Last week I was fidgeting around with my phone while checking my email. The following message was waiting in my inbox:
—– Forwarded Message —–
From: The Malaysian
To: Jessica
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 4:21 PM
Subject: tsk tsk tsk
Someone’s been slacking off on updating the website.. The last time you wrote was like almost a year ago .. my FREN!!!
True enough. Here’s hoping that changes sooner than later, my fren.
This post was started on August 20th 2010 and never finished. Originally titled “Plan F”, it went a little something like this:
Umm, about that whole “writing more”-thing? Well, yeah, so life was/is somewhat interfering with that.
Between getting ready for an upcoming trip, studying for a professional certification, plus a bajillion other things at the top of the list, JuicyK isn’t quite making it as numero uno right now, but I’m working on it.
Several weeks ago one of my coworkers surprised me—in a good way. That surprise came as I answered his question on what my plans were for that weekend. They revolved around visiting Jason. The purpose of the visit was to update the design of JuicyK, fix a few glitches, and watch some World Cup action in between. He then asked, semi-stated, “You haven’t written on there in a while, huh?”
“Ha, wow. No, I haven’t. Thanks for noticing, man.” Normally our exchanges vary between degrees of immaturity most always including a variation of “fart-face”, “shut-up”, or “bite me”, but that conversation was different. He actually noticed something very important to me, and it made me smile.
A few weeks later you could find us in the same spot as our initial conversation, sitting side by side at the computers staring at our respective mitochondrial tests. Because I knew he took the time to at least visit my site, I made it a point to let him know that I had posted something the day before. He took a break from analyzing genetic sequences to check it out. He finished reading about my exchange with The Malaysian and said, “Ha. That’s funny, but you need to make the posts longer.”
“Well, Crappery (another nickname for The Malaysian) doesn’t like to read. He says I should make them shorter, and I told him I would try to put up a picture.”
To keep everyone happy (myself included) I’m going to make an attempt to assuage preferences for both, visual and verbal, types of posts. So, this is me keeping my word to Zachary (The Malaysian’s American name) with a picture I took of a ladybug near Brays Bayou.
On that day the grass was crawling with variations of fire-colored bodies but was too dense for a clear macro shot. Instead of digging through the grass I picked up this stick for a better angle right before she prepared to fly away. It ended up being one of my favorites out of about 500 shots taken throughout the afternoon. Hope you like it, Poopery Shmoopery (alternative nickname for The Malaysian derived from “Crappery”).
For those that would rather read than look, a more verbally focused post should be up within the next few days. Get excited!
