I've been running my bedroom humidifier all winter, and it's definitely helped with the chronic sore throat, but it's still deeply weird to be voluntarily adding water to the atmosphere. The kettle on the fireplace doesn't seem to do anything, however. Which is kind of good, I guess, in a less heat-loss out of the top, more heat coming out the front where it will warm me up kind of way.

Ooh, chili. Maybe I'll go to Hale & Hearty today.

Looks like Fat Chance Belly Dance, juliana.

it is! I will send you the Groupon email.

Women, regardless of their role, are expected to take on administrative tasks. I loved that moment in Mad Men when Roger said "Peggy, can you get me some coffee?" and she simply replied "No."

Yeah, I'm pretty careful not to take on stuff like travel arrangements that have nothing to do with my role. I see some of my junior team members jumping on that stuff trying to be uber helpful and I cringe. It's not an easy habit to break someone of and it creates expectations that are even harder to shake.

Odd headline o' the day: Brain In Bag: New Mexico Family Suing Funeral Homes For Returning Dead Relative's Brain In A Bag

I know I'm a little late re: the commute conversation. But I have to vent: it took me two hours and fifteen minutes to get to Denver this am. One hour for the first 70 miles and another 1:15 for the last 15.

The only good in that is that it has mostly cured the pining I had been doing for a particular job up here.

Roger Ebert's article on food and memory, now that he no longer eats nor drinks.

Yeah, on days like today I'm glad I don't drive to work. I've read that trips on the expressway that normally take 30 minutes are taking 2 hours.

Another contender for Odd Headline o' the Day: Study Reveals How Flies Mate by Shaving Them with a Laser

With extra added bonus picture of a naked Jeff Goldblum as The Fly....

Michal Polak and Arash Rashed pretty much man-scaped the male flies with a laser to see how it affected their sexual performance. The spines themselves were too small to cut by hand. They did it with such surgical precision that they could cut off a third of each millimetere-long spine, or the whole darn thing.

As it turns out, the spines are like biological Velcro. A partial shave did nothing, but getting a full blown Brazilian wax reduced the odds of mating to around 20-percent.

Two of my co-workers drive in from Grayslake, about 35 miles away, which normally takes them an hour (they leave home at 5:30, get in at 6:30, and then they leave at 3:00 pm). Today, they didn't get on the road until 5:50, but then didn't get in until 7:30. They're thinking about leaving earlier than usual this afternoon to beat some of the traffic (and snow) home.