What have you been up to lately?

Sorry about the paucity of posts. I've been running around lately. Friday right after the Origin of Life Symposia we took off for NYC. After a day of mental stimulation, including stops at the Whitney and the Met to hear Janine Jansen play Bach and an incredible Schnittke String Trio, we raced back to Boston on Sunday to catch a ride up to the White Mountains (that's New Hampshire for you non-east coasters) to attend the almost annual Rapoport Lab retreat. There I participated in the mandatory alcohol toxicity seminar that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. After a quick nap we sprang out of bed for breakfast. Yours truly was appointed chef with help from trusty baymate who acted as souschef. We prepared challah French toast with bacon and sausage. Grease is one of the best cures for post-ethanol fixation. We then departed for Gunstock to study the effects of gravity on translocation.

As the day progressed, our ability to translocate down the slopes became more erratic until ... well I'll let you be the judge. Thankfully we had video equipment to record this wacky experiment:

And they say that scientists aren't cool???

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Alcohol toxicity seminar? That's brilliant. I have attended a fair share of those myself. Highly educational. I would have never thought to get him down the mountain in such a fashion, especially not the morning after a thorough alcohol toxicity seminar. Helicopters would have been involved, no doubt about it.

And some scientists are cool, by the way. They are the ones that leave the lab and go to WD50. Then they are the scientists who wear stained Fisher T shirts and look like they have a vitamin D deficiency from being locked in lab for 10 years. They are not the ones who succeed at tandem skiing. To cool music. With a camera crew.

Challah french toast is essentially what we call here "pain perdu" (lost bread), because we do it with 3 day old bread. Must be better with brioche, though. As Marie-Antoinette said a couple of weeks before french revolution: "they have no more bread? why don't they eat brioche?"