Being Irish, and Blog Transitions

It's St. Patrick's Day, and we have thunderstorms in Kansas City, which is a shame because there's a big parade today, and a lot of people have worked on it, and have been looking forward to it... that parade once was something I enjoyed, but no longer. There are way too many drunk people dressed in horrible, bizarre green clothing. Maybe someone can explain to me why "Irish" evokes strange, highly unattractive clothing and headgear? The Irish folks I know (Irish-American and born-there Irish) are all quite nicely dressed, even stylish. My own ethnic heritage is all Irish on my mother's side (the McColgan and Delany families), and I have no inclination at all toward terrible hats.

As to the ongoing evolution of this blog: I have temporarily abandoned the move to Wordpress. I got ahold of the delanydean.com domain name (is that the right word?), and will be using that address, but still within the Blogger hosting apparatus. The transition should be easy; as I understand it, you will get to this blog by using either of these addresses: http://crimlawdoc.blogspot.com OR http://delanydean.com.

I also have decided to transition further away from the "crimlawdoc" name, which I have been using for a quite some time. I adopted that name when I first became a forensic psychologist, 12 or so years ago, because it seemed to represent much of who I was, professionally: a psychologist/doctor who was also a criminal lawyer (and a doctor of law), and a forensic psychologist. Since my forensic practice is no longer a major part of my professional identity, and my life as a criminal lawyer has faded further back in time, the name "crimlawdoc" no longer speaks quite so accurately to my interests and professional activities. I am much more interested and involved, today, in mindfulness-based interventions; Buddhist psychology and practice; neuroscience; and consciousness studies. All of that can be expressed in the word/phrase: "mind.expressions," and so I am adopting that name for my blog.

I also note (with amazement) that I recently discovered that there is another person named "Delany Dean" who has a blog on MySpace; she is, from what I can see, much younger than I am, and with quite different interests. There are a lot of heart-shaped images on her blog, and lots of talk about sex. I am sure she is a lovely young woman. She is not me. Really.