MacAlpine.org

After watching the death toll in south east asia climb to mind numbing numbers over the last few days, Heather and I have made a donation to the red cross disaster relief fund (Amazon has a 1-click donation set up). I’ve never really felt the need to donate before. Starving people in other parts of the world have never really been my problem. In the US, we rate our disasters on property damage and economic impact — 15 billion for that storm 2 billion for this huricane etc, not in human lives. This tragedy is simply incomparable. Particularly frustating is the news coverage. CNN ran a front page story on a ’supermodel’ who survived the tsunami as well a financial story on Victoria’s Secret and the impact this disaster would have on the retail chain (majority of lingerie is made in Sri Lanla). 100,000 people dead and we are worried about super models and underwear. Donate.

First mouse infestation at the apartmentlet. Haven’t seen a mouse since the days at 4 Blanche st. A week ago we noticed that our brand new bag of sandwich buns had a hole in the bag and in a bun. Assumed the damage had from a mouse at the store. A week later we noticed somebody had been helping themselves to our stale pita bread. Bought some snap and glue traps. Caught our first baby mouse tonight. He was actually kinda cute. Baby mice are the worst because it means that there are many many more mice in the walls. I guess it is time to buy some mouse poison.

Lots going on here at work. My Drosophila chromosome 2L replication paper finally came out in ‘Genes and Development‘ this month. I just finished writing a review paper for ‘Chromosome Research‘[bastard ie only site], which entailed a lot of AOPD (analyzing other peoples data) — never fun. I did manage to get away from the computer for a few hours to enjoy the departmental xmas party with Heather. A characicture artist at the party made a great drawing of Heather, except for the fact that it looks more like Cameron Diaz than HROD.