Am I required to keep him alive?

I just watched my first episode of Fringe (2008–2013). It is amazing how disorienting it is to be told a city is Boston when it is very plainly either Toronto or New York. Also, I think the show's Harvard University might be Yale. Can you do that without starting a small war?

(John Noble is awesome. All mad scientist buttons checked. Including the one where he looks good in a lab coat.)

I saw these cat portraits on Tumblr a few days ago, but I had no idea they were actual guard cats of the Hermitage Museum. I approve.

The baked Alaska this afternoon was an amazing sucess. I am very proud of my skills with folding egg whites. rushthatspeaks and tilivenn can be proud of their ice cream wrangling and attention to baking times. The weevils in the confectioner's sugar were a surprise no one was looking for, and so was the time out where we had to get more eggs because the kitchen was too hot and humid for the first attempt at meringue to peak at all, but the results in Earl Grey and cardamom ice cream were wholly worth it. The sponge cake base was fluffy, the ice cream was sliceable and cold, the meringue on top was crisp-brown with the delicious marshmallow taffiness of burnt sugar at the tips. Egg whites are exactly as effective an insulator as I was always told. We really have no excuse for not reverse-engineering a butter-pie now.

I wish my head did not hurt this much.