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I hope everyone is enjoying a day doing exactly what you'd like to do. (Or doing stuff to make the people you love happy. Families are about compromise.) At our house, we slept in, and we're now preparing a breakfast of coffee cake, french toast, and eggs before heading to a Christmas Day movie. Presents were last night, and it's always fun to see people appreciate your gifts.
Enjoy this quick pic of our family!
Fun times here in Bloomington! Conveniently, some friends were headed up to the Twin Cities . . . at 6 am this morning. I hitched a ride up to the mall and enjoyed some time with the senior citizens by mall walking for a few hours. Blessedly, the mac store opened up at 9 am, so I've been getting in my fill of new mac products (verdict on ipad: nifty, but give me a laptop with a real keyboard any day). Thought I'd check in and say hi.
Some observations:
- the mall was only dimly lit when it opened at 7 am, and it was actually kind of pretty. The Mall of America has a mini-amusement park in the middle, and this park was completely dark except for the ferris wheel. Maybe I should have taken a photo . . .
- Microsoft has a competing store directly across from the Apple Store. So far, the apple store is winning for sheer number of customers AND better music (I'm listening to the Beatles!).
- You never know what will happen at the mall. I was witnessed to this morning. An older woman came up to give me a gift. I went with the standard "my father is a minister," and she wisely countered "That doesn't mean you know Jesus." Touche. I made polite conversation and accepted the little pocket Gideon's new testament. She was actually really nice and interesting, and we had a pleasant conversation. She was not too pushy, which I appreciate. On the whole, a positive experience.
Observant readers will notice that I still have bangs. I did get my hair cut this week. I think it's a little bit of a tragic hair cut, but it will work. Mostly, it looks mullety if I tuck my hair behind my ears. Since I do that a lot . . . sigh. Thankfully, I kept the length, so I can now make a really cute teeny poofy pony tail. I'm thinking I might grow it out again next. I was looking nostalgically at pictures of me from early college and enjoying my pretty, collar-bone length shiny mane. Thoughts, everyone?
In any case, time to head off and explore more of the capitalist mecca of America. In an hour or so, I'll hop on light rail, disembark at the airport, and continue my journey across the country. Look forward to my next update from the west coast!
The view from the front of our porch:
Looks like we'll have lots of fresh snow tomorrow. The weather reports say we could get anywhere from 10-20 inches! Pretty awesome.
For fun, a picture of Matt helping Lucy check out the new snow:
A great biology-related comic in xkcd (one of my favorite comics but typically more physics or computer science related)!
The extra text says "According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.
Now, the interesting thing is that the new bacteria are not naturally arsenic based. Here's more info from the NYTimes, for those who are interested. In a nutshell, there are some bacteria that will incorporate arsenic into their DNA when grown in the lab. This is neat because arsenic is a poison to us, but it's apparently not a poison to everything. The bacteria are using the arsenic in place of phosphorous in their DNA. The molecules are chemically similar, so it's not entirely a crazy proposition.
Still, the implications are that life can form from different molecules, so there's more than one possible paradigm for life. This doesn't guarantee that there's, say, silicon-based life out there . . . but it is definitely possible, and researchers have now shown this empirically. An exciting step forward for science, for sure.
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