I'm not entirely sure what changed. I got busy. I got tired of feeling like nobody cared. I got tired of the people who do.

What's left to say? Be safe. Take care of yourself. If it's important to you, tell a friend. If you don't know about HIV and AIDS, get educated. Or, contact me. I'll gladly tell you what I know, and show you where to learn more.

I can't save the world, but if I help someone and you help someone we can come a little bit closer.

I'm trying to get people to come over and take a ribbon. They don't have to stop and chat. It doesn't cost them any money and only a split second of their time. Why is that so hard? Do people not want to let others know they are aware of the AIDS crisis that is going on? Do they themselves not want to know? Heterosexual, Caucasian, upper-middle class people can contract HIV too. The excuses are the worst part.

• "No thanks, I'm aware of AIDS." -- and what about people you know?
• "My hands are full." -- I'd be happy to drop it in your bag for you.
• "Sorry, I don't have time right now." -- to take a pin off a table!?

You can't spread a message if people don't want to hear it, and people don't want to hear about unpleasant things if they don't think it applies to them.

Maybe we should try an AIDS FUD campaign.

"Save the young person. Why should we worry about curing AIDS? Haven't we got a huge overpopulation problem as it is?"

Even now, I'd like to give him a piece of my mind. I'm not a violent person at all, and I would never wish harm on anyone, but I just have a hard time understanding how a person can come to their second semester in college and not be more informed and have a little more critical thinking ability than to make a comment like that. I like to think that I'm a very tolerant person, but I just cannot stand for intolerance. I managed to quell my anger for long enough to get through class, but the professor caught an earful afterwards. She was sympathetic, and I thanked her for redirecting the conversation before I said things I would regret.

I thought that I had fulfilled my quota of remaining calm in the face of intolerance for the day, but apparently it's not a quota-based system. Like a trooper writing tickets, I just deal with as much as there is, with no minimum, and apparently no maximum.

I was discussing the world population problem with a professor today. I asked him if my fear that society may be selecting away from intelligence (more on that later). He said that I could have a valid point, but there were other factors to take into account. When population density in Europe reached a critical level, it allowed the plague to spread rapidly kill one third of Europe's population, with mortality rates as high as 70% in some cities. With the population density and mobility increasing steadily, my professor speculated that a crisis of this nature is not infeasible. "Maybe it'll be AIDS," he said. "Look at what it's doing in Africa already." Now, this statement by itself might not seem so bad, but he has also expressed, in an offhand sort of way, that he doesn't approve of homosexuality. He has also admitted that he's not terribly accepting of diversity. In that light, and given my day, can you blame me for being a bit upset? This was a man that I looked up to, who inspired me to persue my selected branch of animal science. I still greatly respect him professionally, but I've lost all respect for him as a person.

I found it to be a different sort of experience this year, something a bit quieter, a bit deeper than before. I was trained by the Red Cross to educate my peers, young people. We are the generation of imitation, riding on the coattails of all that came before us. What is our rallying cry? We have no Kent State. We have no liberation, no revolution. It seems nobody is interested enough anymore. I try to educate my peers on how to not contract HIV, because that's the best way I know to fight it. It seems like it falls on deaf ears.

I fight AIDS because it is a worthwhile cause. I think that it's important, it doesn't get enough attention, and that some people are maliciously or ignorantly spreading misinformation. It's just a cause for me though. What made it different for me was speaking with one of my professors. For me, AIDS is a disease which kills tens of thousands of people in the US and millions of people globally each year. For her, it meant the loss of friends, classmates, and colleagues. She remembers when Ronald Reagan first mentioned AIDS publically, four years after the first outbreak and two years after the virus had been isolated. I was 16 days old. Hearing her talk about it gave me new resolve. The job of an activist, I learned, is twofold. The first is to raise awareness, educate the public, and influence policy-makers. The second is to remind those who pioneered this cause that the fight isn't over, and there are still people carrying on the torch.

• Man Claims He Has Rid Himself of HIV (via NYT)
• The man who might hold the secret to defeating Aids (via The Independent)
• Q&A: 'Cured' of HIV (via BBC)
• HIV patient claims to have cleared the virus (via Reuters)
• Experts urge caution on HIV 'miracle recovery' (via nature.com)

To be perfectly honest, I'm thinking it was a false positive right now. I wanna see more actual facts. Part of me still hopes though.

What happened for me is that the 10 day mark rolled around after I got blood drawn. They said to expect results within 10 days. Well, luckily for me, the momz0r works at the doctor's office. She just flags the chart to be brought up to her in the computer system, and in a few minutes she calls me and tells me my results. That's it! It felt almost anti-climactic though. Oh well, I suppose it's better to know than not. Apparently the results came in, and they hadn't even bothered to call me. If they had, I would've gone through it. At this point though, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

I'd also like to point out that I am not proud to be HIV-. I am just terrified of the alternative.

I've been hanging out with Tracy (who incidentally hasn't touched her site in ages) quite a bit lately. We spend much time contemplating how little there is to do in the Finger Lakes for people who are Broke As Hell™. These are some of the few times that I regret being unemployed. The other times are when I am on my computer and want it to be faster, or when I want to buy something, or when I'm low on gas, or when I'm hungry, or in other situations where it would do well to have money. In retrospect, there are more than a few times that I regret being unemployed. I do not regret it, however, between the hours of 6 and 11 in the morning, when I am sleeping.

I digress. I came today to talk about bloodwork. If your doctor sends you in for routine bloodwork, and casually asks if you'd like to be tested for HIV, tell him no. If you have a female doctor, tell her no. The number of things that have been going through my head, the what ifs, is terrible. Even though I'm sure it will come back negative, my imagination really seems to love contemplating the possibilities. Because I needed to take my mind off it, and because I knew she'd be a helpful person to talk to about it, I called on Tracy.

We sat around on the dock for a while and dangled feet in the water and talked about school, friends, life, and everything else. Hunger set in, and on a reminiscent kick we decided to go to Luigi's, a little pizza place in Naples. There we ate chicken wing pizza and reminisced more. More so than doing it, talking about reminiscing makes one feel old. After pizza I did not feel like going home, so we got in the car and I drove in the opposite direction. That was not much more exciting than the route home, until I decided that getting lost would be a good idea. We took a side road, about a lane and a half wide, dirt, with trees on either side. There was this house that appeared to be abandoned. The windows were all boarded, with no trespassing signs, but the lawn was mowed out front. That, along with darkness and lack of flashlights kept us out. The oddest thing about the house was not its lawn, but its address. It had a five digit number! This was before we were thouroughly lost, so I do intend to explore eventually.

A few twists and turns later, we found ourselves on top of one of those big hills. If you're from the Finger Lakes you know what I'm talking about. It's one of those hills you always see in the distance but can never figure out how to get on top of. We went out and sat on top of the car for a while and popped some straws we liberated from Luigi's (remember Luigi's?). The ones from Wendy's worked better.

It was a great time of day to be way up in the air. The stars were just coming out. We sat for a while trying to discern where the sounds of traffic originated, so far out in the sticks. It turned out to be I-390. We had fun looking at the sky and contemplating the really important things in life, like what the fuck was a broadcast antenna doing on top of this hill and what did it broadcast?

On the way home we got Really Fucking Lost™. I'm trademarking a lot of things tonight. Anywho, we were down near Cohocton and Wayland, and by astral navigation and Tracy's Spidey Sense, we managed to find 21 and get our Really Fucking Lost Broke as Hell asses out of there. I should mention that Spidey Sense is probably trademarked to Marvel, or Stan Lee, or something like that. It would be pretty dickish of them to come after me for something like this though.

Back at the Casa de Tracy, we did more lakeside-sitting, though this time we kept our piggies out of it. The temperature had dropped a healthy number of degrees, and there was a stiff breeze. More stargazing was accomplished at this point. I'm losing wind here. Can you tell? Oh yeah, and before we arrived back at Tracy's, we stopped at the graveyard and did the first major stargazing and talking about stars thing.

I'm done.