January was supposed to be about the art of letter writing, the experiment coming in because we couldn't use electronic media to communicate: no cell phones, no email, no social software, etc. I'm referring to this in the past tense because the experiment was such a complete failure we called it off on the 10th. We may try again, at some point, but for now, we're preparing for tomorrow. And we need a lot of prep work.

February's experiment is to only speak Spanish to each other between the hours of 8am and 8pm. It's an experiment not just because talking in another language can be difficult, but because neither of us speaks Spanish. At all. We got by in Argentina with our half-forgotten, simplified Italian and the occasional Spanish greeting, but neither of us has ever studied the language (and we couldn't "cheat" by studying in January). So, in addition to trying to navigate conversations with family, friends, grocery clerks and what-not in English while remembering to speak Spanish to each other, we also have to learn Spanish. Eeee! I'm so excited!

I have invented a variation called the Portimotxo:

1/2 glass of port wine (here the Kalimotxo uses red wine)
1/2 glass of cola
1 lime wedge

Mix these ingredients (in a glass of ice, if you like) and enjoy this very sweet, simple drink...oh, and happy holidays!

When friends get together a few days after Thanksgiving to enjoy a pot-luck dinner, we call it Friendsgiving. It happened again this year. Towards the end of the evening, some friends, Leah and I sat comfortably behind our bellies and talked. The chaotic path of group conversation led me to recall a book I read in Pittsburgh a few years ago.

I shared a section of the book with the group about a particular parasite, which is widespread, but generally unknown. The parasite's life cycle is in house cats, but a large portion of house cat owners worldwide have it. Few know about it because, until recently, the parasite was considered to have little effect on humans. But, it turns out to have a subtle and strange impact on our lives. People with the parasite shop more.

As I talked, I realised that I didn't remember the author's name, or the title. I didn't remember the name of the parasite, where or when the study was done. In fact, I didn't remember enough to sound reasonable. I'd put a kink into thread of polite conversation. Several friends looked at me blankly. Leah glanced at my drink to see if I'd had to much. I briefly started to repeat myself and then trailed off. Pause. The conversation launched in a new direction.

Not surprisingly, I've been wanting to remember the book title since Saturday. Today, after an arduous Google search, I found it:

It's Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem, and the parasite is called Taxoplasma Gondii. I was wrong about some of the details. The parasite actually infects about half the world; 20% of the US population and 90% of the people in France are infected, for example. Humans acquire it "by eating undercooked meat or poorly washed vegetables or after handling cat litter." Then the parasite establishes itself in muscle and brain cells. In mice and rats, the parasite alters their brain to make them lose their natural fear of cats. Cats eat the rodents and the parasite (which only breeds in cats) completes its life cycle.

In humans, the parasite is largely benign, but may complicate some illnesses--especially in pregnant women. Professor Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague found the correlation that women with the parasite spend more money on clothes, care more about how they look, and are "more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends." Men with the infection are more likely to be "less well groomed...suspicious and jealous and less willing to follow rules." Wow!

I have to admit: I partly wanted to write this post because this is not the first time I haven't been able to think of this title. Now I just have to remember to search my own posts. Nice. I also picked up a copy from the library to re-read it. If you're interested you might want to check it out from your local library, too. Or, I guess if you own a cat, who knows: maybe you'll buy it.

It's not quite as intimidating as it might sound for a first lab, partly because it wasn't a true dissection, in the sense that no one critiqued how well we cut into the heart. Mostly it's not intimidating because for everyone else in the class this wasn't actually their first lab. This is the second semester of a two semester course, so yesterday's lab was more a continuation for most students than an introduction. But since I had the first semester about twelve years ago and I don't remember doing any dissections at all for it, getting to poke at a sheep's heart on the first day seemed really exciting and slightly nerve wracking.

I'm disappointed, though, that I missed out on dissecting a brain last semester. That must have been really interesting.

School makes me not quite giddy, unless you count the butterflies in my tummy. Is it weird to say I'm more nervous now than when I started grad school? Because I think I am. Other than the three science classes I had to take to satisfy core requirements as an undergrad the first time, I haven't had a science class since high school. And now I have two, and they're hard ones! And they have labs! But they should be a lot of fun, too, and the professors seem both nice and engaging, which is an enormous plus.

The only down side to starting a completely different program, is probably the down side Obama is facing: it's going to be a lot of work. And here I am, finally comfortable with having "nothing" to do, too.

Perhaps more applicable, though, is that part of the reason for not posting is because I feel we haven't been doing anything terribly interesting about which to write. Writing from Madagascar can't fail to be interesting, and even babbling about hiking in New Zealand sounds faintly exotic, so has a guaranteed interest factor, but writing about what we do, or don't do, in Boise seems much less interesting. Which is too bad, because actually we've been doing some pretty neat things.

We've had lots of fun hanging out with friends, snowshoeing, knitting and baking (me), building bat and bird houses (David), and planning our futures. Which are also vaguely interesting, at least to us. David's starting his PhD in electrical engineering at BSU (apparently it finally dawned on someone that the BS in BSU was ripe for all sorts of jokes so they're trying to re-brand the school as Boise State. Whatever.) on the 20th. And I've decided that nope, indeed I have no interest in being a manager, which is what my masters degrees have trained me for, so I got my old job back at the library and I too, am going back to school, this time as an undergraduate in nursing with the goal of becoming a Nurse Practitioner. Oooh, and we get to learn Spanish!

And then we became an aunt and uncle on Thursday, to Quinn, a healthy baby girl born at 10:23 am, who has lots of black, curly hair, weighs 7 lbs 15 oz and is 20 1/2 inches long. We leave on the 15th for a quick trip to Portland to meet her and check in on her parents.

So there has been some neat stuff going on. It just hasn't seemed like it at the time. Except the baby. Babies always seem exciting at the time.

With Mama and Papa, we went to the local protest against California's Prop 8, organized by Join the Impact. We also met most of our friends there, since civil rights are something we're all proponents of. The protest was pleasant, though the mic system was not quite adequate for the crowd, so I spent a lot of time cooing over Ben, Alisha's youngest, or talking to Alisha and Amy, while we all enjoyed the sun. David took pictures, naturally, the best of which you can see here:

Prop H8 Protest

And then we all went to lunch, which was fun (though may I say that Bittercreek was a little stingy with its tzatziki sauce on the pita David and I shared).

In the evening, after walking home via Boise State's library, we went bowling, something we always enjoy, but don't do nearly often enough. We were going to meet our friend Ed, but he stood us up, having thought that we were meeting Sunday evening, instead. So he missed my rather nifty game of 145, and the two less nifty games that followed of 86 and 89. Seriously, when you haven't been bowling in awhile, your hand starts to hurt! In fact, David would claim that more than just your hand hurts, since he woke up Sunday morning with a sore backside, but I maintain it was because of the walking, something we haven't done nearly enough of since moving back. Life is just so hard, isn't it?

The good. Obama won in an electoral landslide and his tide of dreams swept clean many Congressional seats, which promises hope that the US can pull out of the dark ages of the last eight years. Or maybe the dark ages have been going on much longer. Thomas Friedman pointed out that the American Civil War began in Virginia 174 years ago and, in many ways, ended there on Tuesday. Overstated, but inspiring. Notably for the record turnout, especially among minorities.

The bad. Idaho politics didn't shake the narrow-minded conservatism that bogs down political life here, except in two cases. 1) Voters from four districts that form the core of Boise (including the district in which I live) enabled a sweep for their democratic state legislators. 2) Idaho will be sending one democrat to the House in Washington. He's a true "Idaho democrat," which means he'd be a republican in almost any other state, but still, Idahoans did actually elect a democrat.

The ugly. California, Florida and Arizona approved anti-marriage ballot measures, which undermines the concept of marriage (and the legal protection it provides) by limiting who can and can't be married. According to exit polls (which Nate Silver tells me to distrust) the bulk of racial minorities voted for these hateful measures. If so, it is baffling how, in one day, progress can be made for racial minorities and those same minorities can simultaneously beat up on another minority. But, by far, the ugliest result on Tuesday was the Arkansas' anti-child ballot measure, which hurt orphans by reducing the number of loving homes to which they could otherwise belong.

In the end, maybe Benjamin Franklin said it best, "Democracy is two wolves and one sheep deciding on what to have for dinner."

But until all of that happens, David created another time-lapse movie of our Day 2 work, which you can watch below. You know, just to prove that we do, in fact, work. At least on occasion.

From Geekery

Does anyone else think it looks a bit too much like a hammer and sickle?

What took the wind from the sails of victory last week started with an abdominal pain I had after breakfast Thursday. (In truth, I had had a mild intermittent pain for the previous few weeks.) I spent all Thursday in bed moaning while waves of pain broke over me. By evening the pain localized in my lower right side. (If you're a doctor, or interested in medicine, you can probably guess what happened next.) The pain had not subsided by Friday morning, when I went to a local emergency room. An exam, confirmed with a CT scan, indicated a bad appendix. The surgery was later that day.

But then, after spending about four days in Boise, I realized how much I really do like it: there's so little traffic, and people are so nice. Plus, Idaho has everything we love to do in the out of doors. The politics leave a lot to be desired, but really, other than that, Boise is perfect. So we've decided to stay for a couple of years while we figure out a way of getting to Africa without having to spend a few years back East.

Naturally, however, all of this means we need to be seeking employment. Or at least one of us does, anyway. So as all good decision makers do when making important, potentially life-changing decisions, we played rock paper scissors to determine which one of us has to actually get a job. And sadly, I lost. David wouldn't even go for my best-out-of-three ploy! Can you believe it?

So now, whenever we get around to making the old house presentable to sell, I'll be looking for a job. Sigh. But until then, I won't have one, which is just so much better.