Dog story:

Mr Peabody recently took to sleeping on my pillow, which is not particularly good for my allergies, so I had started roughly making the bed. Last evening, I heard a scrabble scrabble in the bedroom, and finally went in to see what he was doing. He was sleeping on my pillow, after having pulled back the bedspread.

Man, I missed an entire day's worth of Natter - how did THAT happen?

Given that twins do run in families (the tendency for embryos to split OR tendency for some women to release multiple fertile eggs) all you need is a couple related families that have lived in a town for a couple generations and you'll see a statistical uptick. And since there may be unexplained environmental triggers for twinning....

I thought fraternal twins ran in families but identical were considered unexplained?

There are a ton of recipes online, but most of them involve 10 lbs of masa harina and 4 lbs of lard. I don't mind the lard, but I'm looking for a recipe that will serve 2-4 people.

They freeze beautifully. You might as well make a bunch! (Well, maybe not that big a bunch).

Mr Peabody recently took to sleeping on my pillow, which is not particularly good for my allergies, so I had started roughly making the bed. Last evening, I heard a scrabble scrabble in the bedroom, and finally went in to see what he was doing. He was sleeping on my pillow, after having pulled back the bedspread.

Dallas has started doing the same thing!! Now not only do I have to make the bed every damn day, I have to spread the pillows around in a rediculous looking fashion to thwart her.

Heh -- last night Neil DeGrasse Tyson was telling Jon Stewart about receiving hate-mail from 3rd graders about Pluto being demoted from a full-fledged planet. So it starts early....

Well, that's understandable. Who's going to stand up for Pluto if not the eight year olds? Besides, they might be right. When we were eight we all knew pandas were bears -- eventually science caught up with us.

They freeze beautifully. You might as well make a bunch!

Dude, my kitchen is in NYC. You think I have freezer space for 10 lbs of anything?

Late start at work today, so I had time to upload some pictures from my Monday trip to the Keys. Link is in my profile.

If any of you get the chance to head down that way, I highly recommend the glass-bottom boat tour out of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo: [link]

Thanks to Laura and her DH for the recommendation!

Dude, my kitchen is in NYC. You think I have freezer space for 10 lbs of anything?

Besides the ice that freakin' instantly builds up on the sides of those crummy freezer-in-fridge freezers? Prolly not.

Jessica, I asked a teacher at my school who makes yummy tamales. She said that this ratio should work:

2 teaspoon salt
1 cup lard or shortening
3 cups Masa
1.5 to 2 cups stock, but only add enough for the dough to form.

:: fights sudden urge to skip out of work to make tamales ::

Thanks Kat, that makes a lot more sense.

I think the cookbook I was using must have had a typo because it was calling for 1 cup of stock for 1/2 cups masa - my guess is it should have said 1 1/2 cups masa instead.

That does look like a typo. Typos in cookbooks and recipes lead to epic fails!

Okay. I should go work.

I just realized Noah and Grace are now officially too big to benefit from stuff on the Babysteals website. There are no toddler steals, huh?