I woke up today feeling much better. I still have the remnants of the cold, but I'm about 90% back to normal. I got to go to Stats today (which was only slightly confusing, el yay) and the primate behavior class. I didn't want to miss today because Dr. C (the instructor, my advisor) was going to talk about old world monkeys and I wanted to learn more about 'em.

I work with old world monkeys, y'see. Specifically, I work with this critter. No, that is not me. No, that is not my advisor/PI. There is an exceptionally good reason we WILL NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER do stuff that sites suggests, as nice as it sounds. A certain percentage of these monkeys can have Simian/Monkey Virus B. If you read the article, you'll see that this disease can make you DEAD--and QUICK. Just seeing people handle rhesus macaques like above strikes me as unnecessarily life-threatening. One scratch, one bite, and that's it. Thankfully they've got anti-herpes B meds now and they usually work if they catch it in time. Trouble is that by the time you show more than flu-like symptoms, you are the walking dead.

I can't believe some soldiers in Afghanistan have bought some as pets. Damned fools, every one of them.

Just my public service announcement if you ever happen to come near a rhesus monkey.

On a much less serious note, life is going excellently well. The homework is nearly complete except for one problem; Open Mic night starts in 30 minutes; I wrote up another 4 pages of dialogue stuff yesterday and 2 more today; and over the weekend I just need to do next week's readings.

In terms of work stuff, I got an e-mail back from my prospective undergrad assistant. She seems like a pleasant and competent young woman. I've only talked to her once, but she does have alot of enthusiasm for wanting to help. I gave her about three science articles to read to get a feel for the types of experiments and research questions I'm doing and looking in to. I want to meet with her soon to see if she's interested and, more importantly, if she's got the credentials. Not that I'm a prick about expecting people to be 4.0 genius vat babies, far from it. I just want to make sure, quite frankly, that she doesn't waste her time pursuing a line of work that requires you to have top-notch grades and standardized test scores.

Getting into grad. school ain't gettin' any easier, and depending on what she's got in her major and overall GPA I'll give her the low-down. Fucked up system that way in a way, but if academia is any one thing, it is not fair.

Besides that, I'm meeting a fellow grad student, Megan, on Monday to go over the homework and to talk at my usual coffee haunt. She might be late due to a possible 'cute lesbian encounter', but I figure I'll be at the place anyway and flirting deserves a little lee-way.

She's an exceedingly pleasant person and we've done some work on a few other occasions. I'm thinking out of all the grads in our incoming class that's she's about as likely a friend as I'll find. Don't get me wrong, most of the other grad students are friendly and pleasant. But you know the socially expected friendly and pleasant behavior: you or they are that way only when the situation dictates it...like when you're out some place having beer, you or they need something, or you and they are working together. Otherwise, may as well be ghosts to one another.

So maybe we'll strike up a friendship, maybe not, but I like her personality and she seems fun.

Well, the time for beer approacheth, so I'm gonna ditch this wank factory and get a move on.

Hope all you have a fabulous weekend.

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