Scary Stuff Part 1

Artist:

I knew it was prudent to say 48 hours on my last update, because less than twenty-four hours later, I was working overtime – I find it kind of hard to write risk assessments and draw comic strips at the same time. I multi-task a lot, and if I were ambidextrous… My blood pressure’s probably better off not knowing.

I discovered a new blog The Daily Monthly, via the twitterings of Boraz (from Twitter), author of Blog Around the Clock (go have a look-see), written by Dave Munger, where he intends to blog daily about a monthly subject. The opening topic is AIDS, something I know shockingly little about. A family member of mine had AIDS, although that wasn’t his cause of death. I didn’t know him all that well, he was intensely private and it took him years to tell me he was gay, when I was 12 or so.

We spoke on MSN, by phone and he came down to visit about once a year. I wanted to see him more often, to know him better, but it was hard to break through a blockade he’d erected before I was even born, I’m not exactly a therapist – I usually bulldoze my way through things or avoid them altogether for fear of causing more trauma. He saw human-larva number one after it was born, but missed number two by a measly 7-day gap.

On the subject of rectifying my immense knowledge gaps about infectious disease, I’ve just started my new course, Infectious Disease, so take a look at Girl Geekery in the near future as I’ll be blogging as I learn, a kind of continuous revision exercise. Right now though, I’m going to get a spiced tea, and read this, and this, with all the added linkages – given my latest area of study, I’m very interested in the malaria-DDT argument in the second article.