today. i'll be outta here by tuesday.

shwing baby

2008-11-16T14:13:00.002-05:00

last night was a wonderful night: an 18 piece big band, "rosy the riveter" style girls handing out cracker jacks, getting to wear pearls and a fedora, new friends, new moves. oh, good times indeed.

kennesaw state had a great swing dance with a 1940's war times theme. i attended with an old friend from high school who i hadn't seen in over 4 years. there was of course some east coast swing and i learned to lindy hop and charleston and taught john the carolina shag.

this was exactly what i needed.

oh, literature

2008-10-28T16:39:00.011-04:00

seeing as how i'm unemployed right now, i have a lot of free time. i have restarted my quest to read the 100 greatest novels of this century. i have only read about 15ish (the ish is for the maybe 3 books on the list that i started but didn't finish or that we covered in one of my AP lit classes but i never really read...)of the books on this particular list, but i've discovered that there are a whole bunch of different 100 best novels lists. there is the question of whether to only read the 100 best of this century or include the 100 best of all time (oh shakespeare). then do i base my list off of a poll composed of votes from the general public or based on the votes of a board of literature gurus from some publishing company? i think to begin with i'm going to read the books that seem to appear on all these lists.

i'm on page 75 in lolita. so far, i really like it, which i was at least partially surprised by - come on, we all know whats going to happen in this one. nabokov's voice is really pleasing to me though. and i even like how humbert humbert is overly pleased by himself.

"let me repeat with quiet force: i was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanour..."

when did "slow-moving" become something to make us ladies swoon? hmm. this also demonstrates another aspect that i like - the random but fairly common french phrases. who knew my 4 years of french would actually come in handy (especially since i can't actually speak it at all)!

at any rate, i'm excited to be reading good literature again. in college i was always reading so much intense scientific stuff that the novels i read for pleasure were really nothing more than fluff.

no sponges here

2008-10-26T15:28:00.003-04:00

i've kept a blog at livejournal for ages. first there was the silly high school ranting. then slightly more interesting thoughts. then i made a separate travel blog for the 5 months i lived and studied in finland. well, turns out i really liked keeping that latest blog; after returning to the states, i couldn't see any reason why the lovely public would have any interest in my rambling thoughts and ideas. buuuuut - hooray i changed my mind! (get used to that, it will probably happen frequently)

so here it is, my very own shiny new blog. i have yet to decide what its focus will be. i am hoping that writing here will force me (and you!) to think more about the things i hear about and actively participate in learning despite being officially graduated and all that jazz.

which brings me to the address being www.dontbeasponge.blogspot.com. my high school AP biology teacher mrs. gazaway once told me not to be such a sponge. she said to read and try to learn as much as possible, but without simply absorbing all the material without processing it, asking questions, determine which bits of information clash with other bits of information, yadda, yadda. so here's to me being a filter and not a sponge!

but wait, sponges are filter feeders...

edit: adventures in the (almost) arctic is my old travel blog from finland, just in case anybody was interested :-)