I am eating an avocado in Los Angeles now.

First things first, this picture quite perfectly captures the essence of this blog:

I definitely need to add "My skills include donut eating" to my résumé. Hell, I'd go so far as to say I'm a donut eating expert.

Second things now, an update on where I am and what I'm doing. I am back in LA. Well, still in LA. After TAing this spring, which was a blast (aside from the other TA being lazy, irresponsible, and annoying to work with), I decided to stay in LA for a bit and have got another TAship for the upcoming Fall Quarter. Yay! The spring class I TAed was Biology of Invertebrates (a favorite), but this fall will be the Marine Biology Quarter, or the field quarter that all Marine Bio majors at UCLA have to go on. It's probably going to end up being a lot more work than the spring, but will be totally worth it, as the class gets to spend 5 weeks on Catalina doing research projects. Sweet.

The decision to stay in LA was not all too tough. While I have mixed feelings about the city itself (I'm alternating between love and hate currently), most of my professional & university contacts are here so it's a good place to be for my career for the time being. Wow, never envisioned myself typing that sentence. Anyway, like I said before, I enjoyed TAing this spring so much I wanted to stay on at UCLA and keep TAing. Hopefully things will pan out for Winter and Spring 2013. Also, I may be going out as a volunteer whale watcher with the Aquarium of the Pacific again here and there, to help out in between batches of interns, so stay tuned for some whale watching updates!

Third things last, enjoy this picture of me in Scotland with a giant squirrel.

Scotland was fun; I had such a amazing time being back there for a few months. While it's nice to be back in the states after about a year of globetrotting, I do miss Scotland already. And I still have itchy feet.

Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles... how I loathe and love thee. Culture, weather, food, diversity = love. Density, architecture, traffic, assholes = barf. I think I might feel differently about the city if I didn't live on the westside, within a commutable distance to UCLA. If I lived in one of the cooler neighborhoods, farther east, I'd be looking at an hour (or more) commute each way. No thanks.