Master and Commander, Apartment 406

Master and Commander, Apartment 406

Mike and I got a kitty! His name is The Admiral Santiago P. Wellington III, but we civilians may refer to him simply as "The Admiral". He comes from a long line of sea-faring cats with good leadership skills (or so we have surmised), and he has taken full command of the apartment, including some of its closets and cabinets.

He is a great, friendly, lovable cat who sat and studied with me last night until he fell asleep with my arm around him. Well, he was mostly studying my petting abilities, but I think I passed the test.

I think I also passed the Neuro exam that I just took, but I predict that it will be one of my poorer performances. It was hard to get back on track after the week-long snow day, and I decided to take this one a little easy, with some stress-free, mellow cramming at the end. That's a new skill for me, and it feels great.

This test was all about the anatomy and development of the brain, with some extras thrown in about the sensory, pain, auditory, visual, and vestibular systems. One of the cooler things that we learned, but that was unfortunately not on the test, was the following: Did you know that you can give someone debilitating vertigo, possibly with accompanying nausea and vomiting, by simply dropping cold or warm water in their ear? Its true, and I've seen it. The temperature change causes convection currents in the fluid of the semicircular cannals of the inner ear, which acts just like how the fluid moves when you are turning your head really fast. Your brain interprets this as if you were spinning around and around, and your eyes even move back and forth to keep up with the spinnng world. One of our lecturers (a Neuroscientist) demonstrated this in front of the class last week, and he could barely stand up afterwards and reportedly couldn't eat his lunch later because of all the nausea.

So next time you're at a slumber party, screw sticking the hand of that annoying girl who came even though nobody really likes her into warm water - drop some of it into her ear! Then watch as the fun ensues.
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