We are having a house guest tomorrow so tonight I kicked off my vacation with some CLEANING.

Normally I am a slob, but sometimes when I start cleaning things get a little out of control and I lose all sense of proportion. For example, in the kitchen: I did not just clean all the visible surfaces. I also got on a chair and cleaned the most inaccessible of the cabinets, as if our house guest was going to show up, nod appreciatively, and then immediately begin inspecting our pantry. Actually, this particular house guest may do just that.

Anyway, I threw out anything that satisfied one or more of the following conditions:

1. Had moved with us from our previous house two years ago
2. Was in a plastic bag
3. Was unidentifiable

Curiously, almost everything I tossed looked about the same. I am pretty sure the set of six things included at least:

1. Textured vegetable protein
2. Panko bread crumbs
3. Dried coconut
4. Rolled oats
5. Different bag of textured vegetable protein

Several months ago I threw out a whole container of textured vegetable protein because it was contaminated with pantry moths. The thing is, I can remember purchasing TVP only once, and for one use (veggie chili). I like it in veggie chili but not so much that I would keep buying it. I am starting to suspect it can undergo mitosis, and then gather itself snugly into little plastic bags.

The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution is a history, in a way, of the expression of evolution. Told from the point of view of humans (who else?), it moves backward in evolutionary history visiting the major junction points where our species’ ancestors branched off from other groups. As the book progresses, the leaps (in form and function, as well as time) get progressively greater, ending with the origins of the first forms of life on Earth, estimated to be almost 4 billion years ago. The shtick of the book is that at each of these “rendezvous” between groups, a particular organism at that junction tells a “tale” which illustrates some principle of evolution.

I know a fair amount about hominid and primate evolution and pretty much nothing “before” that, so I found the later chapters more captivating than the first. It turns out I often didn’t know what our ancestors were.

I appreciated that Dawkins doesn’t shy away from the complexities in evolutionary history, but I wish the book’s structure were different. He reminds the reader repeatedly that the notion of progress as applied to evolution is pure nonsense — it’s nothing more than an expression of observer bias. To us, the notion of moving from sea to land, from four legs to two, seems obvious and natural. In reality, evolution moves in no particular direction at all, and even in our own history there are regressions and backtracking and the repeated “re-invention” of features.

Think about the evolutionary perspective of a bird. To them, mammals are an evolutionary dead-end: a minimally notable subplot in an unbroken chain from sea to land to air, from proto-reptile to dinosaur to bird. Humans managed to achieve flight only by over-engineering some unrelated organ (the brain) and constructing devices that surpass bird flight only in altitude and speed, but not even remotely in grace, agility or endurance. One imagines the pinnacle of evolution, from the point of view of a swift, of almost never having to set foot on land in an entire lifetime.

There are weirder trees to imagine: what would a fish think of the evolution of a whale? (”What a pointless digression were lungs and legs”, probably.) And the eusocial insects would be amazed that primitive forms of relatedness were still hanging around.

Dawkins can’t help but grumble about creationists throughout, but it’s mostly constructive: he cites the number of times the eye has independently evolved (nine) and there’s a good amount of space devoted to homeobox genes and their role in macroevolution. But I got the impression that he was holding back, if only because he knew he had The God Delusion in the pipeline.

Overall, it’s a good book, especially for people who enjoyed biology in school but haven’t kept up with the extraordinary discoveries enabled by molecular DNA analysis (dogs and the most recent common human ancestor are both from Asia, who knew?) Next up: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Dawkins buddy Sam Harris.

I finally purchased some Pimm’s.

The story about how I became obsessed with acquiring Pimm’s is extremely boring so I won’t reproduce it here. It is enough to say that the moment this afternoon when I retrieved a case of Tremont Ale, stood on it, and reached up onto a high, neglected shelf at The Wine and Cheese Cask to retrieve my dusty prize was a highlight of the week.

The Pimm’s cocktail, as we interpreted it:

• 1 highball glass, half-filled with ice
• 2.5 oz Pimm’s No. 1
• .5oz Drambuie
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Club soda
• Sprig of mint

Every year I buy a bunch of romance novels for our vacation. I feel compelled to mention that the guys read them too.

This year I asked Amazon for high-rated romance novels set in the Jane Austen era:

1. A Wicked Gentleman by Jane Feather
2. Sinful Between the Sheets by Barbara Pierce
3. Bedding the Heiress by Cathy Maxwell
4. The Naked Earl by Sally MacKenzie
5. The Geology of Fluvial Deposits: Sedimentary Facies, Basin Analysis, and Petroleum Geology by Andrew D. Miall

Technically, the last doesn’t count: it received only 3 stars.

Salad greens:

Minty mojito:

This is galangal. I got it at Whole Foods, the first time I have seen it outside of an Asian grocery store. I bought it largely to take this picture.

That is all.

The introduction for the 2005 edition, rushed back into print to capitalize on the novel’s prescience, praises Sinclair Lewis’s achievement (of course) but only in spite of the book’s “loose melodramatic pot, flat and even corny characters, weak cliched dialogue, padded political discourse, awkward sentimentality, and heavy-handed satire.” All of these criticisms are true. I loved it.

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In the Whole Foods produce section a man in his late 40’s is standing, inert, with an empty shopping cart. A woman of the same age, perhaps sensing prey, asks him if he needs any help finding something. “I’m just trying to remember a recipe,” he replies.

“Oh?” she says. “What kind of recipe?”

“It’s, uh, complicated,” he answers, in a tone that indicates he’s not interested in her cooking advice or anything else. Then, perhaps thinking he was too brusque, adds, “I’m a raw-foodist.”

“A raw-foodist.”

“Yes, I don’t eat cooked food.”

“People who eat raw food call themselves ‘raw-foodists.’” It’s not a question.

“Only to people who eat cooked food,” he replies sourly.

To me she says, “Welcome to Cambridge.” Then she pushes off into Seafood.

Coming soon in the Short Cuts series from O’Reilly Media: Next-Generation Web Frameworks in Python, by me.

To answer the most important question in advance, I don’t know if I get to pick my animal.