Nobel Genes is finally out today. I haven't seen a copy yet myself, but I used my mouse to pat the cover that's up at Amazon. I hope it fares well out in the big bad world.

In not so related news, we picked blueberries. I'm not much of a blueberry-eater, and my hard-earned berries sometimes go bad in the fridge before I think of doing something like actually eating them or baking blueberry muffins or something.

But there is something hypnotizing and compulsive about picking berries, the silence of the countryside and the scents of the fields and getting so close to the ground. Not to mention, to the spiders.

I thought my daughter might quickly get bored, after all she's just two years old, but she loved it. She carefully plucked each single berry off the stem with her little fingers, opened the box, put a berry inside, and closed the box before getting the next one.

There is something I should be learning from that.