Why Rudolph's nose is red, according to science. From the British Medical Journal.

( Cut for largeness )

I'm going (more or less) backwards through the enormous backlog of photos to be processed and uploaded--they're all old at this point, so it doesn't really matter what order or when, right? :P Here's some stuff from December: our wandering downtown (including gingerbread houses), decorations, Xmas day, and the like. ( A sampling under here )

We spent the last day of 2010 fairly quietly--I was stuck at my work computer most of the day (even though I only needed one thing to finish a project and clear my schedule until next week, it never came), and morthael ran some errands and continued his fierce rampage of housework (which he had already intended to do during his time off, but was made more ( Read more... )

( Continuation of Friday )

The past week has been so out of control that by Wednesday night, the chance of me getting any holiday baking done was looking almost nil. I was freaking out about everything, my husband was getting frustrated, friends were telling me to stop trying to be superwoman ( Read more... )

Operation "Do everything morthael wants to do in Seattle before he leaves" got underway this weekend.

Friday evening, we had dinner at Lark. He mostly went with things he's always enjoyed there; I tried a couple of new seasonal things, including an apple and endive salad with smoked blue cheese that was absolutely outstanding (even the hardcore carnivore ( Read more... )

We had a nice Thanksgiving celebration. Yet again, I marvel at the culinary talents of my friends and community; we're all still coming up with inventive twists on the traditional holiday ingredients, and making fantastic dishes. The excellent company doesn't hurt either ( Read more... )

I actually stopped working EARLY on Friday. (There wasn't anything to do.) Friday evening, I made dinner for us--something I haven't done much lately--a lovely vegetarian dinner of penne with mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a light cheese sauce and spinach braised quickly in white wine, and did I mention it was vegetarian?* It was quite tasty, ( Read more... )

Last night, for the first time in several years, we had actual events we could go to for NYE instead of defaulting to sitting at home. But when the time came, we were both feeling rather under the weather, and thus, in one of those silly little ironies my life is always full of, we *chose* to sit at home this time. TCM was running a Thin Man ( Read more... )