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than you would from a gross of old-fashioned thermometers, we need to focus our attention inwards.
     
    Saturday, January 12
     
    Brandon—Erin’s boyfriend—called…I guess this Indonesia thing is nastier than the papers say. Of course with the NFL playoffs rolling towards the Big Game, the election politics, and the insanity that is the Middle East, nobody is talking about Indonesia. I’ll bet almost nobody heard about the “Lost World” find in a jungle never touched by modern man. Mudslides and volcanic activity are just grinding that place. Hospitals all over Europe and the states are preparing to take in a whole slew of people. The CDC is overseeing the United States’ participation by having representatives at each of the approved wards. I guess there was some attempt at quarantine, but too many relief workers had come and gone. Whatever these people have is already popping up all over the place. They (the CDC) are hoping to gather as many people as they can and try to control the mess. I thought they were bringing in people from Indonesia. Turns out they are scooping up our own people who have been exposed by returning relief workers.
    I guess Beth will be staying with me for longer than the weekend. The band has a gig next Friday at some frat party. She wants to come and help with set-up. So, my choice is to leave her home alone for an entire day on the rare opportunity I have to spend a large block of time together, or bring her to a frat party.
     
    Sunday, January 13
     
    Wow! Erin called to talk to Beth. I guess Brandon was flown to some hospital in Virginia. I might have failed to mention that he is a doctor. He’s some biology specialist. Deals with contagious stuff. Mostly he has been dealing with West Nile. A hospital in Virginia has a pair of scientists who were in on that Indonesian find. They discovered some sort of giant rat that is like three times the size of a large city rat. Seems these things weren’t afraid of people at all and just walked around the research team like it was no big deal.
    Erin says every single one of those researchers got sick. But not until after they came home. So, nobody is sure if they got sick from the site, or if it was exposure to the relief workers who came home on the same flight.
    She did say they were receiving their first patients tomorrow. Beth is worried that her mom (and Brandon) will get sick.
    I wasn’t…until now.
     
    Monday, January 14
     
    Nobody gives much thought as to what happens in the world when they’re sleeping. It is almost as if everything is on pause…like a giant version of the children’s game Red Light! Green Light! With our eyes closed, everything stops. We are an egotistical organism.
    Things in the night do continue to move, I believe the reason we tend not to think about it is because of fear. Every morning, we wake up one day closer to death. Death cannot be stopped. Genocide in Africa. Unrest in Pakistan. Nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea. Plagues closing the cities of Bangalore and Mumbai in India. And now Singapore is simply shut down. Nothing is coming in or out.
    Today, there was a story on page six that claims some small town in Mississippi called Natchez is going under some sort of quarantine. I’ve tried to get ahold of Erin to see if any of this is something I should be worried about. I tried to watch television news last night/this morning as I was getting ready to go to work for any information. All I got was the latest on which Hollywood Starlet is driving while drunk, which movie stars just broke up ending a tired use of two individual names as one to describe their entity as a couple. Well, at least they each got their own first names back. (When did that trend start, and could it please go away!)
    I am convinced there is no such thing as actual news anymore. Every event needs a catchy title and a graphic. Since when did I need a panel of experts I’ve never heard of to explain an event’s relevance to