Sorry I have not written for a while. I ended up with the flu and have felt terrible. Not entirely sure what kind of flu it is but that does not really matter now, I am on the mend. I am just hoping that my professor lets me make up my test that I missed today. I have never missed class and I have an A in there, but you never know. Sometimes these professors have God complexes, no it's true they do. This one is new and definitely needs his ego stroked regularly!!! What bothers me is all of the posters around campus, along with the news media, reminding you to stay home if you have a fever, and then when you do, it is not EXCUSED!!! A professor can cancel class, which I pay for thank you, without any notice. However, if you are ill, you better come to class because it will not be excused. How is this protecting the spread of viruses???? I have pregnant women in my classes, should I not consider them? Along with this philosophy, is parents sending their children to school, medicated to mask their symptoms, sick!!! Obviously people are not taking this flu thing seriously. Well, I guess many have received the shot and don't feel the need to take precautions anymore. I don't know. I guess I just get irritated with that. I understand it is difficult to call in due to a sick child. Not everyone is a stay home parent, or has a back up plan when their kids get sick. However, that does not condone the action!!! We parents have mostly the same issues!!! My main point in this is STAY HOME WHEN YOU ARE SICK!!!! I am mainly concerned with my class and the test that I missed. The other professors e-mailed me wishing me wellness. This one on the other hand has said nothing. So where do I stand?? I will let you know.

Speaking of germs!!! I got the results back from my streak plate tests and let me tell you GROSS!!!! If you think that the toilet seat is gross in a public bathroom, I am here to tell you that it is one of the cleaner things we tested!! Our shoes are filthy!! How many times do you wash your shoes?? Not very often huh?? I will not go into the detail of what diseases are on the bottom of your shoes but think about ALL of the places we walk everyday, day in and day out!!! We don't wear our shoes in our house and let me tell you, now that I am privy to seeing what is growing on my shoes I wouldn't wear my shoes in the house if I previously had!!! I had seriously contemplated burning them but promptly realized that every one's shoes, not just my nasty one's, were victim to these micro-organisms!!!

I was also privileged to participate in a grant from the USDA to do gene sequencing on the chick pea! I will forever be a part of the chick pea genome project for the USDA!!! The chick pea is highly nutritionally dense, so the USDA is conducting a research project, which I participated in, to see how quickly we can grow chick peas. It is thought that the chick pea would serve as a better source of nutrition for poor countries than rice due to its dense nutritional value. I was so excited about this. President Obama's Head USDA advisor came and spoke to our class. My professor was supposed to email me the pictures but he has not done that yet. When he does I will post them. So, I got to use two $10,000 micro-pipettes, and remove the genes from the chick pea and place them into a machine for sequencing. It was much more complicated than that and took about an hour but it is too boring to write about each step. I have such a passion for places who have such poor and underdeveloped countries that I could not help but be excited about this project!! They are also researching how to put the polio vaccine into bananas that would express itself once the banana ripened!! The polio vaccine needs to be refrigerated, which is difficult in remote areas in Africa, so this would help save millions of vaccines. What is one of the first foods babies eat!!! Ah HA!!! Bananas!!! I just love this stuff!!

Love each other, be kind, and remember this is the only shot we have, so live it up!!!!