I guess I’d better start by explaining my tag line and domain name.

First, the blog is just for me and you, and I was encouraged to establish it by my loving friends, Jerry and Buena. So here’s hoping you like it.

Second, what does agouti mean? It’s my nickname, yes, but why? Google says this:

is an agouti. Looks like a guinea pig with long legs, and apparently lives in South America. But that isn’t what I meant. And I don’t look like that! I will post a picture later to prove it. It turns out that agouti also refers to a gene in the mouse that produces bands of color in each fur follicle, which makes them a beautiful golden-brown. Brownish-golden mice with normal copies of this gene are called agouti, like so:

Well…that’s what my hair looks like! NOT “mousy”, mind you, which means something different. Instead, “agouti”. The nickname was given to me by my junior-year-of-college boyfriend Ed, who I met while working in a mouse genetics laboratory. Ever since, they call me Agouti. Only my parents call me Bernadette.

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