Coral Christmas

The Corals of the world are all supposed to be gone by 2050.  This is one of many reasons I want to get down to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef before it's all gone.  Another reason is how stinkin' cool corals are!  I had started to write my big bio thesis on corals before I chose to go the theatre route, and so I will proclaim my love for them here in blog-form.  Corals, similar to most naturally occurring stagnant living beings, record history over time.  Not many people know this, however, which is why no one has done a "save the corals" campaign or whatever other type of bullshit you would have to do to keep them from dying.  The coral animal is, in itself, a cnidarian meaning he is an interesting emmer effer, check it out up top.  He's in the same phylum as jellyfish which makes them both stinger-hunters.  They eat small animals, plankton, etc. in the water that they sting and those little animals get entangled in the tentacles and they eat them.  Corals will deposit Calcium Carbonate to create a great shell/skeleton that they live in.  Wouldn't that be FREAKING SWEET?!  You'd never have to pay for an apartment again.  Each person sort of builds their own apartment on top of their family's apartment or on top of their friends' apartments!  Yowza!  So here's what happens, as things like hurricanes, tornadoes, runnoff from farmers on the coasts happens, corals will deposit calcium carbonate (this is for their skeletons, people) with trace amounts of whatever the predominate chemical/element to the land is, whether it be illyum, iron, phosphorous, whatever.  If that element is too acidic or too basic (which is basically anything over or under pH of about 8 or 9, generally depending on where the coral is) the coral dies and/or deposits that substance into its skeletal makeup.  The coral animal itself is what give the coral reefs their color, so when the animal dies bleaching occurs where the skeleton is left, and it's white.  My point here is that I should've stuck with Corals because now they're coming out with studies that prove exactly what I had started writing about in college.  

Little Holiday Recap From Yours, Truly:

Christmas Eve I had Chinese food and made cookies while watching Love, Actually.  I was waiting for Mike to arrive (I was waiting less patiently than he or I would have wanted, I think).  He got here on Christmas Day and we went to his family's Christmas.  That was very fun!  Met all his family and actually his Yia-Yia's basement was almost exactly like my grandparents' basement growing up where we always held Christmases!  It was a wonderful jaunt down memory lane for me while at the same time meeting a while new crew of very loud, fun, Christmas-spirit-filled folks!  Also may I say, for the record, Nils (Fotis' nefew) is pert near the cutest ever.  

Then I worked.  ugh.  

Now I've got a break!  Yay!

Yours Truly (and thank you for reading)

L. MF. B.