My friends have met me.
Rob, to Amy: "I hope you can abandon your cold on a BART train soon."
Me, to Rob: "If she leaves it on a BART train, I may pick it up. Why do you hate me so?"
Rob, to me: "But honey...you like finding unexpected viruses in paper bags on trains. It's almost your hobby."
In other news, I have the best cousin in the world, because Victor called me to make sure I'd heard about a new arenavirus associated with hemorrhagic fever. It only has about a 70% amino acid similarity with the closest relative that we know of, which means it's a really, really new arenavirus. For the win! It looks like it's going to be named 'Chapare', which is a very pretty name for a virus, and it's happily making people die in Bolivia. Well, person, so far.
It says something about my relationship with Victor that we followed this news with a lively discussion of emerging pathogens and various viruses that want to kill us all. Kate would like me to be aware that my bus drivers can call Homeland Security to report me (this discussion happened on the Transbay Bus); I pointed out that it's not like we were talking about actually releasing any unholy pathogens into the wild, but apparently, my adoration of the things they do is odd enough to be worrisome, at times. Ah, well.
Arenavirus!
Me, to Rob: "If she leaves it on a BART train, I may pick it up. Why do you hate me so?"
Rob, to me: "But honey...you like finding unexpected viruses in paper bags on trains. It's almost your hobby."
In other news, I have the best cousin in the world, because Victor called me to make sure I'd heard about a new arenavirus associated with hemorrhagic fever. It only has about a 70% amino acid similarity with the closest relative that we know of, which means it's a really, really new arenavirus. For the win! It looks like it's going to be named 'Chapare', which is a very pretty name for a virus, and it's happily making people die in Bolivia. Well, person, so far.
It says something about my relationship with Victor that we followed this news with a lively discussion of emerging pathogens and various viruses that want to kill us all. Kate would like me to be aware that my bus drivers can call Homeland Security to report me (this discussion happened on the Transbay Bus); I pointed out that it's not like we were talking about actually releasing any unholy pathogens into the wild, but apparently, my adoration of the things they do is odd enough to be worrisome, at times. Ah, well.
Arenavirus!