so clearly, it's not been a very good week for blogging. i was hit last week with 242 (!) midterms to grade, and have had very little time to eat and sleep, never mind come on here and recount my tribulations to you lot. in any case, i got done with the very last script yesterday, heaved a huge sigh of relief, and immediately went out and got massively drunk. good times.

it's going to be much of the same for the next couple of months until classes and my exams are over, upon which there will be delight and rejoicing and all that. in the mean time, i refer you to a story i heard on npr the other day about the plan to send microbes into outer space to test the theory of panspermia. apparently some astrobiologists are worried that the capsule will crash onto mars and contaminate the planet, or that the unicellular organisms within will eventually evolve into powerful bug-eyed life forms that will return to their host planet and exterminate us. or something. personally, i think it's pretty awesome to send anything into space, and would trade my human brain scans for that s*** any day.

(goes off to work furiously on his astrobiology grant.)