So it's been sporatically snowing the past couple of days, which is a sure sign that it's almost my birthday. Ah yes, the past two out of three years I've celebrated with snowpeople. And in one case snowanimals as well. Hooray for freak weather.

Today was my presentation on molecular "pharming". Pharming is all about genetically modifying plants to produce pharmaceutical proteins, vaccines, antibodies, and the like. Not as nerve wracking as the last one, which is funny because I had never been less prepared for anything in my life than I was for this presentation. It went pretty well, and for our final slide (the obligatory "Questions?" slide), we decided to be funny and put an animated gif that I had found on the internet last night that was the funniest and most appropiate thing I had ever seen. It starts as a stump and grows into a tree, which then shakes back and forth until a stick man falls out and lands on the ground. Most people were a little shocked and wondering why we were showing a graphic where someone falls to their death out of a tree. First of all, it's a stick man. Secondly, he's not dead, he's just lying on the ground and whoever made it didn't animate it any further than that. Third and most importantly, it illustrates how plants are eventually going to be producing human products...including humans. Why doesn't anyone get it?

I am currently addicted to this dessert that my roommate made the other night for a small dinner party we hosted (when I say "small", I mean "for one other person"). I know she's told me the name of it, but I still can't call it anything other than "the green stuff". It's like a square, and it has a graham cracker crumb base, but the main ingredients are a combination of products that you wouldn't normally think to put together in a bowl, namely pineapple chunks, lemon juice, marshmellows, and lime Jello, heated throughly and then left to gel, and finally topped with whipped cream and kiwi slices. It has a sort of fluorescence to it, but it's really really good. The lesson here: give lime Jello a chance. Take that Martha.

"Go shawty, it's your birthday, we gon' party like it's yo birthday..."