During a shopping trip over the weekend, I acquired a set of lovely pillows with a map of Africa on them for the sofa in our lounge. Geokitteh Zayna heartily approves of the new map pillows. She’s sleeping on one of the map pillows in the above picture.
I really enjoy decorating with maps. When we have a house, I plan to frame a few maps to display in various rooms. I have a geologic map of Oman just waiting to be framed. Do any other geologists decorate with maps?
For those of you who don’t know, in addition to Georneys I also have a blog about geology and cats (yes, cats) called Geokittehs. In this somewhat silly blog I share pictures of cats and think up geological principles that are being illustrated by the cats. The primary purpose of the blog is to share adorable cat pictures. If I teach a little geology along the way, that’s great, too! I write Geokittehs along with my dear friend Dana Hunter, who is a fellow cat-lover and also blogs about geology for Scientific American.
I am very excited to share that Geokittehs was recently featured in the Science section of the New York Times (see the paragraph titled “Gneiss Kitty”), both online and in print. Dana and I are quite shocked that Geokittehs was featured in the New York Times, but of course we’re thrilled! Dana has already blogged about the feature here and here.
I haven’t seen a copy of the Geokittehs write-up in the New York Times yet. I had trouble finding a copy of the paper here in South Africa, but fortunately a couple of American friends have promised to save the paper for me. However, Dana and her geokitteh Misha managed to track down a copy of the paper. Here they are posing with it:
To celebrate Geokittehs being in the New York Times, I thought I would share ten of my favorite Geokittehs posts here on Georneys. In no particular order, they are:
3. Cat Ichnology: The Marks of Misha
5. The Progression of a Night of Thesis Writing
6. Steep-Angle Subduction Kitteh
Geokittehs also has a Schrödinger’s cat series. So, wander over to Geokittehs and enjoy the cat pictures…. with a side of science!
My thesis defense is in exactly one month. That’s right: I’ll be defending my thesis on Friday, April 13th. Friday the 13th! Honestly, it feels very surreal that I will be defending in a month. I’m excited, nervous, happy, anxious, confident, and worried all at once. I’m working long hours finishing up my defendable draft, so I probably won’t have much time for posting on Georneys other than my weekly Monday Geology Picture. However, after I hand in my final thesis draft in early May, I plan to revive the dormant Geology Word of the Week and also write up a couple of longer posts that I have been musing about for awhile. So, stay tuned for that.
The next month of thesis preparation will be challenging, but there’s one thing that I know will help me survive: Geokittehs. What is Geokittehs, you may be wondering? Geokittehs is a ridiculous blog about geology and cats. I think it’s best explained on the About Geokittehs page. Basically, I started Geokittehs with my friend Dana Hunter so that I would not post too many cat pictures here on Georneys. My husband and I have two gorgeous, long-haired cats that probably have some Norwegian Forest Cat in them, and I am constantly photographing them in adorable poses. If I didn’t have other outlets for posting cute cat pictures (Facebook and Geokittehs), I’m afraid cat pictures might sneak on to Georneys more often, and I’m not sure AGU would want to host a cat blog. I promise to keep Georneys (mostly) cat-free, but I plan to do quite a bit of posting on Geokittehs over the next month as I wrap up my thesis. So, if you like cats and geology and cat-themed geology puns, feel free to head over to Geokittehs to check out the posts. I actually have a small backlog of photos to post since I neglected to check the Geokittehs email for a few months. Sorry about that if you sent an email! I’ll try to post the backlog over the next week or so. If you would like to submit a Geokitteh photo, you may do so by emailing geokittehs at gmail. Please do send as many cat pictures as you want. You’ll be doing a good deed by helping me survive my thesis, and hopefully other cat-loving geologists will find the Geokittehs posts entertaining.
Georneys 