Junco, Oh how I love thee...

Yes, that is a tattoo of a dark-eyed junco.

I wish I were a ballerina-spy

I was recently told that happiness is when you are satisfied with your life and don't wish you were doing something else. Well I wish I were a ballerina-spy. It's common knowledge that it's the only job I would trade in my life as a field biologist for. I imagine it would be a snow free existence. Well, except for when I was in Russia. When I interviewed here at Indiana and Dr. Butch Brodie, then head of the graduate program at IU, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up (those were his words) my answer: ballerina-spy. So why am I not a ballerina-spy?!?! Why am I out slogging through ankle deep snow in my pursuit of the seemingly elusive junco? I can't answer that question this week. This week I seriously wish I were a ballerina-spy and I am kicking myself for giving up on that dream for biology. This week as I'm writing yet another grant, which is really an exercise that causes you to question the overall significance of your research and probably the impetus for this blog, I can't help but imagine that life would be SO much easier if I were a ballerina-spy: Wake up, do some dancing, scale a building to steal some government's secrets, some more dancing, and round off the evening trying to extract informants from hostile countries... or something like that.