I hope everyone’s Xmas was heaps and heaps of fun! 🙂 Ours turned out to be quite nice…full of delicious food (prepared by Stefano and me)…a few but useful presents…and of course a few funny moments…How could it be otherwise, in MY house? 😉

One of those funny moments: my best friend gave our kitties the mat that you can see in the photos…Well, as soon as we put it on the floor, Pinga went right over to the “intruder” and sat on it, showing who‘s boss in this house, hehe…

Peekaboo, on the other hand, acted as though we had just let a terrifying monster into the house. She began circling around it in slow motion, tummy to the floor, nervous fluffy tail, sniffing the air suspiciously…

The circles kept getting smaller and smaller…until finally she got close enough to sniff the monster’s head. Since it didn’t attack her, she decided it was okay to walk on top of it. In the final photo, she is clearly triumphant.

Let’s see, what else? On Xmas night I skyped with my parents, sister and niece who live in the U.S. It took us a while to figure out the three-way connection (Italy-Massachusetts-Arizona), but we all finally managed to get  on the same screen, together with our cats…And that was definitely my best Xmas 2011 present…even though it made me realize how much I miss my family…eh. 

Okay…changing the subject quickly!…Even though Stefano went back to work today, I’m going to be on holiday until January 3rd, so I’ve decided to have some fun, yaaaay!

I haven’t wasted any time. Today I went out for lunch with my best “old” University of Florence friends, an annual event that is always lots of fun and laughs (my jaw and side still ache from all the laughing…aiaiaiaiaiai!!!). After lunch, we all came back to my house for some herbal tea, banana bread and cookies…and more laughter…

I’m also planning card games and dinners with other friends for the rest of the week…just like a “normal” person would do. That means I probably won’t be doing much research in this period… 🙂

But wait, speaking of research, let’s have a quick look at a fascinating “Science Daily” article on a fish oil compound called delta-12-protaglandin J3, or D12-PGJ3, produced from EPA (!), which exterminates leukemic stem cells: http://goo.gl/x1a9D I mean, hey, it kills chronic myelogenous leukemia STEM cells!!! Here is the link to the abstract, published in “Blood” on December 22: http://goo.gl/vBe68