The worse of winter is over for me. There's actual pink over the eastern mountains when I come in to work, and southeastern faces of the mountians are showing alpenglow. Yes, it's still dark, but it's pre-dawn dark, not "normal people are still asleep, it's the middle of the night, you idiot" dark. There is natural ambient light instead of just streetlights.

It'll be bone-achingly cold for another month and a half, but dammit I'll have light.

Yeah, that's the bitch of it.

Brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tart to the rescue! And mmm, milk.

God, I missed milk. That's the other thing about India: we didn't have milk for three weeks, because they can't even spell "pasteurization" and "homogenization," let alone do it.

Am I a quitting quitter that always quits?

So SO SOOOO not a quitter! You're recognizing your limits. That's actually the very opposite of a quitter. You're going to do this. I know you will. You didn't go through all of that pain with the GREs to quit. I know you better than that.

I forgot to say earlier, Jilli, that's wonderful news about your friend.

I think I'm going to procrastinate by taking down the Christmas decorations. It's January 19. They really need to come down. Plus, I'm going out to my parents' tomorrow, so I can put them back in the basement. Everyone wins.

Interesting.

I guess I never really thought about the use of cow's milk in India. Not that I've really gone beyond the "some inhabitants of the region believe the cow is sacred" level.

Oh, they drink everything over there. Cow milk, buffalo milk, goat milk. I mean, you could just walk down the road and grab an udder if you were thirsty.

Nova, I sympathize with the iPod breakage. My buttons quit working the other day. Thankfully I have the Apple Care thing so they are sending me a new one as we speak. If your is less than 1 year old or you have Apple care, you can do the same? (They even gave me a new one once when I dropped and broke mine, but sshh, let's not mention that again.)

My grandfather used to shoot us with the milk when we watched him milk the cow, aeons ago. I always thought raw milk tasted a little funny, but I learned to make butter from my grandmother.

My father's uncle owned a dairy farm in PEI (now dad's cousin owns it). I loved the raw milk, but won't drink it again, and wouldn't let my kids have it.

My uncle owned a dairy and we used to drink fresh, warm, whole milk as kids. I also wouldn't do it again.

(BTW, what do you get from unpasteurized milk?)

Oooookay. The tales of drinking warm milk have me shuddering. Eeeeech. I can't even touch the super-processed cold stuff, much less milk au naturel.

I think you can get salmonella from raw milk? Is that right?