Another Caturday-eve video....

Simon’s Cat in Lunch Break

US Map Showing The TV Series Best Representing Each State

DC gets "The Pretender" Not that I didn't love that show, but there are a variety of better shows. Like, say Bones.

Okay. I am making progress today. After working until midnight last night with the last victorious keystroke only to discover that my corrections put my number off by even more than I was wrong in the first place. Woes.

Today I decided I needed a clear head and to put the Big Task aside and try to work on all the little tasks that Must Get Done before I leave. And whaddya know, those mostly didn't take that much time. So now lunch, and then tackling the Big Task again.

DC gets "The Pretender"

Actually, that's Delaware.

Happy Birthday Jessica!

US Map Showing The TV Series Best Representing Each State

Those are pretty funny.

Apple bran muffin. I still feel cheated, though this is quite tasty. Too sweet, though.

The Insanity Virus

Is schizophrenia caused by genetics or environment? The answer may be both, but in a way you’d never imagine. The culprit may be a virus! The good news is that you don’t have to worry about catching this virus. The bad news is that we all carry it in every cell of our bodies.

Sixty million years ago, a lemurlike animal—an early ancestor of humans and monkeys—contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and once there, it struck the jackpot: It slipped inside one of the rare germ line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare, random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford in England. “Over the last 100 million years, there have been only maybe 50 times when a retrovirus has gotten into our genome and proliferated.”

But such genetic intrusions stick around a very long time, so humans are chockablock full of these embedded, or endogenous, retroviruses. Our DNA carries dozens of copies of Perron’s virus, now called human endogenous retrovirus W, or HERV-W, at specific addresses on chromosomes 6 and 7.

This virus was long thought to be “junk DNA”, which makes up a fair amount of our genetic material, but doesn’t affect us. The new line of research says that this virus, if it is activated at a certain age under the right conditions, may cause changes to human immune systems that lead to the development of not only schizophrenia, but multiple sclerosis and possibly other diseases.

GRONK. Ugh.

I am waiting for my sleep script to be renewed in a couple of weeks, as we are switching insurance companies. It's actually going better than it has before, me not having sleep meds, except that cold/sinus infection I had last weekend is lingering, but really only flares up at night; when I get horizontal, I start coughing and hacking, and my nose gets that lovely combo of congested, yet running.

So I got sleep, but I slept pretty crappy with all the coughing and snorting, and I find it impossible to sleep with my mouth guard in without meds, so I have spent the last 3 days grinding my teeth, and my jaw hurts.

Jessica, happy birthday! A deep clean sounds like a FAB gift!!!

Which I realized last weekend staring at my senior portrait, mostly shocked at my eyebrows in their natural state.

Oh, god, this. My eyebrows and my hair color are natural, and I am wearing pink and pearls. And my jewelry is gold, not silver or white gold. Oh, 17 year old self! You still had not found your place in the world!

D's brother left this morning. He was a lovely guest, and I like him very much, but I am happy to be able to walk around without a bra again.

Also, I really agree with what you all said about the retreat thing. It wouldn't ping me so bad if they were growing some of their own food, or knitting mittens, or constructing prayer wheels for sale to support themselves or something. As a very hermit-like person myself, I totally support contemplative practices, but I also believe in balance. They could be all anchorite-y for three years and still do some shit. Milk some goats, yo. Make your own cheese. Mindful work is meditative.

The Insanity Virus

I read the Discover article on that last night. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Congrats, sj!