Small bit of news...
Last week, I got an e-mail from my friend, John Crea, who I knew in high school. He now teaches English classes at a school near where I used to live and he was teaching a course on Thoreau and transcendentalism and asked his students if they knew anyone who, whether they knew it or not, was a transcendentalist. The kids answered and then turned the question on him. He told them that he felt that I was a transcendentalist and then told them a bit of what he remembered of me in high school and so on and so forth. So apparently the kids were really fascinated by me and had a bunch of questions for me.

Anyway, as I was considering my answers to some very well thought out questions about my life philosophies, I started wondering how I was manifesting those beliefs in my daily life and kept finding that I really wasn't. I purport to be a person who wants to live in harmony with nature, someone who loves animals and believes in their rights, someone who is moral and ethical and considerate of my choices, etc., but too often, I think, I've come to take the easy road--to essentially say, "Well, I believe these things, but you know, it's really difficult to actually act on those beliefs." And for me, that's not an acceptable response.

So I've decided to become a vegetarian. My hope is that, by forcing myself to make a conscious decision about one major aspect of my life, I'll also start making more conscious choices about other areas of my life. Hopefully I'll be a better person for it. So don't feed me any steak.

Edit:
I should clarify that I'm still allowing fish in my diet. So technically, I'm a pescetarian. But the basic idea is the same.