Everybody is being nice to me since I had a meltdown a week ago; maybe I should do it more often! Not really. I still feel bad, but I like being surrounded by pleasant people.
Wednesday night we were invited to dinner at the Porters last night. They are our neighbors in Kenney Ridge. She is a retired professor; he is associate dean (I just found out) and an expert on coral reefs. They had invited former dean Anderson, a genetics professor, and his wife Margaret, as well as our minister, Dave, who used to be a geologist before he became a minister. And they invited us, especially Ray because he is a scientist. So there were a lot of scientific discussions, including some that were interesting. Did you know they have the complete genome of Neanderthal man--and could clone him? If you shouldn't clone humans, is it okay to clone Neanderthals? How about chimps, who have exactly the same DNA as humans, except for one chromosome pair (#2)? Also, in what ways might humans evolve? Karen thinks they are done evolving, since the things that kill us off these days generally happen after reproduction has occurred.
Anyway, it was wonderful to be invited to dinner. I offered to bring something; she suggested salad (this was late Wednesday). I didn't really have time to go shopping for salad ingredients, so she said dessert would be fine. Then I spent an hour looking through cookbooks for something I could make quickly with ingredients I had on hand. A regular cake has to be cooled and frosted, but this chocolate-ginger cake is served with whipped cream. Plus, it's delicious and relatively healthful--no butter, only 1/4 c. oil (it is a small cake, but big enough for 8 and we were 7). So then I had to get to work early enough to leave in time to come home and make it. So no time for racquetball, although we did have a nice long walk--and then walked to and from dinner of course. What a lovely evening for walking in Kenney Ridge!
Beautiful weather in Athens yesterday--our garden is growing wonderfully--Captain is working a lot and enjoying it. Lettuce is the most ready to harvest, but some other greens are coming along--Chinese cabbage and bok choy!
Well, it's snowing here in New York. Inappropriate for the first day of spring!
ReplyDelete"including some that were interesting" hahahaha
ReplyDeleteI didn't know scientists could clone a Neanderthal--that's pretty amazing. I don't think anyone should clone a Neanderthal or any animal just because we can. Sounds like a great discussion and a fun evening! The weather's been starting to turn very nice here, too. It's starting to get a bit hot inside from the solar water-heating panels on the roof that feed into the radiant floor heat, so we'll have to cover some of the panels soon.
ReplyDelete