Where's billytea? We need him to tell us about the mating habits of horseshoe crabs.

Maybe there was an echidna sighting.

One of my very earliest memories is of watching the horseshoe crabs swimming/mating in the marsh next to my childhood home. No joke.

It looks really strong that we'll flip the Senate. We need to gain four seats and two are definitely going to the Dems. And we just need to win two more out of five close races.

It's looking promising; but the Dems need a big result, not just stumbling over the line. In 2018, there'll be only eight Republican seats up for grabs; the remaining 25 wil all be Democratic or left-leaning independents. Two years of Senate control would be good; they have a very hard climb to make it four.

Where's billytea? We need him to tell us about the mating habits of horseshoe crabs.

Well now. On the whole it's pretty standard behaviour. A female digs a hole in the sand and lays thousands of eggs, one or more males fertilise them while clinging to the female's back. (The males are somewhat smaller.) However, two things are worth noting: first, a male may stay attached to a female for months at a time. Second, it may be that to get crabs to breed, they need sand or mud from the location where they themselves hatched (and to which they return to mate). It's still unclear what they might be sensing that makes the difference.

Horseshoe crabs aren't really crabs, they're more like Jillifonts, and they're really ancient, like cockroaches, unchanged for millions of years

For roughly 450 million years, in fact.

Maybe there was an echidna sighting.

There was! Not by me, it was by Lee and shrift. Still very exciting.

Kalshane - my DH was in a similar place -- he had a halo ablation( I may be using the wrong word. - but basically they used a laser to remove the scar tissue in the esophagus. over all it has reduced the basic pain from a naturally high acid stomach and - by removing the scar tissue the cancer risk is diminished. it is not always covered by insurance ( yes it was expensive) however - despite a minor complication - it seems to have been well worth it.

feel free to email me - I'll have DH talk to you directly - but a good GI - will figure out if now is the time and how to work thee system

I am in New Zealand!

Happy belated, brenda.

I am jealous of Shrift.

Also it is too damn early and I am on my way to the airport.

Kalshane, my mom had the same problem. The pain was so intense she went to the hospital thinking it was a heart attack. This was in her 40s. She lived to 78 with minor diet changes and prescription strength antacids, and she died from something completely unrelated. I hope things turn out to be easily manageable for you, too.

Things I should do today: get the motorcycle registered, vote, write 2-3 blog posts, create the handout for the workshop on Friday, clean the litter box.

Things I want to do today: nap. Play Witcher 3.

Things I am going to do today: sit with a professor who smells of cigarettes and try to get him to do what he said he would.

Kalshane, I hope this is the start of a good treatment plan for you.

This I actually have seen—more than one minor pro hockey player delaying their return home to Canada so they could get medical care under their US doctors. May have been something about familiarity with the team's doctors though.

It probably has more to do with continuity of care, especially if the reason for the doctor's visits is the result of playing the game. Many organizations will not clear a player to play unless they are/were under treatment by team physicians.