My mother's a biochemist. She knew. My sister knew nothing of it. My blank "I had no idea you didn't know that" wasn't well received and is somewhat trip legend now. Christmas dinner conversation went quickly to what makes a man a man (society, psychology, genetics, hormones, epigenetics...). I think my sister tried to shut us down because we were in quite a religious house, and you never know how these things will go. The gender of god came up too, as men tried to lobby for dominance.

Good luck with that.

oy. just read that the city mulching will not be until 1/10 -11. My tree is ready now. SO my options: keep bags of branches and needles in the basement storage and the trunk in the living room for over 2 weeks, or put it all on the curb where it will be treated as regular trash.

We have a cardboard rocket set up in our house. Noah LOVES it, but he does not always remember that it's a big step in.

My mother's a biochemist.

My FiL is a biochem professor. It's very cool.

Oh, there's a book I was given for my birthday, A Guinea Pig's History of Biology, that has a fascinating chapter on Mendel, what he actually thought he was doing with his pea experiments, why it took so long for the scientific community to recognise its importance, and what he did next (hawkweeds, which showed none of the genetic ratios he found in his peas).

Well, I got nothing done but laundry today. I need to be more productive tomorrow, with the cleaning and sorting and packing and stuff.

DAMN.

House just broke me.

In other news, I'm starving. I think I'm gonna go have a chocolate chip oatmeal peanut butter cookie that is nothing but a fat bomb.

There's nothing that will make one feel happier than 200 extra calories one doesn't need.

Aw, man, I'm so bummed about Eartha Kitt.

I got to my dad's late (just before 4:00), but I was still the first one of the kids to arrive. My stepbrother brought his four kids, including his 6-week-old daughter, who is just the cutest thing and soooo tiny! I held her for a while before my other stepbrother and his wife arrived, whereupon the baby was absconded with.

Her big brother, who is turning one on Saturday, was very entertaining while playing with his new toys and being freaked out by the mooing squishy bowling bowl with the cow's face on it. (He liked the mooing part, just not the cow's face.)

I've got some checks to deposit and a computer to buy this weekend!! I finally get to recycle this POS desktop that runs on Windows ME.

My SIL and I made buckeyes. I share that for Kat's benefit. Watched WallE and KungFu Panda tonight. Dinner was quite good this afternoon, enough so that supper was snacking on veggies and cheeseball.

I'm still inordinately proud of the gift I constructed for my brother. He'd been bitching about the cost of ties and shirts as separates and how he found sets for much cheaper (like $20), so I carefully constructed a small paper shirt out of transformer wrapping paper and made a tie from two twenties. I even managed it so the faces on the bills landed centered on the tie part AND the knot. Still not sure how I managed that. But still, neat! And it was received with proper acclaim for its creativity.

My mom said her best moment was me bursting into tears.

OK, and it is so weird to be using my SIL's computer: it is my old one (with new parts.)

I just put one of the batches of cookies I am hoping to take to Megan Walker's tomorrow in the oven, and I am pretty sure they are going to turn out to be one of those "you did the butter wrong" batches. Luckily, I have time and ingredients to make brownies and other cookies tomorrow, plus wine tonight to ease the cookie mishap sting.