Quanny.

While chatting with a colleague at RNACon, I noticed over his shoulder someone enthusiastically hating on locked nucleic acid technology. It only took a moment for me to recognize the naysayer as a friend from the deep past of high school – Hytham.

Several hours later, after ditching the final Bay Area RNA Club talks, I was drunk with Hytham and his coworkers on the rooftop of their biotech company. Gertrude (one such coworker) harnessed some Chinese New Year magic to whip up paper floating lanterns, which we torched and set to sail high above the Bay (except for one, which crashed into the roof of a neighboring / competing biotech company – but you didn’t hear that from me).

Still having much catching up to do, Hytham and I escaped to the Dogpatch to dine on funghi pizza at Piccino, a delicious restaurant with accommodating staff and perfectly proportioned entrees (despite what others may say, Tiffani).

DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ in Mission Bay.

A brief summary of the 2012 Meeting of the Bay Area RNA Club (or as I’m calling it – RNACon) at UCSF Mission Bay: hammerhead ribozymes, picornaviruses, optical tweezers, plastid tRNAs, and protein folding on the ribosome!

But perhaps the best part of RNACon was the glimpse of the snappy commute I would have had if I had [gotten accepted and] gone to UCSF. Oh, in another life, perhaps…

In case you haven’t noticed (I hadn’t): the single-serve, made-to-order coffee movement has stormed ice cream.

Smitten in Hayes Valley prepares their ice cream one order at a time in a fancy liquid nitrogen-enabled churning machine – which they have affectionately named Kelvin. It’s certainly pricier than ice cream from any of the Holy Ice Cream Trinity of San Francisco spots (Humphry Slocombe, BiRite, and Mitchell’s), but Smitten’s ice cream is certainly worth it.

My “cinnamon toast” ice cream tasted like Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal blended with frozen butter (maybe it was?) – in other words, like the most amazing flavor and texture combination you can envision.

Bier at Suppenküche for Nik’s Birthday on Tuesday. Please note that all beer glasses* are depicted to scale with various German woodland creatures, so as to aid in your selection of an appropriately sized drinking vessel. Danke and bitte. 

*Damage to or loss of any drinking vessel will result in a $50 charge to your bill.

From extinct reptiles to their extant relatives – a smattering of scaly characters from the East Bay Vivarium.

Pteranodon longiceps and Tyrannosaurus rex at Berkeley’s Valley Life Sciences Building

On Saturday morning, Nik made the fluffiest waffles ever. I would have snapped a photo of the savory cornmeal and chive waffles topped with spicy black beans, salsa, and a fried egg – but the whole production didn’t last long. Instead, I present to you the batter in all its unappetizing glory.

wumbly:

Jeff, after using an electric whisk on some whipped potatoes: “I put the Cuisinart away in your room… where I thought it should go.”

Ersa Major: “I’m sleeping on the floor tonight!”

A.K.A. Devils on Horseback. @Elsa’s for dinner on Monday night.