Absent-minded professor husband

I'm really getting worried about everyone's brain.  There is not a day that I don't hear about difficulties with memory outside of my office.  Last night my husband huffed out the door, upset because he thought I hadn't told him about the upcoming open-house at my son's school.  In fact, we'd talked about it at length last week with friends who tried to solve his scheduling puzzle.  Since there was no error message in red letters warning me that his autosave had failed, I had no idea the info never made it into his hard drive.  Furthermore, I had asked him to pick up mini-bagels and a tub of cream cheese for this morning's kinderthon (more on that on another post).  I finished slicing the bagels with a few minutes to spare before the mad rush out the door, to find that there was no cream cheese.  It was forgotten in his trunk!  I knew this was coming years ago, hence I planted blueberry bushes in the front of our house.  It's time to get back to eating veggies and fish, and start playing cards.  Click here if you also are concerned.

Now to answer your question.  What did we name the rat?  And why did I name him when it's my kids' pet?

The bulk of my adult reading material is rat literature.  I spend my days teaching about what we have learned from rats and applying rat principles to humans.  When I first held that little creature in my palm, I fell in love with the prototypical foot soldier of science.  We would still have a 40-year life expectancy if it wasn't for Them.  To honor all his brethren, I gave him the quintessential name in science: Albert.  This is one rat whose hippocampus will not be probed, nor any of his genes knocked out.