I have the blues, no not really but I've been listening to it

So recently after my weekend trip to Austin for ACL I came back with a new taste in music. I guess it started with watching the Blues Travelers sing, "run around" and watching John Popper go crazy on his harmonica. I was never a fan of them, ever, but for some reason when my hand was inches short of catching the harmonica he threw in my direction my mind changed. I must admit in secret (because if my friends found out they would judge me) that I enjoyed their preformance. Right After they played I got to see The Black Keys perform and they changed my life. I had listened some of The Black Keys songs but I never really got into them, but their live perfomance was AMAZING! I have sinced created a Black Keys Pandora station and have been intrigued with the different bands that have gone under my radar for so long. Who knew Stevie Ray Vaughan was that good, or that Jimmie Hendricks played the blues, or that Muddy Watters had lyrics that I would come to love. Since I've been really interested in this type of music my really good friend bought me a harmonica in order to explore my creative side. Worst mistake she could ever do because now i'm annoying everyone I come into contact with when I play. I have learned a simple blues chord that is really corny and fun to play. As much as I aspire to play the blues on my harmonica like John Popper I think I'll stick to my studies. I have a better shot at passing my Mammalian test than being a famous harmonica player.

Bat Attack

So this Sunday my brother was helping my mom trim some of the palm trees in our back yard. As he snipped this dead dangling cluster of palm out flew a bat, frightened by the sudden attack he let go of his positioning on the latter and feel on his back. It was the funniest thing to see but non the less he was at a loss of words as to what happened. Shaken up by the event my brother recapped what had happened and used a lot of inappropriate language to describe this poor creature. "Effing stupid piece of shit ugly bat, what the HELL was it thinking!!!" He yelled. As an obnoxious bio student I felt the need to defend the creature and piss my brother off.

"Uhh it was probably thinking the same about you interrupting his sleep and destroying his habitat." (My response to his argument) I didn't fully get a chance to examine the specimen but judging by our climate and location I assumed it was an insectivorous bat. I went on to explain how this bat is a big importance to bio regulation. "Batty eats about 240,000 kilos of insects a night, would you rather go around swatting these unwanted insects yourself or have this poor 'malreputable' creature do it?" He thought about it and agreed but then finished by saying, "yeah but its freaking ugly."

Weekend Recap

This Saturday rather than live up to my reckless 'oh she's young' reputation I decided to change it up and enjoy some female bonding with my bestie and do things slow. We started our Saturday night with dinner at a new restaurant I had heard about. We went to Lolo's on 10th, its a small health conscious place, they had extremely amazing hummus, and the menu contains a brief description of what kind of vitamins are in the food and how many calories are consumed. We enjoyed out soups with a glass of wine and chit chatted until we felt like maybe we should continue our night elsewhere. We ended up leaving the restaurant but were still in the lets drink wine mode but we were reluctant to go to a crowded noisy bar or club. Driving down 10th street we passed by Sahadi's and were urged to stop by. The mood at Sahadi's was exactly what we wanted. The lights were dim, the restaurant smelled good, and they had a live band. The band was a 5 member family band that played Spanish songs. The youngest member of the band was only 15, and he played the bongos like nobodies business. We were impressed by the talent of this band, the father of the band played 5 different instruments including the violin and the saxophone and had a voice that could rock a baby to sleep. We ended up drinking our wines with a cheese ball plate and an escargot appetizer. Escargot was a first for both of us and to my surprise it did not look or taste like what I expected. After a couple of glasses of wine and as the restaurant was closing down, we left but were not ready to end the night. We stopped by our favorite coffee shop Ambrosia, to grab our self some fresh coffee and make fun of the people that surrounded us. It was a pretty great night, I had excellent wine, excellent food, excellent company, and excellent coffee...ahhh I fell so grown up.

Prorotodactylus

When I look at my pet cat, Lady Kittens, I do not see ferocious dinosaur. Instead when I think dinosaur I picture a great massive stature like a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Brachiosaurus straight out of the Jurassic Park movie. According to a recent article by the BBC small prints only a couple of cm in length found in 250 million rock may be evidence of an early species of dinosaur. That is the claim a team of scientist have concluded when they found the fossilized footprints in Poland. Before the find scientist estimated dinosaurs evolved hundreds of millions of years after the “end-Permian mass extinction”. Is it odd that up to reading today’s article I had never even heard of this Permian mass extinction idea, I’m embarrassed by this. None the less the prints date back to only 2 million years after this mass extinction which is baffling researchers and changing the ideas previously believed about the rise of these ancient vertebrates. But like the pompous scientist thinking with their heads (eh eh plug in today’s bio writing lecture) the scientific community isn’t completely satisfied by this finding. The researchers blame the lack of finding skeletal evidence of this newly introduced dinosaur creature to the reason why their findings were not published on more important scientific journals. Hey guys, be happy your stuff is even being published. Heck if I found something as exciting as that I’d probably have enough to feed my ego for a lifetime….hmm do I smell a new prospect for expanding my possibilities towards a new biology field after my BS degree?? As much as I want to bust out with my shovel and brush I think my lack of direction as to what field to further my education and scientific career in is still up in the air, besides how many new pre-dino creatures can you possibly discover in a life time?

A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 850 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S.

A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 850 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S.


This is interesting...a simple historian doing her job tumbles on some papers and finds this.