How can llamas help defeat biological weapons?

Made you look, didn't I? This headline is lifted wholesale from HowStuffWork's article of the same name. It was so intriguing, I just had to post it.

Favorite quote:

...llamas are our friends. They're soft, good-natured and amusing to view...

and the meat of the article:

Llamas ... produce an antibody that is incredibly sturdy. It has no light protein chains, only heavy ones, making it not only hardy but also simple, with a tiny binding site.... Scientists can create these single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) quickly.... Because the binding site is so small, they're far easier and less expensive to engineer than other kinds of antibodies.... Using these tough, simple antibodies, scientists could develop a library of sensors to detect every bio-weapon imaginable -- and then very quickly develop antibodies that bind to new threats as they come up.

Isn't that fascinating? You should read the whole article. It's neat.

Trashcans - part 2

Today in my cube there are a total of 8 trashcans - which means they continue to spawn.

This is just weird.

Practical cooking

A while back, I started a recipe blog at http://www.impatientcook.com. I enjoyed it, but really - after a couple of months I lost time & inclination to deal with it. One blog is all I'm up to at the moment, and as I've gotten more comfortable with this one, I've deprecated the other (ah, the joy of techno-corporate-speak!).

I am still putting recipes online, though; it works nicely with my habit of finding something good and then using it as a jumping-off point because a) I don't have thyme, and neither does the grocery store b) it would be better if I. . . . I'm an archivist at heart, so I like to save the originals, but I usually like my results, so I'll cook from those. The web is a much better venue for this sort of meandering thought-process than paper.

And so . . . see the recipe for Six Onion Soup I made last night. It was awesome. You should try it. (at least, if you like onions. If you don't like onions you should stay far, far away). Cheers!

Does 2007 really exist?

On New Year's Eve my guy & I went out to dinner with friends. We gorged ourselves on Italian food, wandered into the currently-being-renovated gorgeous lobby of a downtown hotel (reminds me of one of my favorites in Santa Fe - all tall columns and off-white plaster & big fireplace & red & gold upholstered chairs), commandeered blue and silver balloons in hand, then headed home to drink champagne & devour raspberry tart and pumpkin pie.

"2007 doesn't really seem real," said one of my friends. "I mean, it seems like a year in a movie."

"A futuristic movie," I agreed. My guy & I celebrated the millenium together (though not as a couple - another story). How can seven years have passed? Seven years is the magic number in fairy tales; did I spend the past few years sleeping under a hedge?

"2007 seems like it can't really happen," said my friend. "We should all be driving around in pods. Wait, when are all our birthdays?" We discussed. In 2007 we all turn thirty, and we're all dreaming up grand-hurrah trips to take: Asia, Montana, any place we haven't been and that will be harder to get to "after we have kids" (huh).

Thirty. My guy, feeling like he missed out on his late twenties, is not really ok with that. Neither is P. Irene and I nod - thirty. Sounds ok. What is wrong with this, that the women don't mind getting older but the guys do? I read in the New York Times a year or so ago that thirty is the new twenty (yeah right - but it's funny-sounding so I like it).

New Year's is like hide-and-seek: ready or not, here it comes.


The difficult thing about reporting conversations in blogs is that I never remember who said what, or exactly how. . . .

Want to buy a trashcan?

Yesterday afternoon, I needed to review some documents. So I printed them out, stacked up the 5 trashcans currently occupying all the foot-space under the side area of my desk, and got to work.

This morning, I needed to review some reports. So I printed them out, stacked up the 7 trashcans currently occupying all the footspace under the side area of my desk and spilling out into the floorspace in the middle of my cubicle, and got to work.

Just for reference, I currently occupy a three person cube. That's right, three. And today we've got 7 trashcans, even though yesterday we had 5. My cubemates and I on average throw out .25 trashcans' worth of stuff every day (today we might be up to .32, if you include the bonanza of destroyed doggy chew-toy recently contributed by my boss's black Lab).

Corporate life is sometimes very, very weird.

Frost

Last night I officially went from two homes to one - finally! After 3 car trips with final batches of stuff from Cupertino to Palo Alto, hours of vacuuming by yours truly, and more hours of shower-scrubbing by my guy, we finally closed the two garage doors of our original townhouse and drove away.

This morning when we woke up, my guy went outside and found our cars and the front yard covered by fallen red leaves, their edges covered in webs of frost. He brought in a leaf to show me, but of course the ice melted as he walked past the heater. So we both headed outside, heavy coats on - our feet crunched through the frozen grass. Yes, there is such a thing as winter in California!

Ahhhh. . . .

Downtown

"Ooooh, what an attractive man!" says the woman behind the counter at Caffe del Doge. She has a heavy Italian accent and fluffy blond hair. I turn to look for the attractive man (who wouldn't?) Behind me in line: one middle aged, average-looking guy in a yellow windbreaker and those silly stretchy biking shorts. The man grins hugely.

"Most attractive man all day so far!" agrees the other woman behind the counter. And to me: "Latte macchiato, piccolo, right?"

"Right," I say, and turn again to see what I'm missing in shiny-blue-bike-shorts guy.

The two women behind the counter laugh, not the basic flirty giggle you usually get around here, but a real laugh. Both women both seem incredibly awake for 8:30 am. I mean, they can flirt. "He's my husband," the first woman says to me, pointing at bike-short guy with her chin. "We don't really rate all the men."

I lean forward, keeping my voice low as if this were some kind of conspiracy. The oh-so-Italian guy with the neatly-folded newspaper standing next to me, elbows on the counter, doesn't move. "Would it be so bad if you did?" I ask.

She grins. "Well, we do, but we don't tell everyone."

Bike-short guy steps forward. "Cappuccino," he says, and I can see that both he and the woman behind the register think this is incredibly funny.

"Cappuccino again," says the woman, shaking her head: she doesn't believe it. I bet this happens every morning.

Latte macchiato, piccolo, in hand, I head back onto the street and start walking home.