Tweaking the blog

I finally decided to stop being coy and post an actual picture of me, like most other bloggers do, and ditch the sailboat image that was my profile pic from the start. The sailboat was intended to conjure up feelings of calmness and peace, which at least one of my fellow Disciple classmates said were quite descriptive of my true and actual effect on others. (My family has a different view, which will not be mentioned here.) Also, it was in keeping with the thought that appearances don't really matter, do they? But the sailboat just wasn't cutting it anymore. However, it was a part of my blog for so long that I am posting it here for all posterity to view. Well, I would have if I could have found it. Here, instead, is the pic that loomed over my blog recently, of a 2006 vacation to Hawaii. I say "looming over" because it was way too large, and you had to scroll way down to actually get to a blog post. But I didn't know how to shrink it down without just getting rid of it altogether, and I liked the beautiful blue of the ocean too much. It was painful when I finally made the hard choice to ditch it as well. So here it is:

In my case, changing the profile pic was a desperate, last-ditch effort (pathetic, really) to gain more fans. How's it working? The new profile pic was taken after Mother's Day using a lovely new pocket camera my family got me. It has really cool features like taking a panoramic shot, only taking someone's picture when they smile, and shooting movies with audio. It has touch-screen access to most features. The only trouble is it has an itty bitty (size-wise, not memory-wise) card that will not fit in our computer's card readers. Luckily, a gallant coworker came to the rescue and downloaded the pictures to a CD for me. My only complaint is that it tends to show every detail, every wrinkle, every gray root, etc.

So the profile pic is quite recent, but in a salute to Buddhism's concept of impermanence, it is already outdated. Am I talking about the endless regeneration of cells within and without that occurs automatically, round the clock, that means I have a whole new batch of skin cells since then? No. I'm talking about getting my hair highlighted, in an effort to disguise the gray better. I've never been a blonde before in my life, or even partially so, and when I see myself in the mirror now, I keep thinking, "Who's that?" The color would better be described as tawny, especially since my hair is more accurately called a mane. So here's a very current, updated picture snapped with our old camera just a few days ago:

Portrait of the author, thinking. Think-think-think. Another blog entry to follow, soon.