26 November 2003

FOR OUR ANNUAL SUMMER FAMILY VACATION, WE     visited my mother's relatives in southern Ohio. We    stayed in the town of South Charleston and toured the countryside. About an eighth of the Earth's land surface is planted with crops. Since I live in an urban area, I consider myself at risk of thinking, as Aldo Leopold put it, that "breakfast comes from the grocery [and] heat from the furnace." It was intriguing to see our nation's impressive engine of food production up close.

Ohio Family Trip >>

I have spent this fall holding down the fort in Half Moon Bay. My parents and sister have moved to Irvine where my mother has begun work as a professor at UC Irvine. (We are keeping our house in Half Moon Bay.) I am applying for graduate school and will begin in 2004. This winter, I will travel to Bolivia for three weeks with my brother, then move to Reno to do an ecology internship in the laboratory of Dr. John A. Arnone III at the Desert Research Institute.

And finally, this graphic of my college grade point average provides irrefragable evidence of the correlation between fun and learning.