A place for all that

As requested by Harmony, I have made public the recipe for Log. If you don't know what Log is, you have been missing out. If you do want to know, then you're about to find out. My blogging has been taken to the next level, as per request by my sister Emily, I've created a whole nother recipe page. And you can visit it by clicking HERE.

There is also a handy link to this new recipe page over in the sidebar in the links section. It only took me about a half an hour to figure that one out.

Playin' Hookey

A two day Spring Break? Pffft. Screw that. I need more! I've officially extended my Spring Break by one day, and what have I done? Come home, eaten chocolate, watched day time TV, eaten Popcorn, watched the olympics, eaten cake, and fallen asleep on the couch. It's been glorious. I intend to do the same tomorrow.

Wonder No More

Remember this?



There were many theories as to the identity of the driver of the pink beast, and inspite of my many stakeouts nearby the bubblegum Hummer, I never got a glance. Until now. Curious? Check THIS out.

Getting Closer

My Dad informed me today that his quest to find my blog goes on . . . and though he has yet to have any success with finding me, he has managed to find Christa's blog, and read about how great I am. See you soon, Dad.

High Risk

I had my appointment with the Hemotologist on Tuesday, and while he didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, he gave me some further information on what I already knew. Basically, I have this inherited abnormality in the Factor V Leiden gene, which increases my likliness of clotting. Duh. He said that with my structural abnormality (extra rib), clotting abnormality, and being on the pill, I was basically a ticking time bomb. I will always be at risk, always. I will be at particular risk whenever I fly anywhere longer than 6 hours, and with any hormone change, such as pregnancy. Actually this pregnancy thing is quite serious. Here is what I've found:





Women with Factor V Leiden (FVL) have a substantially increased risk of
clotting in pregnancy (and on estrogen containing birth control pills or
hormone replacement) in the form of DVT (deep vein thrombosis, sometimes
known as "milk leg") and pulmonary embolism. They also have an increased
risk of preeclampsia, as well as miscarriage and stillbirth due to clotting
in the placenta, umbilical cord, or the fetus (fetal clotting may depend on
whether the baby has inherited the gene). Note that many, many of these
women go through one or more pregnancies with no difficulties, while others
may miscarry over and over again, and still others may develop clots within
weeks of becoming pregnant.

There may be nutritional and lifestyle reasons why some women clot and some
women don't. There is some evidence that low magnesium levels can increase
the tendency to clot (2). Likewise, high homocysteine levels may magnify
the effects of FVL or vice versa. The treatment for high homocysteine
levels is supplementation of vitamins B-6, B-12, and folic acid (3). Both
birth control pills and pregnancy demand higher intake of these nutrients,
so nutritional deficiencies in women with FVL can have extreme
consequences. Likewise, women who exercise regularly and are not immobile
for long periods of time will have better circulation and less opportunity
for clots to form. Given that the vast majority of people with FVL are
unaware of the condition, and the fact that in the U.S. it is a safe bet
that every midwife has had at least one and probably many clients with FVL,
it pays to be aware both of the nutritional issues and the symptoms of
abnormal clotting.

Women who are diagnosed with FVL are generally considered high risk in
pregnancy, particularly if they have had clotting in the past. Standard
medical practice in most cases is prophylactic treatment with low-dose Low
Molecular Weight Heparin (LMWH, usually Lovenox) for women who are not
actively clotting and therapeutic anticoagulation with LMWH for women with
active clotting.





So, further investigation will be done, since a 'slight abnormality' has shown up in another clotting factor, along with the 'significant abnormality' with the Factor V Leiden. And some family testing may be done to figure out if anyone else has inherited this condition, and where the heck it came from. Life goes on.

How Great Am I?

Well, pretty great, according to Xta. She has written an incredible tribute to me at the close of our nearly 4 year period of running the show together at the pool. You can read it here.

She's said some pretty awesome things, and the more I read them, the more they make me teary eyed.

Christa, in short, is the craftiest lady I've ever met. Not in the neat and tidy Martha Stewart-esq way in which I strive to be crafty, but in a wild and crazy 'ooooh, I can melt glass with fire!' kind of way. She has huuuuge boobs. I have tiny tits. She is the yin to my yang. We made such an awesome team, saw totally eye to eye (for the most part) on how things should be done, and earned praise from high up people in the aquatics community for shaping things up. Our boss is an IDIOT and still doesn't think he was the reason she left, and ultimately, he'll be the reason we ALL leave, but I don't think he'll ever be aware of that, so I shall plug on, keep my head down, keep going to school, and one day get the hell out of there and move onto other things too. Christa is moving on to the next phase of her life, which is the self-supporting with her arts phase, so . . .

check out her incredible glass beads at www.christagiles.com

and check our her latest passion, hooping, at www.christahoops.com

Buy a bead, take a hooping class, heck, buy a necklace to wear to a hooping class (hoops and beads and jewelry can all be shipped, ya know)

Christa made a comment in my early days at the UBC AC, that she wondered how many Head Guards she would last through. 2 I suppose, since I'm still there. Now I'm wondering how many Head Instructors I will last through, 1 so far, and the new one hasn't started yet, but I feel very uneasy about it. I am aware of a bit of a wall I already have up, and that is mainly due to anger I have at my manager about not being included in the interview process for someone who is going to be MY partner. I am doing my best to take this wall down, and be unbiased, so I can be warm and supportive of the new HI when she starts at the end of the month. I wonder how many Head Instructors I'll last through . . .

I am very sad about the end of my working relationship with Christa, but she needed to move on, and in the end, I needed her to go too. It's been great - I wouldn't be so sad about it if it had been crappy, and now we can start a new era of being 'just friends'. Wow.


And . . . Speaking of self supporting arty friends, my friend Harmony Trowbridge now has her CD 'Amoraphobe' in music stores all around, both east and west coasts. Check it out now! I have 2!

And shout out to my cousin Katherine, who reads my blog after all! Howdy Darlin!

Nerding Out = Survival

For most of last week, exhausted, weary, bummed out, generally feeling like total crap, I was pretty sure I would end up dropping a class this term. That would suck, cause I'd only have to take the same class again at a later time, much like the ill fated micro economics class of September 2004. Only, on Sunday, a miracle happened: Chemistry study group! And who formed this nerderiffic little club? I did! I did! I did! I spent Sunday afternoon sitting in the cafeteria at school with some of the other 'older' students in the class, going through chem notes, bitching about our prof, and actually absorbing the info. I went home and finished my prelab assignment and my lab write up, and actually figured stuff out on my own.

Here is what I can do:

An experiment calls for 10.0 grams of anhydrous copper(II) sulfate, but the only chemical available in the chemical supply room is copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate. How many grams of the hydrate would have to be heated to provide 10.0g of the anhydrate?

Reaction equation:

CuSO4.5H20(s) --heat--> CuSO4(s) + 5H2O(g)
hydrate anhydrate


Step 1 was figuring out that this was basically the same compound, and all I needed to do was separate the CuSO4 from the water to get the stuff I needed for the experiment. But how much? Well, to do that I need to figure out the percent composition of CuSO4 in the hydrate.

So . . .

% mass CuSO4 = 159.6096g CuSO4 / 249.686g CuSO45H2O x 100 = 63.9241%



then . . .


?g CuSO4.5H2O x 63.9241 / 100 = 10g CuSO4



and . . .

?g CuSO4.5H2O x 0.639241 /0.639241 = 10g CuSO4 /0.639241 = 15.6435g CuSO4.5H2O required



Lets double check that . . .

15.6435g CuSO4.5H2O x 63.9241g CuSO4 / 100g CuSO4.5H2O = 10g. CuSO4!!!!


Some of the cancellations may be a little unclear, but that's about me not being a computer genius, not anything to do with the chemistry.

Horrah! Chemistry study group rules! This makes me ridiculously happy, and I think I may survive the term after all!

To Skip, Or Not To Skip?

The dilemma: sit through a god awful two hour Chemistry lecture, absorb nothing, take really patchy notes, go home exhausted, make dinner, attempt to prepare for tomorrows Math quiz and do poorly on it . . . OR skim chem, go directly home from work, have over six hours to plow through three units of Math and get ready for tomorrows quiz. I hate skipping classes, and almost never do, but I'm so friggen swamped, and had such an unproductive weekend (my own fault, as a result of birthday festivities which shall remain undisclosed) that I really feel like I'm drowning. The semester is showing no signs of letting up, and I really feel that I must spend this week, and this weekend buried in the books, attempting to get ahead, and then perhaps I will feel slightly less stressed out. So, I suppose I'll skip one class, and hope I don't miss anything TOO important.

Such is life.