Happy New Year (Observed)!

Breakfast was the best part of New Year’s Observed. I made the traditional pecan caramel rolls, which were greatly appreciated by all and sundry.

Pecan caramel rolls

We watched the Rose Parade. In a striking break with tradition, I stayed awake for the whole two hours. Every year the commentators become increasingly lame. I stopped watching the Thanksgiving Parade years ago because it was nothing but thinly veiled advertisements. There may be a day when I give up on the Rose Parade as well.

The weather has gotten drearier and drearier as the day passes, as if to make we notice that the holidays are over, and we have to hunker down until spring. Bah. In a few weeks, we will be looking wistfully through the seed catalogs and ordering way too much.

For those of you who envy the long vacations of instructors, let me remind you that our work is never really done. Over my vacation, I have been making chromosomes out of craft sticks. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who look at genetics problems and say, “Of course. This makes perfect sense,” and those who struggle. My craft stick chromosomes are an experiment in helping students visualize what goes on when each parent gives half their chromosomes to an offspring. Should I have to do this stuff in a college class? Probably not, but it is obvious that they can’t make the picture in their heads on their own. I have to teach the students I’ve got. No idea if it will help or not, but if they could just understand that each parent gives the offspring one yellow chromosome and one red one, we will be a little further along.

I started by spray painting the sticks in the glass greenhouse on a nice day when Terry thought it was warm enough in there for the paint. I then did my best to paint letters on the sticks with squeeze bottle acrylic paint from the craft store. It was kind of blobby, but I think everyone will be able to tell the capital letter from the lower case.

Red chromosomes (dry)

The red paint dried better than the yellow paint. I thought each side was thoroughly dry before flipping them, but after several flips, the yellow sticks were still sticking to the newspaper. Remembering the “stickering” process at Hedstrom’s Lumber Company, I stacked them up for better air flow. I restacked them today and hope I can pack the up tomorrow.

Yellow chromosomes stacked for drying