Every year Thanksgiving involves us getting up early, eating a light breakfast and loading the car to head out to some family members home. This year we’re having dinner at Chris’s folks, but we’re not eating until 3:30 and since they only live about five miles away we don’t have to be anywhere until 3:00.

Of course I’ve been up since 7:00AM. That’s actually “sleeping in” for me. We’ve had breakfast and two cups of coffee. It’s now 8:43AM and Chris just caught me wandering aimlessly around the house. I just don’t know what to do with myself. We’ve never had almost the whole day of Thanksgiving to just ourselves. I guess I’m going to watch the Macy’s parade. I haven’t done that in forever.

Hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Many blessings to you and all your family.

Every Friday morning around 7:30, while we’re on our way to work, NPR plays a StoryCorp recording. StoryCorps is an NPR oral history project that started in 2003. They travel the country collecting stories from every day people. Any one can sign up to spend time in the StoryCorps booth.

I love StoryCorps. Every time I hear the opening music for it, I clap my hands with glee. But really Chris and I decided that it should be called StoryCry because we always end up getting all teary eyed and needing a tissue by the time it’s over. The only time StoryCorps didn’t make us cry was when they aired a woman’s story about her first Halloween in the U.S. That one made us laugh out loud.

I keep thinking I should make a StoryBooth reservation, but I have no idea who I’d interview. There’s too many questions and family history to record. I’d probably get the biggest kick out recording some of Dad’s tales of his youth. Dad can be a pretty funny guy and I think a bit of a prankster when he was young. But I think it would also be neat to sit down with my siblings in the booth. I don’t know what we’d talk about, maybe the annual family Easter photo. We never looked pleased to be taking those pictures. They were torture.

OK, maybe cows aren’t so threatening now, but cattlelike beasts called bovids could be responsible for bringing tuberculosis to North America long before Europeans arrived. Rheumatologist Bruce Rothschild and paleontologist Larry Martin have found fossil evidence suggesting that this is true.

They found that bovids with Asian origins like bison and bighorn sheep had bone lesions that are characteristic of tuberculosis. Bovids started spreading across the Americas about 75,000 years ago.

These same bovids may also be responsible for the extinction of mastodons. More then half of mastodon skeletons examined had tuberculosis related bone legions. The disease only started hitting the mastodons about 34,000 years ago. Since the bovids record of infection stretches back farther then that, they’re the suspects. Actually, the first documentation of this disease stretches back to a 500,000-year-old buffalo in China.

I think its amazing that a little bacterium can be so old and still kicking our asses. It’s had a lot of time to develop mutations to resist our defences.

I don’t know what’s up today, but I have been on high energy mode all day. I only had two cups of coffee this morning. It’s like I can’t slow down. I can’t sit still and I’m all fidgety. I finished my work about an hour ago so I’m done for the day. Yes I have knitting to do, but I knit a round and then have to get up and do something else.

Of course this means I’ll probably crash really hard in about thirty minutes and talk myself out of going to the gym. Maybe I should eat a candy bar.

A retrovirus called VRX496 has demonstrated that gene therapy has the potential to treat HIV and other serious human diseases. VRX496 is a genetically altered AIDS retrovirus that impairs HIV viral replication. It’s sort of like a Trojan Horse, but instead of carrying soldiers it carries genetic material that inhibits HIV replication.

Five patients with advanced AIDS experienced a decrease in viral load and an increase in white blood cells (the cells that fight off the bad things like bacterial and fungal infections) after being treated with VRX496. All of these patients had been unresponsive to at least two antiretroviral treatments. Normally white blood cells never go up in AIDS patients, but steadily decline year after year.

This phase I trial is very encouraging, but there’s still a lot of work to do. The phase II trial has started using AIDS patients whose virus is under control with the use of antiviral treatments. We’re looking at maybe another 20-25 years before we actually see VRX496 being used world wide to treat AIDS. Meanwhile 2.5 million people worldwide have died from this disease.

Let’s hurry things up people! Time’s a wastin’.

For the past year and half I’ve been under this cloud of general malaise. I have all these things I want to do and all these ways that I want to “fix� myself but I just can’t muster the energy to do anything about it. I guess you could say that I’ve been depressed, but trying really hard not to be by not talking about it or giving myself little pep talks (‘cause talking to yourself isn’t crazy). I find myself staring at the anti-depression adds feeling like I really need those drugs. I mean not really, but sometimes I think that I do.

Yesterday the cloud seemed to lift. I was standing in the bedroom taking off my jewelry when I yelled to Chris “I feel something that I haven’t felt in a really long time�. He asked me what it was and I said “I don’t know. I think its hope�. I feel good and not so angry. It’s like I could drive down the highway without yelling at other drivers. You know what? I think I’ll knit myself some yoga socks. I might even throw in two colors. I’ve never done that before. I’m thinking orange and yellow.

I think all of us at one time or other has been caught preening in front of a mirror. This is a basic behavioral trait. We share this trait with primates and dolphins. Primates and dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors. This behavior is thought to be related to empathy. Now a research team from Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University has found evidence that elephants can also recognize themselves in mirrors.

I heard this story on NPR earlier in the week and was fascinated. The study included three female elephants from the Bronx Zoo. Two of the elephants did just the basic look in the mirror-understand-that’s-me thing, but the other one named Happy actually seemed to preen before the mirror. She was more concerned about her appearance then the other two.

It’s not too surprising that elephants can recognize themselves in mirrors. They do live highly social complex lives and have been known to show empathy towards their fellow elephants.