My mind is a cotton ball suspended three inches behind my vision at the moment. I feel like I'm looking through paper towel rolls out onto the world, and I think it's because I haven't eaten a whole lot today. And possibly also because I didn't get a full eight hours of sleep? Although I certainly hope that I haven't become that fragile.

It's probably just a symptom of going to work early this morning sans my usual waking period. I've been mostly zonked all day.

My weight continues to drop, thankfully. Current low is 194.3, and I'm thankful for progress (although annoyed that it isn't faster - patience is not a virtue of mine when it comes to such things). On a related note, my ketone strips no longer reveal that I'm in ketosis (although I obviously am) - I've read that once ketosis is extended, the body produces ketones that the strips cannot detect. Strange.

I'm having a conversation with my cousin about evolution, which is interesting considering the reflection of my own studies in Christianity-meets-science over the past few months. A God-performed evolution model is so appealing to me, and yet it seems to completely fly in the face of the writings of many of the holy fathers. Still, there is far, far too much evidence supporting a) mutations of beings into beings unable to reproduce with one another (i.e., different species) and leading to incredible diversification, and that b) the universe and our world are immensely older than literally-read Sola Scriptura evidence would suggest (i.e., older than 10,000 years).

The evidence of this, despite what many people believe, IS actually revealed in the fossil record. The "gaps" are being filled the more fossils we recover, but fossils are rare enough that there may always be gaps in the diversification chain. Complete and undamaged fossils are preposterously hard to find, extract, and study, and doing so accurately requires specialists from a long list of fields. Despite all of this, it's pretty fair to say that a team of specialists studying fossils based on their individual knowledge can put together a picture of when the creature lived, how it looked (and possibly behaved), what it ate, and where it lies on the grand family tree of life as a whole.

Humanity's place on the tree - and the direct line of mutations that occurred to allow us to be the way we are - is incredibly long and complex. But many of the major mutations that make us unique stuck with us over a very, very extended period of time.

But yeah, I could talk forever about this and not get bored. However, I'm fuzzy and I haven't studied this enough to be certain I'm being accurate. So I guess that's enough rambling on for today.