I'm back, what'd I miss?

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately, but things have gotten a little crazy, work-load wise, up my way. I'll probably be more coherent once finals are over.

The next encounter with the vampire technician was cut short due to a little thing called an infiltration, so now I have a very interesting bruise on one arm. No data on whether or not he was going to discuss biology versus theology with me, but while everyone else was running around patching me up so I didn't bleed out into my arm or all over the floor, we both made fun of Twilight, which was playing on the TV they set up for the donor's distraction, and got into the vampire vs werewolf squabble (my stance: I'd rather be a vampire, at least at first, so I still have some control over myself rather than risk hurting someone I care about. Werewolves still rock just as hard, so if I got to spend my "training" well away from humans, I wouldn't mind at all. As to who wins in a fight: assuming equal experience, it goes to whoever gets the drop on the other.)

The pro-birth, anti-contraception, anti-willingly childless groups came through campus, so I got to spend some time playing with their heads. I think most of what I said went over their heads, such as the fact that being pregnant with me nearly killed my mother not being an inspirational story. (Yes, one of the girls said that. Inspirational. That sizzling sound you heard was every neuron in my brain frying at the thought of someone being forced through this being "inspirational." I felt terrible when I learned just how hard she'd had it, and she fought tooth and nail to be able to have just me. Imagine if she hadn't wanted to be a mother....)

And before I get hate mail about that, I'll call you pro-life if you're consistently so: vegetarian/vegan (I'm generally lenient on this point, since if you're dirt poor you don't really have much of a choice and meat is still great stuff - just show some consideration for non-humans, like no throwing away your dog at the side of the road when the dog becomes inconvenient), anti-war, anti-death penalty, promotion of good health care for everyone from womb to tomb, and all that other good stuff. And be intelligent about it. Don't tell me shit like "the birth control pill was the inspiration for the idea of abortion," or "NFP is 99% effective," or even "there is never any reason for an abortion."

Anyway, it's crunch time. I'll probably update once I'm semi-coherent after turning in the last of four large papers and slogging through my work shifts.

"The Sun Will Rise," Round Two

A while back, I wrote about a vampire (read: a medical technician who does all of the messy work of handling human blood and plasma) back at the plasma clinic who was apparently trying to pick a fight over evolution. I did manage to get him a list of literature, but throwing something out there and hoping it sticks is not what I'd call a proper rematch.

Just the other day, I wound up in his section again. He was reading the literature on the list I wrote out for him, and he seemed genuinely interested. Maybe it wasn't an attempt to pick a fight after all.

I'm not holding my breath, however. Tomorrow will be round three, and I'm not certain if

A) He'll be there

B) He'll have time to discuss what I offered, or

C) If he'll come up with something else to try to pick a fight over.

I'm hoping that he's honestly looking at what I've offered instead of deconstructing it, but I'll keep my mouth shut until I know more.

I had a little bird...

...and his name was Enza
I opened up the window
And in flew Enza.

I made a slight mistake when I was grading tests in the middle of class while the students watched a movie. My mistake was to listen with one ear, and occasionally look up at the screen.

Of course, this being a class about human adaptation and a quick overview of evolution, it was about a recent disaster that showed how a different genetic roll of the dice would spell out life or death - the 1918 influenza epidemic.

That epidemic has lived at the back of my mind ever since I learned about it, along with all of the other ways the world as we know it could end. But it's terrifying for two reasons, one of which is that it defied all logic as to how a disease should behave. Microorganisms, be they bacteria or virii (viruses?), don't want to kill their host quickly. They want the host to survive so that they have a chance to spread, and not be stuck in a rotting body when the host keels over. And it's the flu, for chrissakes - you feel miserable for maybe a week, you spend some time recovering, but you do recover. But the Spanish Lady moved so fast that people were healthy in the morning and dead by nightfall. Sometimes entire households would fall sick, and on occasion everyone or nearly everyone under that roof would die, in a week or two.

The other frightening thing is that the epidemic was forgotten so quickly. How on earth do you forget things like shortages of coffins and a backhoe being needed to dig a mass grave, or the carts collecting the dead like something out of the time of the Black Plague? How do you forget people dying because their lungs filled up with fluid and drowned them on dry land?

And how on earth can anyone be so arrogant about the human race or science being invincible after being slapped in the face like this?

The hunt was good, and the gods are pleased.

I love it when libraries hold book sales, mostly because you can find books that the stores tend not to carry that are amazing in their own right and can get them pretty cheaply. This is a good thing for a bibliophile like me, and hopefully I've managed to snag some things I can give as gifts. Finding books for my family and Moreau and his kin can be trickier than usual. I never seem to find exactly what anyone wants, but I think I've turned up some good ones in this trip.

Tomorrow, I'll sort the bunch out into keepers and secondhand store books, and then see if I can haul the bunch over to either of the stores and trade them for credit. With any luck, the pile will be large enough to make the trip worth it without breaking my back or straining my shoulder when I inevitably drop the pile one way or another.

Hopefully I won't drop it on my foot. I managed to whang myself with a one-pound padlock Sunday night. I had no idea that smashing one toe would mess up my walk so badly. Still, I'm walking, and I'm not on crutches or in a cast. It could always be worse.

And I'm still grinning. I got to haul out as many books as I could carry with no help (and I can haul a lot when properly motivated) for only three dollars. Now, if only I had enough shelf space...

Hypothermia (almost) in the name of education

Something I didn't know this morning: while it is unpleasant to be heavily rained on while bicycling, it is physically knock-your-breath-out painful to be heavily rained on while trying to ride into the wind, especially when the wind chill is below freezing. I'm still not totally sure whether my fingers have thawed.

Before you start thinking I'm that much of an idiot or masochist, I have to say in my defense that it was dry, if a little gray, when I originally set out. I headed out to check out one of the new exhibits at the local historical museum and to pick up a few groceries on the way back (in what may or not be coincidence, the exhibit was all about food preparation and eating, and how it's changed over the years from settlement to modern times). Getting almost blown off my bike was unexpected, as were the sudden gusts that felt like hammer blows once I was soaked.

As for the exhibit, while they could only fit in four kitchens, they crammed a lot of information into those four exhibited time periods. What we think of as "American" food was by and large brought in by the immigrant population. The actual diet that most Americans ate was top-heavy with meat and bread or other baked goods, made mostly with corn due to wheat being so expensive. Settlers didn't care much about vegetables and ate as few as humanly possible when they had the choice, from what I gathered.

Oh, and a lot of women died from being burned. Childbirth was the primary cause of death, but death from a cooking-related accident, particularly from the open fire they had to work over, was a close second. And, given this, people wonder why I nearly fall over laughing when they start talking about the good old days.

Things got a little better with the advent of indoor plumbing or a close approximation, but not by much. The post-World War 1 period just looked sterile to me, with white enameled everything - I understand what drove it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

And then came the "modern" kitchen that was supposed to be set in the '50s or '60s but looked alarmingly like the kitchen at home, even down to the fridge that abruptly went kaput when I was nine or so. (I finally learned that that color was supposed to be avocado.) That was in conjunction with a lot of the appliances that we think of as kitchen staples (although I am still personally baffled by automatic dishwashers) and the auto boom.

One interesting little point I learned was that I am apparently in a county known for having the most fast-food joints and restaurants per capita. No wonder this is a car town - cars and restaurants apparently exist in a feedback loop of their own beyond the usual urban sprawl.

Then I had to make my way back through the aforementioned rain with a quick stop for beans and rice. It was still worth the adventure, even if my legs are only now thawing out from my jeans nearly freezing on.

So when do I get the broomstick?

Ethnology was...interesting this afternoon. I really don't want to analyze the results too deeply, because I'm paranoid enough as it is, but this really is interesting.

At the start of the class, the prof announced that she knew someone in the class was a witch (in this context, it could have been male or female). We had to guess who it was by a silent write-in election.

If you want to know, I wrote in that it was the prof. I was being a smart-ass more than anything else, since nobody I knew of claimed to have been involved in anything remotely paranormal.

Come the end of the class (during which everyone sort of nodded off), she announced that the class had elected yours truly as the witch. Apparently I violate the social norms of the class by asking questions, volunteering information, and being the first with my hand up as opposed to sitting silently and only waking up long enough to ask if something will be on the test. The other person who's nominated the most often is the prof, who's capable of doing the most harm to another. It just happened to be me this time.

Hmm. I wonder if that means I have to have a cat now. I'm allergic to cats, too. Can you substitute a dog or another animal for a familiar, or is there a hypoallergenic cat I can adopt? And when do I get to start making things happen like ensuring my garden gets past the seedling stage or getting those stupid extra thirty pounds off my waist?

Klotho: Spinner of Life

...As opposed to me. I just figured out the whole "turning rough, cobwebby strands of wool I think are about to disintegrate in my hands into useable yarn" two or three days ago, and there's no way I could manage anything as complicated as the raw makings of a life.

As of now I have a respectable lump of electric green wool I'm still turning alternately into chunky single-ply and something that could be used for dental floss, a big bag of odds and ends (they came free with the class), a blob of brown wool the size of a child's head (that wasn't free, but it's cheap enough for practice material), and a couple of weird-looking spindles I think I could more easily bonk someone over the head with than use for their intended purpose. And I still keep bursting out laughing at the look of the larger one - a giant "My First Pencil" for the shaft and a wooden toy wheel as the weight. Is there anything on this earth or elsewhere that screams "beginner" quite like that?

The dogs won't have to worry about our family affording their kibble if I can get the hang of this, though. Their fur is long enough, I can convince them to hold still long enough for a bath and brush time, and they shed enough to make another dog between the two of them in a week. Now, if I could just convince my neighbors to let me brush out their long-haired dogs....