"Some pursue happiness; others create it"

Let me tell something to you: an alternate spelling for pure happiness.

C-R-U-M-B-L-E C-R-U-S-T

It's one of those simple pleasures that never fails to add a dash of color to my day -- even more than the bright yellow tablecloth currently adorning our dining room table.



Add to that the perfect late summer/early fall weather we've had in DC the past few days, and I could almost forgive myself for being nuts enough to come back to school. Plus there's the perk of living in a place where the lesser holidays, e.g., Columbus Day, are actually observed, resulting in the occasional three-day weekend. Win!

The incredible edible mouse

A couple of weeks ago I came across the Science Cookie Roundup #5, which featured, among other things, a mouse cake.

I wanted to bring something special to the lab on my last day, and had been eyeing the gel electrophoresis cookies as a potential candidate.

But guys. A mouse cake.

As the self-proclaimed Mouse Wench Extraordinaire, I felt that I could not possibly pass up such a challenge.



The mouse cake submitted by Jackie has a cupcake tumor, since she used to study cancer biology. While some of our mice also sport induced tumors, most of them receive heart or skin graft transplants, since my lab studies transplant rejection.

Unfortunately a heart graft is well nigh impossible to represent in cake form -- unless I were to render a surgery-in-progress, complete with all the organs, instruments, sutures, etc., which... well, there's an idea. Perhaps I'll attempt it one day, when I have more surgical and cake-decorating experience under my belt. For this particular mouse cake, however, I settled for a skin graft.