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.