Houston, we have Internet access at home! Whee!

I’ve been sick since yesterday with stomach problems. It’s an on-again-off-again thing. At the moment, Husband is securing an 8-foot bookcase in the office to the wall with earthquake straps. Tomorrow we’ll unpack boxes in there.

Some observations:

I made beef stock for soup. Nothing smells more savory to me than roasting the bones and some vegetables in the oven in preparation for making stock.

Now that I have easy access to the Internet, I can follow up all immediate curiosities. For example, I wondered recently about the origin of the name Oreo as I nibbled on the cookies. Well, one answer speculates:

While there is no written record as to the origin of the OREO Chocolate Sandwich Cookies name, there are several theories. Some say that OREO was chosen because it was a nice melodic combination of sounds and was easy to pronounce. Others feel it was patterned after the French word for gold, “or” , a color used on early package designs. It is even believed that the name comes from the Greek word for mountain, “oreo”, and that the name was chosen because the first test version was hill-shaped. Regardless of its origin, the name stuck and today OREO Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are one of the most popular brands of cookies in America.

—Wade Lee

However, a Metroactive article states:

According to Nabisco historians, the Oreo was not named after the Greek word oreo, meaning “mountain.” Nabisco’s pride and joy was named by taking the “re” out of cream and squishing it, sandwich-style, between the two “o’s” from the word chocolate.

—David Templeton

I like the latter explanation the most!

I’ve been deeply immersed in the novel, Ahab’s Wife: Or, the Star-Gazer.

Our friends had their first baby, a son, on February 8th!! He’s healthy and adorable, and we are thrilled for them.

I’ve been following the news about Oswego, NY, coping with 7 feet of snow recently dumped on them. I attended SUNY Oswego for my bachelor’s degree, and it was truly a place for hardy souls. In a recent conversation with my mother, she mentioned she’d heard that part of the reason for the amount of snow is that some of the Great Lakes have not frozen over as usual; the weather system has captured moisture from the lakes and carried it to land, where it becomes “lake effect” snow. I lived in Syracuse for 31 years, and boy, did we know what that was like! Looks like people now have to figure out where to put additional snow predicted to fall.