Gee, no posts for 20 days... That's a lot of time... I mean, when I was younger (last year) December 5th seemed years from Christmas... and that's 20 days.

Anyway, last Friday, I was at this departmental research meeting, and somebody forgot to get ice for drinks... So I run out to look for some, and when I come back, my fellow colleagues have filled a high-school-cafeteria-sized garbage can with dry ice and isopropanol to make an enormous dry-ice bath, and are dipping cans of pop into it with lab tongs to "quick-chill" (as they marketed it) their drinks.

Chemists make me laugh.