Talking about contagious zoonotic diseases is not the best way to start one's day, I've decided.

I went to the monthly volunteer meeting at the wildlife museum this morning. I realized last night that in all my time volunteering there (an entire year already!), I've never been to one of the meetings! I am a naughty docent. Anyway, this morning I went, and as usual whenever I go to the museum for any reason, I was happy I did. Just sitting there and discussing things about wildlife with people who really care about what they do is very uplifting.

We talked extensively about the West Nile Virus and Newcastle's disease (a poultry virus, from what I understand), and it was very creepy. Scary stuff that could seriously affect us when it comes up towards this area. We might have another year before it does, but still. Yikes. I'll have to remember to try to keep up with the news as more research is done.

I talked briefly with one of the hospital volunteers who went to college with my brother. She is a really cool person, always pleasant, and always has a nice smile to share with the world. It's great! We were talking about wildlife, animal volunteer locations, how we celebrated new year's eve, and biology. I told her that when you think of all the things it takes for us to work properly, it's amazing we're all walking around at all. Our hearts beat, and our lungs breathe, and we are usually not even aware of it. That in itself is totally astounding to me, sometimes.

It's also amazing all the things we do that are so different from how other animals handle issues in the world. We create vaccines, and we use radiation and chemotherapy and all kinds of drugs and chemicals to prevent or treat illnesses. We do research such as injecting mice with West Nile Virus and feeding them to captive red tailed hawks to find out if ingesting an infected animal causes the disease to spread to the predator who ate it. I mean, isn't that weird? At the same time, it hardly seems fair to call any of it unnatural, because we are humans -- animals that are part of this world, just like the other animals, and we evolved to figure out how to do all these things. And while our ways of coping with and preventing disease are far more complex than those of other animals, they're really not so different, because the instinct is the same. Each species does what it can to survive and sustain itself.

The world is a weird and fascinating place.

In other news, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans are disgusting! Serves me right for trying them, I guess.

Backstory: MissP and Macnut were up from L.A., and so we met up with them for dinner tonight. Traffic was surprisingly light from home to Joe's workplace. Even the bay bridge wasn't too crowded! I ate an apple while Joe finished up some work. All I'd had all day were some carrots, cake and cookies at the docent meeting. Man, am I sucking at giving up sugar or what? Damn. But! No caffeine since New Year's! I rock. It's true.

Okay, so then we picked up MissP and Macnut from their hotel and while trying to drive to the Metreon and find parking, we somehow ended up going around the block about four times until we got to where we were going! It was crazy. No left turns allowed anywhere! San Francisco kind of sucks like that.

So we walked around the Metreon and had a really nice dinner at one of the restaurants in the food court place. It is set up like a plain old food court, except it has extremely delicious food. I had a 6oz. tri-tip sandwich, Philly style (cheese, onions, and peppers). In what other group of friends, I ask you, could I receive applause for abandoning my vegetarian ways? You gotta love the carnivorous smoker friends. You really do.

We walked around the shops, including a candy shop which sold schmillions (it's a number!) of JellyBelly jelly beans. I asked MissP if she'd ever tried the every flavor beans, and as she was saying no, I turned to see my dear husband holding a box of those very beans!! He said, "We gotta try them! You know you want to!"

So he bought them. It took a lot of convincing, but I guess MissP and I really do have a morbid sense of curiosity, when it comes right down to it. We were both holding vomit flavored beans (I know...), and I counted to three. I popped mine in my mouth and started chewing and A barely bit into hers. "You cheater!" I laughed at her as a thoroughly disgusting taste infiltrated my taste buds. It tasted like garlic powder mixed with fruit. A said that while it didn't really taste like vomit, she's sure she would vomit if she ate another one.

But did it end there? Oh, no. No, it did not.

A tried a sardine flavored one and I tried the ear wax one, which I immediately spat out. She finished hers and was shocked at how fishy it truly did taste. Then MissP's poor finger was struck with some sort of weird malady that caused pain to shoot through it, and her finger to swell. She said she was going to sue.

I tried the dirt one (I know, what's wrong with me? Someone, help!), and it tasted like dirt. Don't ask me what I was expecting. It was awful!!

The cherry, lemon, and watermelon ones were actually really, really good. When I got home, though, my mouth was so full of weird jelly bean flavors that the only way I could think to get rid of it was to eat the leftover cinnadots from Dominos. (Heh!)

Other cool stuff I bought before we headed home: two buttons! I'm not a huge button fan, normally, but I could not resist these!! Instead of Hello Kitty, they said Hello Rottweiler, and Hello Pittbull. Oh. my. god. Too cute!!! Especially with the doggie pictures to accompany them! The pittbull one is pink! I can't tell you how much I love these crazy pins. I can't wait to show them off at work tomorrow!

The sales girl totally didn't get what made those so cool to me. It's because I like those breeds a lot, damnit. She was like, "Did you see the hell-o satan, one??" I don't care. It's not a dog. Then she showed me her, "God save me from the Christians" pin, which I thought was just weird, really. Just give me my puppy pins and leave me be. No, seriously. I mean it.

We walked around a little more and were directed to the restrooms by a crazy lady who kept on talking and talking even though we had no idea what she was saying! She was pointing and carrying on, like we were old friends, but every syllable that came out of her mouth sounded like jibberish. It was pretty surreal.

Then, everything was closed. So we wandered back to the car and chatted some more and talked about places we'd have to visit once we move back to L.A. It was loads of fun and I'm really glad we got to do that tonight! I even wore my fancy shirt, necklace and (gasp!) make-up! It was awesome. Today was just kind of a dress-up day!

And an eat-disgusting-things day.

And a freak-out-about-diseases day.

But still, a fun day! And that's what counts!

Have fun, people!

Love,
Meg