Don't be stupid.

I don't have any new exciting stories to regale you with (I know, you're surprised. Because I am usually SO EXCITING but alas, not this week). I just wanted to share something I'm investigating that is based on a facebook comment a friend's father (I think) made. So this post is pretty much entirely a Chemistry Fun Fact. You're welcome.

The conversation stemmed from a discussion about how bad fake baking is for you (fake baking, fake tanning, laying in tanning beds, voluntarily giving yourself skin cancer, whatever you prefer to call it). Seriously kids, studies have proved fake baking increases your chances of getting skin cancer by 75%. That's huge. That's like saying "Why yes, I would like a side of cancer with my tanning lotion" every time you go. So one friend suggested spray tanning instead, which I have done before. And I looked HILARIOUS. Seriously, gingers aren't meant to be tan, I even have photographic proof, but now that I looked at it, the picture doesn't really do justice how absurd I looked. Embrace your inner pale, my fellow gingers, cause trust me, you look totes ridic.

Also, downside of spray tanning, that shit gets on EVERYTHING. Your sheets, your clothes, it rubs off on everything. I think I recall it washing out...mostly. So consider yourself warned.

But someone joked that spray tanning probably has crap in it that causes cancer. Which I have no idea if that's true, but it might be, because goodness knows everything causes cancer anymore. Which as Tanner (my fiance) pointed out once, is simply because humans live so much longer than we used to, and cancer cells are cells that have gone rogue essentially. Meaning they've mutated themselves in to something bad, which requires time. We used to live to say...30ish. Now most of us see our 80's. So that's a partial explanation. Along with all the chemicals and crap that are all around us nowadays. And other reasons I am sure, I am no expert.

Anywho, someone else then commented that they are concerned about the nanoparticles used in sunscreen. I've heard about people being concerned about this before also. The main component of suncreen that protects you from the sun is zinc oxide or titanium oxide, because they create free radicals which I think I have explained in a previous blog entry (ha, learning!) but basically they block UV rays. That's the take home message. Sunscreen didn't use to always rub on to be clear either, because of how big the zinc oxide or what have you particles were. But if you shrink them down to nanosize (super eensy weensy, like 100,000 x smaller than a human hair) they rub on clear as well as are better absorbed by your skin, and provide better protection.

So a concern, which could be legitimate, is whether or not these nanoparticles are harmful for us. I did some googling, because Lord Google doth know all. Not really, but it's hella useful, and I read some reviews of studies, nothing too in depth because that'd be like real research, and doing research is for losers.

Ahem.

So I read a few things that talk about studies that have been done. In one of which they used a different metal and they tested it on mice. That...doesn't sound particularly accurate to me. In others they had trouble determining whether it was the nanoparticles that actually made it through to living cells or if it was soluble zinc ions (there is a difference) so that's a major deficiency in that study, since the question is: is the zinc oxide nano particle getting through to live tissue or not? Most studies that have focused on this have determined that the nanoparticles do not make it through to living cells, meaning they sit on all those dead skin cells that sit on the surface of our skin, which is our first layer of protection. This means you wash them off, or sweat them off, or they just wear off.

Another study, which amused me, studied the effect of the particles in the colon. Think about how they have to get to the colon....yeah you'd have to EAT YOUR SUNSCREEN. So don't stick sunscreen up your nose, or in your mouth, and if you use it on your lips don't lick it off (I know, "but it's so tasty!" you say, do try and resist). It also said the quantity you'd have to eat is 2 grams in order to reach toxic levels in your colon. That's a lot of sunscreen. That's like...taking a shot of sunscreen. I feel ill thinking about that. You don't eat other things you apply to your skin, like make up or lotions or nail polish remover, or even things you use in your mouth, like toothpaste, for similar reasons, they're bad for your insides.

So basically, don't be stupid and eat your sunscreen. And if you have a paste eating child, keep them away from your sunscreen. Use your sunscreen properly, and you should be fine. Yay for being pale! Power to the pale people! Everyone hug a ginger!

One year (+) later...

Holy shiz I forgot this thing existed. Ha, woops. I think there might be only one upset person about this. He knows who he is (btw, how's Vegas?). Let's have a brief rundown of what happened since my last post:

I went to Auburn. For one semester. I then transferred to University of Cincinnati to be close to my parents and be close to...



...my fiance. Weird, right? Some whackadoo wants to marry this! My favorite joke now every time I do something gross or unladylike (like burp, I'm good at burping) is go "oh yeah, a life time of this" and gesture sexually to myself. No worries, he's an engineer. We're effectively squaring the nerdiness in my life (what if we have children?! Our relationship will require a power law!).

The giant bunny and beloved house pet passed away in June 2010, he pulled a suitcase down on top of himself and pretty much killed himself instantly. It was awful. Also, bunnies are not smart.

Polo sold! He now lives happily in Auburn, Alabama in a large field in the sun. He's super duper sunbleached. It's the latest look, all the coolest horses are doing it.

Lemony is still with me, she is in Cincinnati, in fact I ought to get off my lazy ass and go ride here shortly. She is 18 years old and still jumping and dragging me around the arena at times. She is currently fuzzy as all get out, she grew her winter coat essentially overnight. She looks even more stuffed animal like than usual.

I'm now doing a Masters instead of PhD. Did you know PhD's take FOEVA to finish? Because they do. I don't want to be in school until I'm 30. Also to be honest in engineering I don't think there is much of a difference between PhD's and Masters except for the # of years you permit yourself to be subjected to the mental anguish of graduate school also known as limbo between college and the adult world (sure sure PhD's have more insight and detailed knowledge of their project, but seriously, it's just a # of years suffering in a lab). What am I doing? What the hell is my project really? Why am I here when I could get paid 3-4x my stipend with a real job? Why am I the only American girl in this entire program? Why won't that one professor believe me when I say I'm a graduate student, after asking me the same question 4 or 5 times? Why does this campus's food choices suck? Would it be so hard to have a Wendy's? The list of hard pressing, important questions goes on.

But I think I'm on track to finish in the spring or at the latest the summer. Currently my work is titled "Conjugation of HER2 Monoclonal Antibodies to PEG-PLGA Nanoparticles". Yep. Doesn't make much sense to me most of the time either. It's for drug delivery stuff, like...targeted drug delivery towards the treatment of cancer, specifically breast cancer. Sounds way cool, right? Totes would be if ANY OF MY LAB WORK WORKED EVER. Ahem. In fairness a few small parts of it do. Just not any of the new, novel parts that would be publishable. Wah.

On a different note, I get to plan my wedding, set for November of 2012. I LOVE PLANNING THINGS. This is like, the planner's dream. SO MANY THINGS TO ORGANIZE AND PLAN (insert maniacal laughter here). So far it's been fun. I'll let you know when it gets stressful and I have to sacrifice a bridesmaid for the greater good. The day will come, I am sure.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Chocolate milk. Do you like chocolate milk? I think it's gross to be honest. I'm also the weirdo that refuses to drink the milk from my cereal bowl because it's all sweetened and whatnot from the cereal. Nasty. But do you make your chocolate milk yourself or do you buy the big jugs of it, because those big jugs of it kind of gross me out. Here's why: when milk doesn't sell and it reaches its sell-by date, it gets sent back to the manufacturer. Where they repasturize it and then add the chocolate flavoring to mask the fact that it's now much thicker than it was and would taste funny as just regular milk. Basically they kill all the stuff that's grown inside it that's now bad for you...but leave it there. So they cover up the funky taste with chocolate. Gross. I would suggest buying Hershey's syrup for your chocolate milk desires in the future, mostly because that grosses me out. Also, bonus, this can be added to ice cream for extra chocolate-y deliciousness. Or squirted on to various body parts during...wait wrong blog.

My latest picture of Lemony, the best pony ever:

Weh weh weh.

Everyone, meaning all two or three readers I have (seriously, how lame are you guys?) are bitching at me to post again. So post I shall. Not really sure wtf about. But here we go.

So what's new...oh well I officially accepted Auburn's offer, so I'm going there for grad school. I'm actually headed there tomorrow with my mom to find a place to live. Kind of excited to see what I can get for my money since the south is so damn cheap. So that's kind of exciting.

My dad is a smug retired engineer. He likes to ask me obnoxious tricky questions, typically at 1 am, which are like...super fundamental shit and mock me when I get them wrong. Like in Germany they built a water bridge. For realsies you can walk down the sides of it and barges and boats go down the middle, and it's a bridge over more water. It's whacky looking google it. Now, for such a bridge, do you need to take into consideration the weight of just the water or the water and the barges that will be going down it? I got it wrong the first time. Because I'm a dumbass and a crappy engineer. My three readers can ponder this and give me an answer in the comments. There I've resorted to begging for comments. COMMENT GODDAMMIT. I have another one, why are manholes round? Don't you dare google it. There's one super simple, really good reason for it. My friend Rob got it. Although I personally liked his answer of "because the teenage mutant ninja turtles have round shells" best, but my dad just put his head in his hands at that one. Smug ass. Took us awhile to get to the correct answer. I personally thought because circles are aesthetically pleasing should have been acceptable but my dad thought not. Again, attempt an answer, I'll give you the answer later. Gotta keep my three readers interested.

Equine update: Polo is still for sale. Buy him. Funny horse story, one of the girls in the barn owns this unnecessarily large athletic beast named Palm. Palm is HUGE. Palm is a giant weenie. Palm doesn't like being in the outdoor arena alone. The girl was taking a lesson on him and the other horse that was in the ring left and he started to have a come apart, so my trainer went and got Lemony out of her stall and stood in the ring holding her. And then Palm was fine. Lemony on the other hand was pretty sure this was not in her original schedule for the day, standing in the ring and watching that big lughead jump. She had better things to do. Like nap. Or eat her bedding. Or nap. She once made herself so fat on eating her bedding she could barely get over a 2'6" jump. We have overindulgence problems in this family.

I'm on my mom's computer, I wonder if there's any fun pictures.



That's me holding a GIANT Hershey's bar at a team horse show. My parents brought it, and as a team we managed to eat the vast majority of it. There's a running joke that horse shows are for getting fat, because all we do is sit around and eat and watch. Yes, that is counterproductive. Also, holy cow I look like a hella unfortunate ginger in that picture. Super. Bonus, Zan makes a guest appearance in this photo (my dad, the large bellied man on the right).



My mother is not very skilled with it comes to taking action shots of me riding, that's one of the best shots she ever got. That's a few years old now.

I'll surf through this computer for more pictures later, I bet I could even unearth some from high school. But that's probably best not seen by anyone. Eesh.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: God what more do you want from me, I already gave you two interesting things to ponder in this entry, you greedy bastards. I'll give you a kinda lame chem fun fact. Honey doesn't spoil. Which for one, is great, cause I'm not sure I've ever finished a jar of honey. But I think the reason I've never finished a jar of honey is the shit crystallizes and becomes too viscous to flow and is crunchy and gross and I throw it away. Anyway, so honey, why does it not spoil? Well honey is a strange item, we could actually live off honey alone because it has no fat or cholesterol, and contains large quantities of fructose and glucose. Which for one, cool, maybe I'll lose ten pounds. For two, gross. The chemistry behind why honey doesn't spoil is because the bees "cure" honey to like 18% water and a lowish pH (3-4). Apparently these conditions make the honey stable for centuries. Really, centuries. The only way to have honey spoilage is if it is left exposed to air the honey will actually ferment due to naturally occurring yeast, and not a cool kind of ferment a gross this-now-tastes-bad kind of ferment. But if you expose honey to air and use the right yeast, you get mead. I had no idea. Nifty.

There, we both learned something.

Where's my wine?

Somedays are just not your day. Today was not my day. I overslept and missed my 10:30 class which really doesn't bother me because it's beer and wine and I don't pay attention in it anyway. The rest of my classes were boring, I've yet to start the long looking homework assignment I have due friday night, and both of my other classes have group projects in which my group is quite behind on. Great.

Wednesdays suck anyway because I have class till 6:18 so pile on feeling stressed, finding out yesterday I'm not getting a chemical engineering spot at North Carolina State and have been deferred to their materials science department all really boiled up nicely when I got finally got to my car at 6:30, to find it thoroughly buried in the parking lot by a bunch of basketball game attending douchebags. Upon this I immediately burst into tears and started screaming obscenities. Some extremely tall and nice Australian man saved the day and managed to finagle my car out of where it was to a point in which I could drive it out of the parking lot. I cried all the way to the barn from there with no knowledge of why I was crying. So instead of riding I put Polo in the indoor loose and just played with him. Which is entertaining because he follows me of his own volition everywhere, if I run he trots after me. He draws the line at going over poles though. Lazy ass.

So now I am home, hanging out with good friend Robert Mondavi (California wine maker) drinking it out of a plastic wine glass with a pink base and a blue fish shaped stem. Thanks mom. I'm going to go nuke a lean cuisine now. Nothing but high class in this apartment.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: I've discovered why I hate red wines, they have chemical tastes to them, which my initial beliefs were that is bad, but I guess it's not? So they can have chemical tastes like tar or petroleum. Hm. Delicious. Tar and bell pepper, now that's gross. Herbaceous wines are strange tasting anyway. I avoid them. I like 'em light and fruity and boozy. Hm. booze. I need a cookie. Likes this one.



I may have to go to the store. Crap I've already started drinking. Planning fail.

Victory is mine!

I feel like a big kid, I bought a bottle of wine today. We did a fake wine tasting in my beer and wine in western culture class and I felt thusly inspired. I also now actually know what the hell I'm looking for when I wander through the wine section at the grocery store instead of just wandering blindly pretending like I was remotely interested in wine.

Polo and I had a bit of a throw-down yesterday about what I like to call "the pole circle of death" exercise. 4 poles forming a large circle with 4-5 canter strides between. We started off with trotting in both directions over it and to the left he thinks it'd be way easier if I just carried him with my inside leg instead of him carrying himself. I voted not. We argued. I'm not entirely sure I won. So today I requested the trainer (who is not my main trainer, she subs while my main one is at team horse shows etc) if we could do the same thing and when polo dropped his weight into my left leg over a pole I took my stick and laced him. Sorry sucker. He carried himself and moved off my spur after that. We even cantered it with two crossrails and two poles. Victory is mine. I do have the larger brain in this situation. Even though friday I tried to ride and SUCKED and discovered saturday my right stirrup was two holes too long. And I rode that way friday. The whole ride. And people think I'm smart. Ha. Lies.

Today's picture is another xkcd.com comic, because I love them so and because it's both a mockery of Valentines day which is a lame hallmark-make-your-boyfriend-buy-you-a-gift-for-no-reason-guaranteed-way-to-get-laid "holday" and because it's relevant to a class I'm in. I'm in an experimental design class which talks about performing experiments and what it means if you reject or do not reject your hypothesis and we were just talking about publishing experiments in which you got something you weren't after. Like publishing outliers. So here it is:



Chemistry fun fact of the day: While we're on the topic of outliers...let's talk about viagra! Outliers are a statistical way of saying this data doesn't match the rest of the results. Then you have to go is it a fluke should I exclude it, or should I do something with it? This is probably why many scientists have wild out of control hair from all the pulling on it we do. So if you stalk my favorite blogs at all you've read medically challenged, if not, do so, because it's fucking hilarious. And he points out ever so nicely at one point that viagra which was intended to treat hypertension and angina (I'm sorry but angina is one letter swap away from vagina and it just gets me every time) and when they tested it initially on cows he says they discovered some side effects "which were medically referred to as hilarious". So essentially the drug was intended to treat hypertension, and since it didn't do what they wanted, they almost bagged it. But someone decided to explore the outliers in their results because several outliers produced the same result: after several days of taking the drugs erections were noticed. You see there's a group of enzymes called “phosphodiesterases”(PDEs) and PDE-5 is apparently one of the douchers believed to be responsible for erectile dysfunction. They thought the inhibitor would help prevent blood clots, and while it did inhibit that enzyme...it did nothing for blood clots. But it did a lot for another part of the body! So there you have it, that's where viagra came from. So next time don't throw away your outliers unless you're sure they're useless, because you might just help old people everywhere have sex.

My brain is tired.

I hate night exams. I hate having to spend all day on campus studying, not studying, listening to my friends talk about shit I'm not sure I know but should know and in general being tired. So by the time the exam finally rolls around my brain feels fuzzy and I'm tired and have a headache. Those are not my ideal exam taking conditions.

Whatevs it's over and I'm a graduating senior who's been ACCEPTED BY A GRAD SCHOOL! So now I'm just going to maintain haha. Auburn University in Alabama has given me an offer, they're the first school I've heard from. I'm going to visit them March 4-6 I'm pretty excited to see it in person.

So awkward story time. I was in our ChemE building in a computer lab with a collection of friends studying this evening and we were all getting rather slap happy. Some how sex came up as a joke, I believe I said something fucking something in relation to the exam, and one girl misheard me or something. She strikes me as uber prude so anytime sex comes up she makes awkward jokes and commented on it I responded with "well it'd be more fun than this damn exam". She then proclaimed to the entire computer lab I was organizing an orgy. I'm not sure how she came to that conclusion, but it was high-larious as my friend Andrew, who has a very similar sense of humor as me goes "another one?" to which I responded with "oh he attends all of them". We very promptly made the originator of the statement feel super awkward. Win.

I totally forgot Valentine's Day is this weekend. That annoys me because it means the mall will be busy and I was totally feeling the mall on Saturday. As I told Shane, he asked why I want to go to the mall, and my response was girls just get mall cravings, back off. Maybe I'll rope a girlfriend into going and we'll watch all the middle school couples walk around holding hands and make conspicuous retching noises. Yes, that sounds like an excellent use of my day.

In light of this upcoming fake lame-ass non-holiday:



www.xkcd.com For all of your nerdy entertainment needs. Sort of at least.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: I'm going to investigate food cravings because I have a cravings problem. I tend to get intense food cravings that when I can't satiate it immediately with something in the house I just eat everything else in sight. It's obnoxious. So let's figure out where they come from, shall we? So apparently, our cravings are controlled by interactions between our stomach, brains and hormones. Ha, chocolate is the most craved food in America, surprised? Me neither. So in general hunger cravings which come from the brain are for fatty and sugary foods, and this is apparently because these kinds of foods release a chemicals called opioids into our bloodstream. Apparently the gift of these chemicals is they give us feelings of pleasure and sometimes even euphoria. Well hot damn. No wonder we're all getting fat. Fatty sugary foods are cheaper and easier to get than ever before when a random craving strikes, this I certainly am aware of *pokes stomach* yep, quite aware. Why can't fruits and veggies make us feel euphoric. Sounds like a mother nature fail to me.

Dear winter, suck it. Sincerely me.

Things I hate: snow, cold, winter, driving in blizzards, the tunnel vision you get driving in blizzards, slippery roads, psychotic drivers on slippery roads thinking that because they have 4 wheel drive the can still for 50 mph.

Things I enjoy: seeing said drivers stuck in the median another mile down the road. Suck on that, jackasses.

Clearly, I'm hating on the recent weather we've had in Ohio. We had a storm move through on friday, and it dumped a buttload and I had to drive up to lake erie in said blizzard for a team horse show. A large part of me was thinking it wasn't worth it, which, frankly, it's probably not. But I did it anyway. My eyes hurt from the tunnel vision we had to stop at one point so I didn't kill us all.

But we made it, it only took six hours. It usually takes 2.5. Awesome. I managed a 4th in my flat class today...out of 6...I beat a girl who's even shorter than I am (she must be a classified midget) and some girl who must have royally fucked up. The horse I had was a bit of a spaz and walking wasn't really something she was willing to do, and she kept yanking on the bit. If it wasn't a horse show I would have given her a piece of my mind and kicked the tar out of her but that wasn't really an option today. At least she was cute.

I really can not wait to go south for grad school. Assuming I get into a grad school. I'd be ok with getting an answer from one anytime now. Really. That would be ok with me. I need to look up barns near Georgia Tech, I've already found one near Auburn that's about $250 for pasture board and one near NC State that's $300 for pasture board. I've only minimally looked for housing for myself in either area. I clearly have my priorities straight.

We recently found this awesome picture of me on Polo from a horse show we did in the summer of 2008:



Aw. So nice. Back when I was willing to jump fences that size. I've become a HUGE weenie since.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Since several team girls spent the evening in the hotel hot tub/pool, while I watched from the side with my feet in the water (damn forgetting a suit!) I pondered the function of chlorine in the water. OK not really, but you'd totally believe me if I told you I did such a thing, because that'd be very me. So if you don't already know, chlorine is put in pools to kill bacteria that could be harmful to us. Lo and behold, a chemical reaction is involved! The chlorine that gets put into pools breaks down in to hydrochlorous acid and the hypochlorite ion (an ion is a molecule that carries a charge, in this case a -1 charge which can make it super reactive. Hopefully you already realize acids are rather reactive) what these do is attack microorganisms and essentially destroy the enzymes and such inside their cells, rendering them oxidized and incapable of making us miserable. The hydrochlorous acid is a way faster oxidizer than the ion is, which is why the pH of the pool is important (how acidic or basic the water is). If the pH is high, then you have water that's very basic so you don't have enough of the acid in there, and your pool cleaning will take too long. Stupid lazy ion. Ideally your pool pH is neutral, in the 7-8 range. Consequently if you were curious the pH of human tears is 7.4. There you got two fun facts in one, that totally counts as a second fun fact. I'm so generous.