More than you wanted to know about cat litter

One of the things I do when I travel is take my back issues of Science with me and read through them while I am waiting to do computer work. When I get to a page that elicits a wow, cool, huh! or huh? I tear it out, fold it in half, and stow it. I have a couple of inches of these folded up pages on my desk. Most of them represent future good intentions to follow up, forward to someone, or just keep in my memory. Here is a little story about a Huh! I found last week.

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that requires a cat intestine, where it starts its life cycle, and another host, e.g., a rat. Toxoplasma returns to the cat intestine to start it all over again. To improve its chances, Toxoplasma cysts form preferentially on the rat amygdale, which controls fear responses in the brain. Infected rats don’t just mellow out, they specifically lose fear of the smell of cats, which makes it easier for the parasite to make it back to the cat intestine. So now you know why pregnant women should not handle cat litter.

40 years of recipies and counting

In my kitchen drawer there is a large box dating back to when business stationery came in fine cardboard boxes with lids. It has been filled with a file of clippings, and more recently, printouts of recipies. Then there are a couple of special purpose file folders for things like peaches and plums (I have trees)and bread machine recipies. Otherwise, no order, and the stuff on the bottom of the box has not seen daylight lo these many years. My neighbor to the rescue! She told me to buy a 31-day expandable receipt file, and label the days with food groups, such as salads, etc. I made special labels for zucchini and tomatoes, etc, things I grow and need lots of recipies for. File is availible upon request, since I couldn't figure out how to attach one here!

The only thing more satisfying than cleaning out a junky drawer is planting new plantlets. I got the garden in this weekend, and found yellow zucchini and lots of heirloom tomato sets to go in this year. Hope always springs eternal when dealing with sets from the garden store. Now to get the hedge trimmed so there is afternoon sun!

St. Patrick and the Snake

I attended the engineering campus at Missouri for college, University of Missouri at Rolla, formerly Missouri School of Mines. The patron saint of engineers is St. Patrick, who bludgeoned to death all the snakes in Ireland, which is why there are no snakes in that island. You can only imagine the drunken festival at a mostly male university that annually occurs on this anniversary. Whatever. The point is, my cat Fritz, has found his niche in life, and that is to hunt snakes. After 3 years we have finally discovered the toy that turns him into a mewing, chirping, whirling dervish. Fritz was born to hunt snakes, notwithstanding that there are rarely snakes in this part of the San Jose foothills. We have a cotton-covered cord that in Fritz's little pea brain, must represent the most fascinating of prey, because he will beg to make the snake live, even at 4 a.m. Bless his little kitty brain, after over 3 years of trying to coax him to play, I've finally discovered his cat essence.

I should live to be 90

I found this lifestyle quiz on eons.com (OK, LivingTo100.com if you are under 50 and still have a crack at this). Now I don't do quizzes, having had quite enough of taking and giving them in my university career. However, I thought I might learn something, and so I did. If I would religiously floss my teeth daily, which I will confess doesn't happen, I would statistically gain a quarter of a year. Is it worth it? Doesn't my trusty Sonicare do a good enough job? I also completed the quiz for G, who will predecease me by 14 years, statistically speaking. Why am I not surprised?

Spring has sprung and other minutae

The trees are spectacularly beautiful again, as they always are. You will note they are not yet pruned, which is normal for this yard, as the man has to handle the pruner and we have to wait until he has been appropriately motivated. It has not been a good week although it should have been. Last weekend we went to Sonoma and drank wine. I finally bought a new serger, and took a playday mid-week to set it up, and of course, buy more fabric. My review this week was the best in years; I still have the new boss fooled that I can walk on water with only my feet getting wet. However, there is no money for raises, and I (and some 30 of my close colleagues and probably way more than that) am pissed. 300 shares of Agilent stock, which has not gone up in price and is indeed drifting down again, is not compensation for a year of knocking my socks off and not making the commission because the product line is under quota. There, I have had my public pout, I shall go finish in the lab until I have to come back tomorrow (Saturday) and I shall go home and stand in the yard and admire my trees. I just need to get my head straight again.

The Chicago O’Hare Whatever

I just had the good fortune to spend 3 nights in the Chicago O’Hare Hilton with some 300 of my closest colleagues. Pretty good meeting, actually, although it would have been more fun if the hula dancing had been by our management team than the girls they hired. And so I am languishing in the Chicago O’Hare Airport, because, being Chicago in February, it is fixing to snow and all the departure boards have a lot of ‘Cancelled’ lines on them.

There are a number of things I like about this airport, however. The local Berghof’s café has a sandwich stand with good meats (hey, it’s the Midwest) and a very good lager (which the lady who sat across from me spilled all over the lady next to her, poor thing, who will smell like beer for the rest of her (delayed) trip). I like the tunnel between terminals that plays the United song with the neon tubes. I LOVE the brontosaurus skeleton near the security exit in terminal B. But the toilet seat covers in the ladies’ rooms comprise my main entertainment. Some lucky salesman sold the airport a system that automatically rolls a new plastic sleeve over the toilet seats for each new patron. Nifty little motor hums and does all the dirty work. I’ve never seen them anywhere else. Not as techy as the ones in the local brauhaus in Germany, where the whole seat rotates under a UV lamp that is supposed to sanitize the seat, but I would think the plastic sleeves are more protective. I could do a short dissertation on the various modern forms of Thomas Crapper’s invention, but I see my gate is starting to board and I’m trying to get out of here before the snow hits.

What I do for a living

Much to my surprise, Agilent Technologies has posted a couple of cool videos on YouTube. This one is my bread-and-butter product
This one is the same actor, and to us, also very funny . These were my lab before they spent mega$$ on the new Center of Excellence (sorry, that's really what they call it). For a greybeard organization, someone has a sense of humor.