…from the wikipedia article on “disgust”:

Huntington’s disease

Many patients suffering from Huntington’s disease, a genetically transmitted progressive neurodegenerative disease, are unable to recognize expressions of disgust in others and also don’t show reactions of disgust to foul odors or tastes.^[6] The inability to recognize disgust in others appears in carriers of the Huntington gene before other symptoms appear.^[7]

…is going batshit crazy and stabbing the girl who can’t go three minutes without mentioning Her Research.*

i’ve decided not to continue with my pollination ecology class.  for weeks now, i’ve been bemoaning the fact that i’m not learning anything (it’s one of those idiotic courses where Many Thoughtful Questions are asked, and no actual answers are given.  our instructor is like a sit-com psychologist, nodding and smiling and saying “mm-hm” and “so why do you think that is?” a lot, and offering nothing.)  but the last week or two, it’s been making me actively unhappy and stressed beyond what can even be considered normal for someone of my admittedly tight-wiring, and then i remembered:  i don’t have to do this.  i can quit.  it’s okay, because i’m doing it for myself and if myself says you know what i hate this let’s bag it… well, okay then.  let’s bag it.  i’ve worn the dented crown of quitterhood before, and i survived. 

the upside of being down a class - besides the fact that ever since last friday afternoon, when i made the conscious decision to unburden myself of it, i’ve felt insanely relieved - is that i can now divert all that attention and energy to all the other crap i need to do, like plan the orchestra’s fundraising event, and please don’t ask how i got that job, because i am absolutely clueless myself.  of all the board members, i believe that i’m the least qualified to plan and organize a fundraiser.  so obviously they gave it to me.

the other thing that needs to be dealt with is my throat.  i saw the otolaryngologist (<— and i have yet to pronounce that word fully and correctly on the first try, in any conversation where it’s come up, btw) last week, and we decided that i will have a tonsillectomy, at the horrifying age of 36.  i mean, i make jokes about how old i am and all, but in this case, i actually am fucking ancient, and it will make a difference.  but:  i think it should be done, he thinks it should be done, and so it will be done.  i like him, and i trust him - in no small part because he was straight with me about how much it’s going to suck, while maintaining confidence of a good outcome when it’s all over.  so i’ve left a message with the surgical coordinator, and i’m planning to do it in june, when my mother is taking both my kids to california, and at least i can cross “house full of aggravation” off the list of things that would serve to make my recovery even more painful.

finally, i have to call a guy about some bees.  a couple hives didn’t make it through the winter, so i need to get my grimy little hands on some more.  i told bill that if i’m incapacitated with recovery in late june, he might need to do a little beekeeping for me, to keep things running smoothly.  he was not amused.

*actually, that wouldn’t be so bad either.  maybe i can do both.

so i volunteer as the music librarian for my orchestra.  i also, in an unrelated capacity, authored the member feedback survey that was sent to the musicians earlier today; one of the questions asks people to rate the effectiveness of various volunteers and staff members, including me.

i just took a look at the responses that have come in so far.  one of the respondents skipped that particular item, noting that “i don’t use the librarian.”

i el-oh-elled at that, and am seriously left wondering what, exactly, this person thinks other people are doing with me.

last night bill was saying that he’d been thinking about going to the norman rockwell museum for vacation.  “oh!” i said, and slapped his leg - the obvious thing to do when one is excited, right? - “i was too!” 

“i even looked up the website,” he said.

“so did i!”

there’s no point to this, other than the obvious one, which is that we’re totally a couple of old fogies who think that looking at a bunch of folksy paintings constitutes a nice vacation, and also, that we’re lucky to be stuck with each other, because at least we’re on the same page about it.

in other news, i’m supposed to be in the planning stages of a research paper for my pollination ecology course.  this is troublesome, since i have no idea whatsoever how to write a research paper.  or, well, i guess that’s not accurate:  i’m sure i can write one just fine.  it’s that i have no idea how to do research.  or choose a topic.  i met with my professor this morning for our scheduled Show Me What You’ve Come Up With So Far chat; she seemed underwhelmed by my envelope full of scrawled mental wanderings (which curved artfully around a sidebar section in which bill, mom, billy, evie, and i had taken bets on exactly what time my brother and his girlfriend would make it to my house yesterday, after telling bill at about twenty after two that they were “just about to leave”… they live roughly 15 minutes away, and bill won with his dead-on guess of 3:20.)

it’s not that i don’t find the topics fascinating, because i do.  it’s just that the stuff that makes me slap my forehead and grin is rarely the stuff that makes other people do it, and when you’re the only one smiling and hitting yourself in the face, you’re pretty much guaranteed to look like the idiot in the room.  and if there’s one thing i learned in school the first time, it’s that the clearest path to a good grade is talking about shit the professor thinks is worthwhile, even if you’re talking straight out your ass the whole time. 

additionally, i still have no idea what the point of the paper is supposed to be.  think up a question, read a bunch of other peoples’ papers, and answer the question based on what they’ve written.  why?

“you’ll want to come up with an intellectual approach to the topic,” my instructor told me, after listening to me summarize my envelope, “because there’s a lot of literature in that area, but you don’t want to just restate someone else’s paper, you want to come up with a new way of looking at it.  you see?”

um, no.  not really. 

and honestly, i’ll be really really shocked if i manage to get an A in this class, considering how heavily this paper (and the accompanying oral presentation, which i’m refusing to even address at the moment, so horrifying do i find the prospect) is weighted.  hell, i’ve easily spent half of my project time so far just trying to figure out how to use the fucking university library system.  i’m starting from less than zero on this one, and it’s already wearing my brain out. 

 i tell you what, though:  i’m really looking forward to that as-yet undeclared vacation to see those paintings. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100211/us_time/08599196344700

i admit:  i had no idea that there was no women’s olympic ski jumping.  and my reaction to reading the headline was a sort of subarticulate whaaaa? indicating my belief that either i was misunderstanding it, or it was just very poorly written.  but no, it turns out, there is no women’s ski jumping.  highlights of the article include such fabulous statements as,

“I don’t think there’s any discrimination going on,” says Joe Lamb, the U.S. ski team representative for the International Ski Federation’s (FIS) ski jumping committee. “It may seem like that, but there are hundreds of other issues at play.”

issues such as?

Vancouver can accommodate only so many athletes, says Lamb.

ohhhhh.  gotcha. must be those crazy boobies, getting in everyone’s way. meanwhile, from this asshole: 

Gian Franco Kasper, FIS president and a member of the IOC, said that he didn’t think women should ski jump because the sport “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”

oh, well then.  as long as you’ve got the ladies’ medical interests at heart. 

you know what i find most amazing?  is that these guys can walk down the street an not be quote-unquote accidentally run down by a van full of angry ski jumpers. 

bahahahaa, just think of it:  women, driving!