January 22

Everyone in our office is sick with some sort of upper respiratory infection. We know it’s viral because one of our people went to urgent care and they said so. When we say everyone, we pretty much mean EVERYONE. It’s like a ghost town with people dropping like flies. Amylynn’s been likening it to 14th century Europe and the black plague. There is one operations person left out of six, so the poor girl is being inundated.  Of course, the Sisters spent much of the day plying her with coffee, lunch, and sweets to keep her content. She asked us at one point if we were bribing her. “Obviously!” we told her. “We need our work done and if everyone is too stupid to think of it, that’s their problem.”  Anyway, we’re on a strict regimen of hand washing and avoiding other people. Thank Zeus for the internet. Here’s some funny stuff, or at the least it won’t make you sick.

1. Dessert report. Oh, my. This little delicacy is not to be missed. It’s called a kouign-amann. Pronounce it like Queen-a-mon. We didn’t know where it’s from. Holland? Germany? Heaven? We did some research after eating several dozen of the things to discover they’re French. Of course they are. We don’t know what we were thinking. According to the

Mike Brown (left) and Konstantin Batygin. Borrowed from Sciencemag.org.

Wikipedia page there is a strict recipe of 40% dough, 30% butter, and 30% sugar. What could possibly go wrong with a recipe like that? Find a place in your town that has these and eat several. You won’t be sorry.

2. A very complex word for it. They – the astronomy smarticles – believe they may have located another planet just beyond Pluto. They haven’t seen it, of course. That’s very far. Very, very far. But something out there is causing a disturbance in the force, if you know what we mean. Something is causing elliptical orbits and that something has to have gravity, right? The scientists are calling this thing, “a massive perturber.” Blahahahahahaha. We have quite a few “massive perturbers” in our lives and that’s how we’re going to start identifying them. MPs. You may join in our inside joke if you like. We love to hear about your very own MPs. The person at the grocery store with 37 items in the 15 Items or Less line. The person ahead of you at the ATM who is taking FOREVER. What are they doing up there? Taking out a loan application. Or maybe your crazy boss who won’t stop texting you? Massive Perturbers all.

3. We’re getting this printed on business cards. Bei bei, the most adorable baby panda EVER, made his public debut at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington DC this week. We’ve been watching him on the PandaCam ever since he was just a little bamboo nugget. So of course, the news people interviewed all these people who waiting in like for like 93,759 hours just to see him. Some of them were wearing panda suits – like jammies, not suits made out of pandas. That’s sick. Others were less insane. The best one of the lot had the words Panda Enthusiast written as her descriptor under her picture during the interview. WOW! We didn’t know there was a technical term for it. We thought Crazy People was the best we could do. We are totally Panda Enthusiasts. We’re going to get shirts made.

4. Ooooooh! We hope that you know us well enough at this point to realize that we love Tiffany. Not the 80’s singer. We don’t know anything about her. What’s she doing now? We have no idea. We’re referring to Tiffany the jewelry store. Of course we love their jewelry. Obviously. That color blue is a favorite, too. You probably also know we live in the wild west out here. We’re sure you can imagine our wide-eyed reaction to this little gem. We could really use this during the zombie apocalypse. Really, there’s no reason why you can’t shoot zombies in the head and still be stylish.

5. She’s living our life. The Sisters aren’t really crazy about monkeys. That’s not to say we wouldn’t scoop one up should it wander into our periphery. We know ourselves better than that, and we suspect you do too. You know what we are crazy about? Among other things – many other things – dogs. Big dogs, little dogs. Fuzzy, silly dogs. This Rhesus Macaque in New Delhi just adopted a stray puppy. She carries him around and shares her food and protects him from scary stuff. They take naps together. The citizens of New Delhi don’t know why she did it, but we do. Duh! Look at that puppy! We’d adopt him too. All tiny and spotted and adorable. Just look at that tiny tail. We’d name him Farley. Or maybe Edgar. Lucky monkey. Some people won’t let us have a puppy. Some people are just mean.