Welcome, Bienvenidos, B'an Tulena

If you are looking for cat pictures, you have come to the right place. Oh yes, indeed, you have.

So, why am I starting a blog?

First, I just moved to the metro Washington, DC, area for a communications fellowship at a science institute. That has been an awesome change in my rural-small-town-bumpkin life that deserves some documentation. I can't believe all the new stuff I'm seeing all the time. Why did no one tell me that cities are cool? (Oh, wait...)

Second, I've always loved reading memoirs and other people's reflections on their own lives, but during Peace Corps I developed a serious interest in blogs. I ended up keeping my own (it's kind of the cool thing to do in Peace Corps), but I also just read a lot of them. There are two lifestyle blogs from that time period that I still read regularly; they were women to whom I could strongly relate in some way, who kept me connected to my hopes for the future in the US.

I also spent far too much time in my first year back from Peace Corps absorbing web media - especially blogs - nutrition blogs, news blogs, mommy blogs, lifestyle blogs, science skeptic blogs. I've learned a ton in the last year from some of the thoughtful bloggers out there (more on them later).

And what about the Oliver blogs? Oliver asks. I promise at some point I may actually post some pictures, you know, like, related to Washington DC.

I naturally thought at times about starting a blog to join the conversation, but most of my free brain cells were devoted to teaching labs and finishing my Master's, so the blog hasn't happened... until now!

So here we go! Thanks for dropping by.