When does handwriting stop changing?

So I am home now for a short winter break in Virginia. In my room I found an old sketch notebook and flipped open to a poem I had written in 2003. In 2003 "Finding Nemo" came out, the Irag War was ramping up, SARS happened, Valerie Plame happened...that was a looooooong time ago.

It was July 2003. It was the summer before my senior year of high school. And beside the horrifically emotional drag that is the context of my poem I was taken by my handwriting. It doesn't appear to have changed at all. In 7 years. If anything I think I write with more loopy-ness. I still don't have very girly handwriting. You know how you can tell by looking at handwriting whether it's a male or female most of the time. Yeah with mine you can't. I kind of like that about it.

Well my holiday shopping is definitely not what it was. This year I really don't have the funds to go all out, but that is good. Christmas is not as frivolous as it was to me before...I used to be very into the quantity and how pretty all the boxes and packages looked under the tree. But now, maybe as I have grown older and more tired of it all, it's all very silly. Honestly if I really need or want something I will get it myself. And I usually don't want anything that is beyond my means. It's just stupid to pine for something you can't reasonably get. I know I don't need much so I don't want much...Perhaps if I were richer I would want more things.

Really all I want this year to get into a grad program. Oh yes and nice field job before that would be super too. I have more apps to get out but after the New Year I should start hearing back from people. Hopefully. Anyways, I am learning more and more about birds and this one was an early favorite. I give you, the bearded vulture (aka Lammergeier, Gypaetus barbatus). 

Birds are so easy to like, no? What a beast of a creature!
Apparently they believed it to attack lambs so hence the German name roughly coming out to "lamb vulture." So these birds' range stretch throughout the mountains of southern Europe, Africa, India, and Tibet. It is in decline in Europe but is doing pretty well in Asia. It hates rotting meat and eats mostly bones. 90% bone marrow so say the experts. They drop the bones from as high as 200 feet sometimes several times! To become a pro at this takes 7 years. They have been known to drop tortoises this way too...imagine that visual.  It is this particular behavior that has made it so appealing to folklore. In Iran, it is quite an auspicious sign it the shadow of one falls on you as the Lammergeier is a symbol of luck.


That is all for now - Graneledone