I have made cupcakes entirely from scratch. My in-laws got me Cook's Illustrated for my birthday, and I've enjoyed it a great deal, in large part for the nerd factor. The magazine talks a bit about the chemistry of cooking, albeit in layman's terms. The recent issue had a yellow cake recipe. For MJ's school Valentine party on Thursday, I volunteered to bring cupcakes that the very allergic girl could eat, and thus from scratch came the yellow cake.

Six egg yolks, butter, whipped egg whites, etc. 25 cupcakes later, we have achieved fluffy cakeness in little muffin papers decorated with hearts, despite my not letting the eggs come to room temperature. Time for frosting. I made half their recipe, since the "surface area requiring frosting" math turned out to be 25 cupcakes < 2-layer cake. MJ has 23 in his class. Spouse and I ate the two extra, to make sure they were good. They were. Very. Even if I didn't let the eggs come to room temperature and didn't use a stand mixer or food processor.

When my God-daughters were here, the subject of Little Einstein's came up. This is a Disney show, that features "great music," "great art," and something they call "science" that has no relation to anything that earned me my PhD. Their mother likes LE, and I loath it, mostly for the fucked up science, but also because classical music bowdlerizing has it's limits. Yes, they're hearing the march from Aida, but they will forever associate the last bits of the phrase with, "Find the soup, find the soup, find the souuuuuuuuuup!" Sometimes it's best to let great art lie, and nothing will top "Kill the waaaabit!" or the whole Barber of Seville Bugs and Elmer duo. My other objection to LE is the racist stereotypes. (The Asian girl is smart. The Black kid is musical.)

Pinky and the Brain, OTOH, is required viewing for my kids, and the Godmother thinks it's stupid. Oh, well. When the kids ask what we're going to do (next day, night, whatever), my husband and I reply, "Same thing we always do. Try to take over the world."

"Stop saying that!"

"But it's true."

So, I can't talk openly about my fuckup, but it's primarily political, and a product of being too open for my own good. Hellooo, looking like an idiot. I hate that.

But, where I fall down in politics, I sometimes stand up in ideas. I'm having the great good fun of working with someone on a neuroregeneration project. My team has learned that when I go to a meeting with $cool_scientist, I don't come back in my usual muttering mode, but rather am jazzed about the potential.  Seriously, if this guy is right? Major limb neurological injuries, for which there are currently no cures but time and luck, may have a real hope for recovery of nearly full function. This could also affect, oh, crap, lots of things. I feel like I've made some nice intellectual contributions here.

toxicfur and I had a conference call this afternoon with a bunch of people doing something interesting. It was so nice to have someone next to me I could turn to when one of the people on the phone said something, and share that, "Yes! Demonstration of clue!" or "Oh, no no no, they need to turn left!" feeling. I'm so glad she's back.

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