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.