I’ve been blogging intermittently since 2002. I have a Live Journal account that goes through periods of abuse, periods of neglect, and everything in between, but it serves its purpose as a mostly first-person rambling journal. It is a random online collection of my thoughts since 2002, but it’s not really what a blog is supposed to be. Now that the hangover of New Year’s has dissipated, I can get down to the nitty gritty details. It’s time for a new blog for the new decade. I don’t know why haven’t gotten around to this yet, but it’s time… Well I’m sure I’ve got some forgotten account somewhere taking up precious server space but amounting to nothing. The quintessential question: what should I write about? One should always write about what they know. That ultimately leaves:

• Travel (or hobo backpacking, if you prefer)
• Photography
• Cuisine
• Rats (not to be confused with actually cooking rats, which I do not condone)
• Environmental issues

Which all sort of tie together, don’t they? You can’t write about travel without illustrating your stories with photos you took, or appropriately ganked with credit. You could in theory write about cuisine without photos, but I sure wouldn’t want to read those blogs. I want to see what you’re eating, and wonder why my attempt looks nothing like that. I could write about rats without posting photos, but then you wouldn’t see the fuzzbutts through my eyes and understand why I fall head over heals in love with them every day. I don’t mean rattus norvegicus, of sewer and NYC subway fame, but rattus norvegicus as a domesticated entity, such as exhibit A:

But this will not be a rat blog per say, although they might pop up periodically. And finally I pondered writing about environmental issues, as I hold them dear to my heart. But there are countless watchdog blogs out there to begin with (again, I think I have one in my name out there somewhere, possibly written in French) and that wasn’t necessarily my aim. Then it hit me. I need to write about traveling, eco-tourism, culinary arts of the world, and environmental issues. But these subjects are not mutually exclusive. So I made a Venn diagram to justify my web existence instead of stealing one. http://classtools.net/widgets/venn_1/MMEWX.htm

I guess this will be a photo blog. It will force me to do something with the 20+ gigs of photos I have sitting in my hard drive. It will give me an excuse to justify the cameras – a new dSLR is on its way right now, as is a little point & shoot number that can go under water. And heck – why not… I can mention it. I self-published this little photography number recently: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1030957.