Because it seems to have become a December tradition around here, it’s time for the year-in-review meme.
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month.
Category Archives: Personal
Blogging, philanthropy, and commerce. (Oh my!)
I realize that I forgot to mention here that I’ve been writing posts on the Invitrogen-sponsored group blog What’s New in Life Science Research. The blog is hosting discussions about stem cells, cloning, biodefense, and genetically modified organisms. (The cloning discussion just started yesterday.) As you might guess, I’m primarily blogging about the ethical dimensions of these biotechnologies. We’d love to have you get involved with the conversation.
In other news:
Hippo Thanksgiving.
The younger Free-Ride offspring offers this drawing of a hippo exhorting you to remember Thanksgiving.
Some Thanksgiving recipes (part 2).
Here are the rest of the recipes for dishes that I’m making for Thanksgiving this year (with the exception of pumpkin pie — I’m still shopping for a pumpkin pie recipe).
I’ll mention here (and should have mentioned in the previous post that all the measurements here are U.S. quantities (cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc.). Those of you using non-US measuring cups and measuring spoons will want to find a good conversion guide.
Some Thanksgiving recipes (part 1).
Having posted what I’m making for Thanksgiving, I am happy to accede to your requests for the recipes. Of course, I encourage you to violate the recipes at well (since that’s how I was taught to cook).
I’m posting these in two batches, so if you don’t see the recipe you were looking for here, it will be posted in the next recipe post, which should be up by tonight.
Thanksgiving.
Back when I was a college student, Thanksgiving meant getting myself home to Northern New Jersey from metropolitan Boston.
Before my parents entrusted me with the fire engine red ’77 Chevy Impala station wagon my junior year, this involved inviting another student who hailed from the West Coast and who had a car on campus to spend the holiday with my family. Once I was in possession of the station wagon, it was an occasion for me to provide a ride home to another denizen of Northern New Jersey who was car-less at school. But once I was home, it was the typical holiday meal with parents and siblings, the Friday spent at a high school football game (not to actually watch our team lose, but to say hi to other classmates home from college), the hope that the pull of It’s a Wonderful Life or King Kong or whatever other classic movie the local stations were showing on TV would be stronger than the siren song of the malls. Then laundry, packing up, and driving back to school to finish the semester.
When I moved out to California for grad school nearly two decades ago, going back to New Jersey for the Thanksgiving holiday was pretty much off the table. Luckily, a bunch of my friends from college migrated to the Bay Area at about the same time I did, so we began a Thanksgiving potluck that has become our traditional holiday feast.
Five things meme.
Zuska tagged me; I am helpless to resist it.
5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago:
- Suspecting I was pregnant (I was)
- Drafting thesis chapters
- Walking 5-10 miles a day
- Taking dance classes (Argentine tango and big band swing)
- Playing Snood
5 Things On My To-Do List Today:
Read my personality type like a blog.
In the event that your horoscope in this morning’s paper was not sufficiently informative, there is a website that will take the URL of your blog and return an analysis of your personality type.
Is it accurate?
Well, here’s what Typealyzer makes of me:
Permanent budget crisis.
There are some newspaper stories that must be pretty easy to write at this point because it seems like they’re essentially the same year in and year out. California is having another budget crisis, and the Californians who are going to take it in the teeth are students — especially students in the California State University (CSU) system, to which the university that employs me belongs.
What I’ve learned so far at the PSA.
This is not an exhaustive account of my experiences at the PSA so far, but rather what’s at the top of my Day-Quil-addled head: