We spent the fourth of July at Janice & Dave's place. They live just outside of Travis county, which means Janice can't check out books from the Austin public library (bummer!) but she can set off fireworks in her cul-de-sac. Bonus!
And an extra bonus is that her neighbors are complete fourth of July freaks who every year light up a small fortune worth of fireworks for us all to ooh and ahh over.
Janice channeling a bit of Martha Stewart
Her patriotic cake
My lovely husband and I
For some reason, Greg was bound and determined to ruin every photo with weird faces or inappropriate advances.
Our kitties are indoor kitties. Since they were rescued over a year and a half ago, they haven't set foot outside. Well... ok... except for that one time when Greg was drunk as a skunk after a party. As is his usual weird habit, he was cleaning up the mess (while highly inebriated - am I the only who thinks it can wait until morning?) at some ungodly hour of the morning and had opened the garage door without realizing the kids were camping out in there. And then closed the door again after Gomez had ventured out. It didn't take me long to figure out what had happened and rally for the frenzied search. Don't worry. We found him crying in the bushes just outside the door a few minutes later, freaked out but otherwise unscathed. Poor baby.
So other than THAT, they don't ever go outside.
All of their nature adventures are experienced in the comforts of air conditioning and behind the protection of glass.
I don't know if you can tell, but there's a cardinal in those bushes just outside the window, and it is having lots of fun teasing the trapped beasts of prey.
By the time I turned the video on, they'd already been concentrating so hard on that bird for about half an hour, willing it to drop dead by the sheer force of their combined contempt and frustration.
A few weeks ago, Joyce posted a link to the fail blog. That site cracks me up! And it also reminded me to post about a recent FAIL of my own.
Perhaps I was high from my recent tres leches cake triumph. Perhaps I was suffering from delusions of culinary grandeur. Whatever it was, my apricot soufflés were a massive blow to the ego.
Observe: beautiful, fluffy, perky soufflés
Then, ten minutes later: sad, deflated shells of their former glory
The original straight-out-of-the-oven creations were actually much fuller than the first picture captures. They had already started sinking so quickly I grabbed the camera to document their slow demise... At least I had no guests to witness my shame. (But then I'm now posting it on my public blog so... Whatever.)
If any of you cooking whiz kids knows the secret behind non-deflating soufflés, I'm all ears...
Attending a scientific talk given by your friend when he manages to drop the words "shit" and "butt ugly" into a seminar room full of profs and grad students. It wouldn't be a Gunther talk without that kind of authenticity. :)
Since he's kidnapped occupied with his old boss and other nerdy grad students tonight, I'm hitting the mall and buying two pairs of Levi 501's - long and skinny - for him. He already got the new boots yesterday. By the time he flies back to Madrid tomorrow, his supplies should be well stocked for another couple of years.
And on a completely different note, I've managed to neglect this blog for 3 weeks now. So sorry. We've been inundated with guests and parties. It will be my mission in life to complete some mass back-logs in the next few days. Patience, grasshopper.
Well, his photo, along with those of several other coworkers, made it into the new company booklet that will be distributed at meetings and conferences. His cute, little face will be making the rounds all over the U.S.!
And that same photo is also going to run in a full-page ad in the Journal of Toxicology!
Click on the image to see a larger version. And sorry for the censorship. It's not like it'd be hard to track down this ad or the company but had to do it for some semblance of retaining privacy.
Is it ridiculous that I'm so excited?
It is the journal used by the bulk of customers in the forensic market, but honestly, how many people are we talking about here? When you think about the tiny fraction of a fraction of people in this world who are scientists and then how many of those actually read the journals and then how many of them actually read this particular journal... We're talking about a teeny-tiny population, but STILL! This means his cute, little face is going global, baby! :)
And with that, Greg wishes you adieu!
