"The very deep did rot, Oh Christ! That ever this should be!/Yea slimy things did crawl with legs/Upon a slimy sea." - Samuel Taylor Colridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

"Over mirrors meant/To glass the opulent/The sea worm crawls, grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent." - Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain.

And the angels all pallid and wan/Uprising,unveiling, afirm/ That the play is the tragedy "man"/And it's hero the Conqueror Worm." - Edgar Allen Poe, The Conqueror Worm.

Greeting, y'all. Despite the somewhat gloomy (but, I think, quite beautiful) poetry, things are just sunny here in rainy Bangor. We've been doing some fabulous practicals: looking at seaweed under a microscope, identifying molluscs (Whelks in a lab!), and even digging up and identifying our own specimens. And that's what ties in to the rather morbid poetry: I've discovered a passion for worms.

Ragworms are full of surprises. Take the one I picked off the beach myself, and brought back to the lab to ID. It was a teensy little thing, only about 4-5cm, looking like a cross between a centipede and a leech. I picked it up, popped it in a dish of seawater, slid it under the microscope, and focused in.

Aaaww! What a cute lickle wormy! What a sweet little...AAAAAHHHH!!! AAAAAAHHHH!!! IT JUST BARED IT'S FANGS AT ME!!! MAKE IT GO AWAAAAY!!!

...After I calmed down a bit, and resolved never to go straight to the highest magnification first, I came to the conclusion that worms with teeth (not just any teeth, mind you: two large black fangs that extend on a proboscis bigger than it's head, similar to the thing out of Alien) are the coolest critters ever. Certainly, studying them would break the ice at a party:

Guest: So, enough about me. Where do you work?
Me: I'm a marine biologist.
Guest: Really? Wow!
Me: I study worms. With teeth.
Guest: Er...ew... I'm just gonna head over there...
Me: *Pulls handful of snapping worms out of labcoat pocket* See my worms! Touch them! Love them! LOOOVE THEM!

...Ahem.

Well, what else? On the DevArt front, I've got a few apologies to make. I've been having much more of a social life than before, which has drastically cut into my internet time. I'm afraid my promises of un-disrupted Latency Stages was hopeless hopeful. I think my schedule will be set back quite a bit.

I might also be a bit more elusive (like an errant polychaete, coiled in it's burrow, waiting to capture a passing shrimp...), and a bit lax on the comments front. Please forgive me if I vanish for long periods.

On the plus side, I'm close to finally laying "Take me to the autopilot" to rest. I've got a new chapter up as we speak.

Next: More TMTTA, and some Latency Stages.