My beautiful, kind, intelligent, and highly patient labmate Holly walked into lab this afternoon from the very cold/damp outside. Her shoes make a distinctive squeak-thump pattern, and even she commented on my hearing her coming. It reminded me of one of my brother's favorite childhood poem about a bouncing mouse; the refrain is literally 'Boing Boing Squeak/ a bouncing mouse is in my house/ he's been there for a week." (He even treated me to a rendition of it this Christmas. Aww.)

This article in the NY Times features some worthwhile descriptions of cheese, and the comments are also completely fantastic.

i managed to vacuum up my very delicate star necklace yesterday morning, unwound it in 3 pieces from the vacuum rotary and then spent a good half hour with pins and needles, literally, re-shaping the links. It still fits, but very much as a choker. Can 28 year-old women wear chokers? Is there an age limit?

i spent a large part of the day looking up the MSDS sheets of several fairly harsh chemicals. Hydrochloric acid is also called muriatic acid, "of or pertaining to brine or salt". Apparently, one of it's uses is for pickling metal, which removes oxidation and other impurities from the surface (by running it through HCl, called pickling liquor during this process).