I wanna' live! And other thoughts on the flu

 
I'll post something normal once I'm better enough that checking e-mail isn't disorienting.

Just moments ago I looked at the list of messages in my inbox. And stared.

"Uh...how do I do this? Which one do I read first? The bold ones, right? And why are they wiggling?"

Eating 2 meals in 3 days is NOT good for your IQ. Or your eyesight, apparently.

FYI, if you find yourself in your undies, curled up in the fetal position on bathroom tile at 3 a.m., and then ask (between moans and "ow"s) for a pillow and a blanket, you are not well.

This is the first time the flu has ever scared me. I can see how it's killed so many people.

Jeeze.

So teetering around the house today, trying to get re-oriented to my life. Not exaggerating.

Had to ask Bear yesterday "When was I really sick, was it last night?" "No, the night before." "Oh." I really had no idea. That's a new symptom.

I feel like I must have fried some brain cells, 'cause I keep not knowing what to do.

"What do I usually do when I'm getting over the flu?"
(p.s. imagine long pauses between each thought, with NOTHING in between. Just dead air = bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
"Should I nap?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Make toast?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Do the dishes?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Plant lettuce?"
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Annnd she stares out the window. For a while. Then gets a glass of water. Hooray!

The one thing I do know I should not do is work. This brain is not in any state to edit other conscious people's text. If they had eaten within 24 hours of writing their papers they're way ahead of me.

xo

bb

p.s. Case in point, 1st draft of last sentence above I wrote "paper's"!!! I committed the ever-more-popular writing tic of adding apostrophes everywhere possible and completely unnecessary (as in your basic plural). My #1 pet peeve, of late. Not well.
p.p.s. And "dead air" took me 5 minutes to come up with.
"Blank air?" bzzzz "Flat air?" bzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Blank air?" bzzzzzzzzz "Flat air??" bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"the cooking ape"

 
I actually laughed and clapped at the end, despite being alone in my house. So delightful.

Harvard Thinks Big 2010 - Richard Wrangham - 'Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human' from HTB2 on Vimeo.

This dude rocks.

If you don't know, my most serious academic and intellectual dalliance was in evolution and human behavior (before I went all conservation-biology-NPS-save-the-planet-y), so I am familiar with Richard Wrangham and love, love, LOVE thinking about this sort of stuff.

*happysigh*

In fact, my first night out of California was spent attending a meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) when I was 20 years old.


Thanks SO much to Carl Zimmer for cluing me in to his super-interesting article in Discover Magazine. It's a full-on 5-star article on the bb-scale, A Body Fit for a Freaky-Big Brain.

FYI, to get 5 stars from bb, you gotta

• write something I see as of now or later, vs. 15 minutes ago, since I just made up this 5 star thing up,
• write something I find fascinating
• write in such a way that it's EASY for me to rip through, given my ADD-nature, this is no small task
• not write in such a way that I think your statements are questionable, based on little or low-quality data, or dependent upon questionable (and, worse, also unstated) assumptions
• preferably supply references so I can dig further (also handy if I'm not yet convinced)
  

Seriously. This has made my day.


Brain happy.


And well and efficiently fed.

xoxoxo

bb

vocab answers...

 
Per Merriam-Webster:
propitiate: "to gain or regain the favor or goodwill of : appease"

fistula: "an abnormal passage that leads from an abscess or hollow organ or part to the body surface or from one hollow organ or part to another and that may be surgically created to permit passage of fluids or secretions

Origin of FISTULA
Middle English, from Latin, pipe, fistula
First Known Use: 14th century"

I like that fistula is for the Latin word for pipe, as it seems that is it's function, whether it occurs naturally, or is created during surgery ("for thereaputic reasons" per Wikipedia).

Okay, JUST so you know that I occasionally experience pain for this blog, I just clicked on (with great trepidation) "images" on the Google search page for fistula. I do NOT recommend this, considering one of the first types of fistulas listed in articles, frequently, is anal fistulas. Full color images.

oog.

ANYhow, I cannot recall any context wherein I learned fistula and, apparently inaccurately?, associate it with developmental physiology.

OH, I know why it makes me think of developmental phys: blastula (which kinda rhymes). THAT is a very basic thing in developmental biology.

Public domain image courtesy of Pidalka44. Thanks!

Wikipedia on blastula:
"The blastula (from Greek βλαστός (blastos), meaning "sprout") is a hollow sphere of cells formed during an early stage of embryonic development in animals. The blastula is created when the zygote undergoes the cell division process known as cleavage.[1] The blastula follows the morula and precedes the gastrula in the developmental sequence."

Alrighty.

Pretty much all of you intrepid guessers were either spot on or totally on the right track, so BULLY for ALL of you (Bub, Victoria, and Lynda).

=)

Thank you for participating, and certainly, as new on-the-edge-of-the-dust-bin words pop up in my mind, I will share them with you.

And perhaps together we can encourage those data managers in my (our?) head(s) to file those words BACK in the old brain case vs. chucking them (and my/our college education $$) out into the street.

After all, that'd be the low carbon footprint thing to do.

Refuse (verb) refuse (noun).

Reuse!

biobabbler