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.

My body should boycott riding.

Injuries are tricky suckers. Some heal up nicely, and some are like I'm healed! Nah...actually...I'm not. I've got a variety of injuries like that from riding, the kind that will haunt me forever. When I was a freshman in high school, I got rocket launched from an asshole 3 year old that the manager never should have brought home from the auction and landed curled over on my lower back. I'm not entirely sure how I landed that way, but I'm fairly certain it involved rather impressive gymnastics I could never intentionally accomplish. That is one of two falls (of like...90...some-odd...lifetime falls) in which I could not immediately stand up (the other was a concussion, took me 10-15 minutes to get up. I even got back on after that one...that..was unwise). The end result of my acrobatics was, as I found out a year later because I could not lay on my stomach without intense lower back pain (as a 15 year old) was a torn tendon, which gone untreated initially, healed crooked. Whoopsies. Riders are incredibly stubborn about getting injuries looked at and we frequently ride with a plethora of them. And we wonder why things don't heal.

Alright so tally 1 is a crooked tendon in my lower back which causes very location specific pain if I'm fatigued, super stressed, feverish, or just for funsies!

Fast forward to college about two summers ago when I was riding really intensely, my right shoulder muscle, right over the shoulder blade, spasmed. It was a fist sized inflammation and it pushed on a nerve and made my right arm numb and my fingertips blue. Awesome! I was given muscle relaxers, did physical therapy for two weeks, and didn't ride for one. That one is easily aggravated again, I've had it spasm at least twice since then but to a lesser degree than that first time. It's actually bothering me the past couple days I think from an intense lesson on sunday. Super. That was actually part of why this entry is all about my collection of injuries. And because it's my blog and I can't talk about whatever the hell I want to. So suck on that.

My last stubborn never leaving me injury is my right ankle I sprained last June. I did a damn good job twisting it in the stirrup in a fall. I'm not sure I ever totally let it heal either. Right after I sprained it I hobbled around with a lace up brace on it in a 5 week lab I had to take (yes, in the summer, it blew). I also rode on it a couple times during those 5 weeks, probably not the best idea. Winter has been rough for that, it's stiff a lot. I can't sit with my right foot under my left thigh for the extended periods of time I used to, which bums me out because that's my main way of sitting in this weird little desks at school. Ah, to be short.

Since we're mostly talking about falling off a horse, here's a picture of a random person falling off a horse:



That horse is also super cute. And I hope she pulled her arm in and rolled on her shoulder or she probably did some real damage. Most of the time we fall and aren't actually injured, with the possible exception of our pride.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Let's talk about sex! Now you'll have that god-awful Salt n Peppa song stuck in your head all night. Ha. Anyway. So sex drive is apparently all in your head, ontrolled by neurotransmitters, or chemicals in the brain. A class of anti-depressents are serotonin inhibitors, and apparently they can cause a sex drive shut down, which seems counter productive to me if you're depressed I would probably prescribe a good romp in the sheets. On the other hand there's other drugs that affect the dopamine in the brain which can cause excessive sex drive. Maybe rabbits have an excess of dopamine in their brains? Just a thought. I'd ask Buddy but I had his nuts removed before he knew what they were for.

Power to the math nerds.

I have discovered the ultimate time vacuum, and it's called www.omegle.com. Holy. Crap. I wasted like a solid 2+ hours on that last night when I was supposed to be studying for my Beer & Wine in Western Culture midterm. Ha, right like I needed to study for that let's be honest. Omegle is this chat...thing, it's totally anonymous it just says You and Stranger and you can disconnect and move on to a new stranger at anytime. So of course you get your fair share of creepers, the very first person I opened a chat with started with "I'm touching myself" so I accused him of being 40 and living in his mother's basement. He got mad. I laughed. He disconnected. Off to an excellent start I thought. I ended up meeting a nice girl from Australia, a sexually frustrated poli sci student in DC and a dude who appreciates proper grammar as much as I do. I also had the pleasure of chatting with a 15 year old girl who was really concerned with whether or not a boy in her bible class was like, cute, or like do you think he's gay? Can guys be bi? *headdesk*.

Overall, a highly productive evening.

Otherwise my weekend was pretty much the usual, I rode, I saw avatar for a 2nd time (my roommate and I just friggin' love that movie) and I slept. A lot. I just can't resist the flannel sheets in the winter. I've taken to leaving my door open at night so the dog can sleep on the floor by my bed and so the rabbit can GTFO in the mornings and run laps of the living room and not drive me nuts by waking me up 10 minutes before my alarm goes off (see a previous entry). Thusly I've avoided having to make rabbit stew. I'm sure many are disappointed. He'd make a lovely pair of gloves too.

I'm on my log in on campus in the chemical engineering building...let's see what pictures I have saved on here...



Ah ha, one of my favorite pictures of Buddy. That is a rabbit in side a grocery bag, not like a little brown lunch bag, a grocery bag.

I also have...



That's my favorite math/nerd joke ever. I even have that on a tshirt. I am that cool.

On that note...Chemistry fun fact of the day: well while we're on the subject of math we'll have a math fun fact today. Try and control your excitement. So I figure everyone is at least familiar with the fibonacci sequence (DaVinci Code, anyone?) which is the series of numbers starting with 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...etc. If you're unfamiliar with it look at that series of numbers until you figure out the pattern, it's quite simple. If you don't figure out the pattern then you kind of fail as a human because the human brain is the best pattern recognizer in the world. So what's nifty with this is that if you take the ratio of successive terms in the sequence you get what's called the golden ratio, which is 1.618. This ratio is seen in nature all over the place. One of the best examples is the human body, ratios such as: length of face to width of face, length of lips to width of nose, length of forearm to length of hand, or distance from tip of finger to elbow and from wrist to elbow. All of these ratios are approximately 1.618, and there are many more on the human body. Other examples are sunflowers or daisies, the florets which comprise them spiral out from the center in increasing numbers of...the fibonacci sequence. Pine cones show this also. We also find objects with this ratio very visually appealing. You know what that means? Your brain secretly loves math and never told you. You feel a bit dirty now, don't you. Score one for math.

What is your hurry?

College campuses are all plagued by this one strange phenomenon, and I mean no offense by this, but the asian students, typically the ones from overseas, run everywhere. I'm fairly certain this could be a part of why they are all so tiny, that and I've seen what they eat for lunch, our entire building smells like their lunch too. I once was having a conversation with a friend outside of a graduate organic chem spec class I took last winter, class didn't start for another 10 minutes and the class that was in there before us was still filtering out. We were ironically having a conversation about this very topic, trying to decide if perhaps they were just a chronically late people. Mid-sentence, an asian girl comes jogging down the hallway and shoves her way into the classroom. She was in our class, which didn't start for another 10 minutes. So this continues to baffle me. Maybe I should start his habit, then I'll weigh 100 pounds.

While we're on the subject of abnormal social behaviors, how about people who need a mute button. There's some engineers out there who just lack in the social department. I'll pause for a moment for you to gasp in surprise. The ones who really drive me nuts are the ones who just NEVER SHUT UP. It's like word vomit 24/7; like you and some friends are having a nice little chat about some random subject, and they come in and beat the subject to death. If only we could have a mute button or silencio actually worked. Alas.

I rode Polo tonight and I got to the barn late so I had the whole place to myself. It was lovely.



How precious is he? If it wasn't such a monumental waste of horse I'd take him to grad school and let him live in a field and trail ride him, I think he would rather enjoy it. But that would be an epic waste of a capable young horse, lo siento Polo.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: More cool shit being done with nanoparticles is today's topic. Nanoparticles can be used to create coatings for surfaces that are extremely hydrophobic, meaning they frickin' hate water. Water touches them and they bounce that shit off like a bouncer presented with a bad fake, although it is fun to watch the sorry suckers leave. Anywho. So the advantage of this is you can incorporate the nanoparticles in to stuff like clothing fibers or a coating for windows and you end up with items that are essentially self cleaning or super resistant to getting dirty. Rumor has it there's a self cleaning window coating in the works that photo-initiates (you know what this is now as I've discussed before, oh look, learning!), releases a radical and essentially soaps itself. The goal is to use it on skyscrapers and other such unnecessarily large buildings that are a bitch to clean. Can we have a nanoparticle spray for ponies, so they are resistant to poo stains? Take that, Lemony's white hock.

Not enough work?

I'm not used to having quarters this friendly. I'm used to drowning in a work load and wanting to die of hours upon hours of homework and barely getting enough sleep. This quarter I actually find myself thinking that I need more work because I'm bored at night.

And then I repeatedly hit my head on the wall until that feeling goes away.

Mostly I think I'm just annoyed because there isn't a damn thing on tv tonight.



Do you see this adorable, smug looking animal, sleeping in his dog bed? Yeah he's going to become dinner, as my whole family actually calls him, if he keeps getting under my bed, ten minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off, and destroying things. This morning he so badly shredded a magazine (that I haven't read yet) that I can't even figure out where the cover to it is. You should see the damage he's done to the box spring, I'm fairly certain he's been IN the box spring actually.

Oh yes, bunny stew is sounding lovely about now.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Viruses are actually extremely advanced nanotechnology. Envision something so tiny that it can enter your blood stream, attach itself to a blood cell, and inject it's, well it's bad dna essentially into the blood cell. This is what engineers dream of being able to do someday with nanotechnology. They've actually attempted to take the virus vessels and remove their bad dna and insert good things, and send them into living bodies to do what they do. Alas, every time they've tried to do it with a human (once in the US, a few times in the UK) those suckers have said yeaaah f*ck this plan, I'm gonna do my own thing if that's ok, and promptly killed all the patients. The FDA banned that shit for humans so fast the scientists couldn't even defog their safety goggles. Definitely interesting stuff though and it'll remain as an engineering fantasy forever, or until nanotechnology actually gets there.

Smart friends are fun.

I love having friends who are smarter than I am and/or have better work ethics than I do. Last friday, when I whined about having been on campus all day doing homework, is providing me with great pleasure now. Right now I am plopped on the couch, further widening the dent in it, watching the Saints play the Vikings and repeatedly poking the cat. All thanks to having a friend who insisted we finish an entire assignment on friday that isn't due until tomorrow night. So thank you to her for having a far better work ethic than my generally procrastinating self does.

Don't you just love the phase of a cough where you're hacking up mucus? It's just so lovely. Especially when you're in a situation where you can't just spit it out and get to swallow it. I'll let you enjoy that thought for a second...

...Nice, isn't it?

I really, really hate facebook groups made by teenage children which have improper grammar or word usage in the title. I'm fairly certain the current 13-17 generation is actually opposed to using the proper form of their, there and they're and knowing the difference between to and too, lose and loose, amongst others. I had one I know say she was soar to me. That's....what birds do. Birds soar. You can be sore, but you can't soar. Unless you've sprouted wings recently or your horse bucks you off in to a spectacular trajectory. Do these kids not read? Ever? Maybe it's just that I have an incredibly low stupid tolerance. Or they're that dumb. Probably both.

The Ohio State Hunt Seat Team had a horse show this weekend at Ohio University, and it went really well. These horse shows are weird because at the beginning of the day you draw a horse's name out of an envelope and that's the horse you show and you get no practice time. I've got a gift for picking the biggest horse in the class, and looking like a peanut perched a top it. Our old coach coined a lovely song that goes "little girl on a big horse" to the tune of...well I'm not really sure. Yesterday's picture was a good example of that. And so is today's.



That's from a couple years ago, I'm "human lunge lining" Mongo, this unnecessarily large thing one of our clients had. He's now doing the big eq with some girl somewhere else in the country. I believe I'm riding in my please-don't-spook-because-I-can't-stop-you-if-you-do position. When he did spook I then went into the other classic little girl on a big horse position we like to call waterskiing, meaning your feet kicked out in front you leaning back with your hands in the air, which usually still does not result in stopping the horse.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Today we're going to learn about diethylene glycol, because it's an interesting compound with a ton of uses and is toxic. I think some of the most interesting uses of it are as a humectant for various things like cigarettes or cosmetics (there's two things you want in the same sentence, eh?). Humectants absorb water from air so they, obviously, keep things moist. I find it really interesting that diethylene glycol is not allowed in food and drugs because it is indeed toxic, although there's quite a bit of debate about how toxic it is (how many mg/kg of body weight would be bad news bears, there is no definitive answer at the moment, I think, but no worries it is in fact a poison!). I'm sure the amounts used in cosmetics and cigarettes are low but that's just further proof that cigarettes are FUCKING BAD FOR YOU, and oral ingestion is more effective than dermal (through your skin). It's also a component of antifreeze. Makes you wonder what kind of crap is in stuff you use everyday. Antifreeze in your toothpaste? Could be. Yum.

You can't make me.

I'm a huge homebody. My ass and my couch have a love hate relationship. They love to be together but the couch hates the permanent indent. Which has gotten wider since the first year I lived here. Woops. It's thusly hard to convince my lazy ass to go out unless I've been exceptionally lazy lately or it's something I really want to do.

I don't even have any good pony updates because I haven't left the house all friggin' week until today. Sweet, blessed freedom. And what thrilling adventures did I have on my first day of freedom? I did homework. For five hours. In a computer lab on campus. Behold the excitement that is me. It's overwhelming, I know. I may need to sit on the couch for awhile until I am less whelmed.



That's me on Rueben, the biggest horse we have at the barn. He's fun. He also doesn't steer (yet). My roommate rides him better than I do, his size freaks me out. I prefer my horses to be wee and smaller.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Chloroflourocarbons (CFC's) are made of, get this, chlorine, flourine and carbon. No I'm not done there a chem 101 student could probably figure that out. Actually, that might be a generous assumption. Anyway, chloroflourocarbon is what one would call volatile, it's most problematic reaction is it's photo-induced ability to spit out a chlorine, meaning some sunlight touches it and carbon gets its panties in a wad and says f*ck off chlorine and sends chlorine out the door with nothing but a spare radical. Rude, really. This chlorine then takes its radical and cries to ozone and tells it dirty lies and convinces it to change to oxygen (Ozone: O3, oxygen: O2. Pretend those are subscripted numbers). Oxygen doesn't absorb UV rays as well as ozone does, hence thinning of the ozone layer. CFC's used to be used in all kinds of things like as a propellant in aerosol cans, hence why people were like omg hairspray is ruining the ozone layer. They make such items without CFC's now, but it's much more fun to think of Snooki walking around with her own personal hole in the ozone layer above her. Although I'm not sure she's tall enough for that to happen. Her poof might be though.

Blah.

Because Shane is whining, I'll make a short post. I have H1N1. Yay. I have to go pick up my meds and buy tissues and then I'll be sitting on my ass for the rest of the day. And probably week.

No chem fun fact for you, because I don't have any functional brain cells right now.

Oh dear.

I'm not making a real post. I think doing that whilst drunk is a poor idea. This took a lot longer than it should have to type. I'll make a real post tomorrow. Wait, it is tomorrow. Because it's 1:41 AM so it is now Sunday. Yep.

Chem fun fact for the moment: In the body alcohol becomes acetaldehyde which is what makes you drunk and hung over and how quickly your body processes that to acetic acid determines your tolerance. Essentially. Yeah that's right I can still give you chem fun facts while I'm drunk, I'm that good.

Ouchtown, population: my butt.

Holy cow, am I sore. I got suckered into a work out class at noon called "whole body sculpt" aka death by exercise. There was running involved, let me tell you if there's something my short legged, sway backed, large butt physique is not for, it's running. So off to a great start with the go run and skip and knee high your sorry ass around the gym 4000 times. Or like...6 but whatever. Then we did suicides and squats with a weight ball and so and so forth and more squats and why are we still squatting and oh good lunges now my thighs are excited for a break and jog it off? Why are we jogging again? How are you people chatting casually? Ack. Good news is I probably burned more calories in that one class than I did all week doing whatever else.

I was so grotesque after that I decided to not go sleep through class and just went home and then off to the barn to ride Polo and a friend's horse. And then I got suckered in to riding a third horse, (I've got to figure how to not get suckered into these things so easily) who is being rehabbed (the horse is), and is also being a giant asshole in the process. So I nearly had my arms pulled out of their sockets for a half hour trotting his sorry butt up and down the long walls of the arena, all the while my thighs are basically laughing at me for how intensely miserable they plan on making me tomorrow.

At least the other two were good today.

Dog vomit update: 0 times today. Thank god, the piece of crap carpet in this apartment can't handle much more.

One thing my short stubby ass is good for: schooling ponies. Which produces pictures like this gem:



That pony is Buzz. He is maybe 12.2 hands, which for non-horsey people: he's frickin' small. He's the kind of pony an 8 year old rides. And I fit him rather nicely there. Alas, to have grown after sixth grade.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Shear thickening is an interesting phenomenon, it's counter intuitive to how you think a pile of goop might react. Goop that is shear thickening, under low velocities or forces, the goop will flow easily with a low viscosity, which means "resistance to flow". But at higher forces, they "shear thicken" or become very high viscosity (refuse to flow). Have some corn starch? Pour some corn starch in a small bowl and add water and mix. Stick a finger in and just let it sit there, don't push. The goop will suck it in really easily. Now jab at it with your finger, the surface is hard. If you had like...a bathtub full of corn starch and water, you could run across it and not sink in, walk slowly and get stuck. You would notice how if you stuck your finger in and let it sink, if you try and yank it out, it's kinda stuck. Pull slowly, comes out easily. A current research aim with shear thickening polymers and materials is body armor. You could ideally create a super lightweight bullet proof vest that way amongst other death-inducing-proof items. I've got no way to apply this to ponies. Yet. Give me time I'll come up with something. Maybe that's my ticket to millions...

I prefer animals that can't vomit.

We are dogsitting until mid February for my roommate's grandma. So we have an elderly mutt with us who really is delightfully stupid and easy to care for, when he's not vomiting. He's upchucked four times today.

This is part of why I love having a rabbit, he can't vomit, rabbits are physically incapable of vomiting (downside, hairballs can kill them). Horses also can not vomit, neck is too long and gravity's a bitch. Consequently neither can giraffes, yes, I know you immediately thought of that next, it's like I've got espn or something.

I just saw a commercial for "The Pregnancy Pact", a show about a group of high school girls who made a pact to all get pregnant. What. The. Fuck. There is no good reason for that, other than sheer stupidity. Honestly it should be legal to remove people from the gene pool for the betterment of society. It happens in the natural world, stupid zebra makes a bad choice, he gets eaten by a lion. Stupid lion picks a fight he shouldn't, he gets impaled by an angry buffalo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM If you've never watched that, you should. Looks like bad decision day by the lions to me, it's the famous lions take down baby buffalo who falls into water which crocodile tries to steal which lions save from the crocodile then the buffalo gang up on the lions to save the baby and...well I won't ruin the ending for you.

We need a picture today, so here we go.



Now let me just tell you something about my horse Polo. He's kind of weird. If he were human, he would be in to all the kinky whips and chains and bondage stuff. He loves anything to do with his nose and mouth. Poke it, pull on it, hit it, whatever. The harder and the more you hit it the happier he is. So my good friend Louise is...poking him in the nose. Much to his joy.

I have strange animals in my life. My horse likes to be beaten, my pony eats bean burritos, and my rabbit is 18 pounds.

At least the dog is asleep now.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: This is kinda cool I learned this in my polymer nanotechnology class the other day. There's two kinds of polymers, thermoplastics and thermosets. Thermosets are one giant networked molecule. An example is a rubber tire. Rubber tires are one HUGE networked molecule. Think about that, polymers are kinda like connected spaghetti on a really wee scale. Tires are one MASSIVE collection of connected and networked and branched spaghetti forming ONE SINGLE molecule. Which is why it's really difficult to dispose of them, because thermosets do not break down like thermoplastics to a state in which you can reuse them (like melting down plastic and reshaping it). Although hacked in to little pieces they make a great addition to high tech arena footing for horse stables. Yeah that's right, I brought it back to ponies. It's a gift.

That was an unnecessarily long day

Holy fricking long day. Four classes + one programming review session = I'm pooped. My right contact also boycotted my vision for most of the day so I spent a lot of it looking at things sideways.

The cat and dog are on the couch asleep right now, I may vomit from cuteness.



That's Lemons in winter turnout from a few years ago. She loves snow. In fact the first time we got a big snow fall in New Jersey* I almost carried my dad to the car to drive me to the barn so I could ride in it. And as soon as I got on and walked into the snow covered ring (and I mean like a foot of snow) Lemony promptly tried to roll in it. It was all I could do to get myself and my saddle off first. Rotten pony.

How to make friends with Lemony: present her with food. Carrot, apple, nutrigrain bar, taco bell bean burrito and/or mild sauce (she'll eat the sauce straight). Once she pulled a lady's dunkin donuts bag in to her stall and ate the chocolate chip muffin that was in it, without eating the bag, the wax paper, or the paper wrap on the muffin.

If my days weren't so damn lame I'd have more to talk about, but since this trend of Emily-is-uber-boring doesn't look like it will end anytime soon I'll probably just continue to regale you with pony related stories. I could talk about school and being a chemical engineer but then I would put us both to sleep.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: You can disarm a bomb with liquid nitrogen. Avoid cutting the blue wire...red wire? That's a hollywoodism. But the typical battery operated bomb can be disarmed with liquid nitrogen, it freezes the battery and stops the electrons in it from moving and stops the timer. You know where I learned that one? Manswers. Who knew men could be useful.

*I grew up in NJ. No fist pumping involved.

Today was boring.

Damn you, reeses easter eggs and cadberry eggs being right by the check out. You taunt me with your 2 for one dollar special, convincing me to buy you, "Do you want this in the bag or with you?" "In the bag" as if I'm not going to eat it the instant I get into a car. But the check out lady thinks I have willpower, and that's more important here.

I hate blogs without pictures, I will probably post a lot of pictures. Generally mostly of ponies.



That's my horse, Polo, who is now for sale. He's not going to grad school, he needs to go find a new person who wants to jump big jumps and go to horse shows/has time for that.

Also, I match awesomely in that picture.

This is a really lame entry. Today was a really lame day.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: if a hamster were human size, it would drink us under the table. Like by about 50x as much. Their livers have that much more of an enzyme that breaks down the alcohol. Also studies have found that hamsters love alcohol. Thusly I conclude hamsters would make epic frat boys.

I blame Frank

My friend Frank is forced to write a blog for his first year english class and somehow convinced me start one. So we can all blame Frank for this. He'll be thrilled.

I'm not even sure what I have to say. I'm a big nerd, I love chemistry, especially organic, I love ponies, and I'm a ginger. Those seem to be the main three things people remember after they meet me.

I am a 5th year at Ohio State (obligatory go Buckeyes!) and I finish in June. I'm anxiously waiting to hear from grad schools, I only applied to three and I'm hoping that doesn't bite me in the ass.

I do have a pony, got her as a sophomore in high school, holy crap my 7th year anniversary of owning her is March 2nd of this year. That's crazy. I'm getting old.



The picture is from summer before my first year of college and it's one of my favorite pictures of us. We don't do the horse show thing much anymore, believe it or not that's frickin' time consuming.

I have a giant bunny as a housepet, my roommate currently has a cat and a dog so we're living in a bit of a zoo.



That's him, his name is Buddy, and he weighs 18 lbs. No I'm not kidding. Yes he'd like me to just let him nap in that picture.

So yes. That's me in a nutshell. Life is better through chemistry, especially since they invented sunscreen.

Chemistry fun fact of the day: Freckles form and darken with exposure to sunlight. The UV-B radiation increases melanin production in the skin. So if you see me outside and suddenly notice I have freckles, tell me, because I need to reapply my SPF 462 or whatever the ginger special is now.