Day in the Life, Part 1

 

Accidentally use Paul's toothbrush.  Mine is purple.  Shhh.

Open a new bottle of contact solution.  Looks cool, huh?

Wake Solomon.  Samuel is always, always up first.

Wake Miriam.

Dole out pharmaceuticals. We like the Target brand.

Coffee is my bestest friend.

Breakfast.

Untangle Miriam's hair.

Maybe showering is my bestest friend? Nah, it's definitely coffee.

Decide what to wear.

Scrape 2 mm of the world's hardest ice.

Sign in kids at before school care.

Clock myself in at work.

Check the schedule. Work real hard.

 

Break for lunch and study microbiology textbook.

Consider going out for fresh air but decide it's too flippin' cold.

Have part of a cookie that a caterer brought to the office.

Work more.

Clock out.  (But not at 8:18.  More like 5:18. Shhh.)

Get pizza because the kitchen looks like it does.  More on that later.

Sign kids out of after school care.

Go home and change into this.

Ignore this.

Drink this.

Eat this.

Finally face this.

Sign the school papers.

Turn this ...

... into this.

Occasionally do this.

Think about this.  Forget about this.

"Mop."

Do algebra.

Crash here.

I Dislike Valentine's Day

Yuck. All of this HFCS and plastic crap is a huge waste! Ugh.

Public Transport

I'm quite used to this now. It's a nice routine. Park my car, board the train, meld into the community of other commuters. We all squeeze into ourselves, taking up as little space as possible, trying not to touch but not put out when it happens. And it does happen -- crowded train, uneven tracks -- it's bound to happen. I start my music, pull out notes or textbook and study, one eye on the scrolling sign that tells me where I am. It takes longer than driving but it's free to me as a student so I save gas, mileage and parking fees. And I get time to study which is in very short supply. Yeah, definitely a nice routine and I'm grateful for it.

Sent via Pony Express

BTW ...

I have tons of stuff to write about but school and life are sucking all the time out of my life.  I know that sounds odd but it's true.  Gah.  I will be back to writing more some time.  Like in May or when I don't have school in 37 years.

Also, I had to remove all the pretty formatting from before because it was making things weird for my Granny and she couldn't see any of the blog posts.  In about 37 years I should be able to add back some pretty stuff.  Maybe.

Cellular Respiration

Cells need energy.  To generate this energy they go through several complicated processes in the mitochondria of living cells.  (In the mitochondria of eukaryotic animal cells, that is.  Prokaryotic cells do not have mitochondria.  And eukaryotic plant cells do something else but we haven't talked about that yet.)

The first is glycolysis which occurs in the cytoplasm of cells.  Glycolysis literally means "splitting apart sugar."  That sugar is composed of 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms and 6 oxygen atoms.  The end products of glycolysis are 2 3-carbon molecules of pyruvic acid and 2 molecules of NADH (NAD+ that has been reduced).  Glycolysis occurs by way of substrate level phosphorylation, which means that a phosphoryl group is added to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP).  Because glycolysis needs 2 ATP to begin and because 4 ATP are created, there is a net gain of 2 ATP.

From glycolysis, pyruvic acid is oxidized to create acetyl CoA.  This means that electrons are taken from pyruvic acid and it loses a carboxyl group.

Then, acetyl CoA moves into the Krebs cycle which occurs in the matrix of the mitochondria.  Here, the carbons in acetyl CoA are released as CO2.  The energy from those released bonds is held as NAD+ and FAD.  Throughout the Krebs cycle NAD+ and FAD are combined with hydrogen electrons to produce NADH and FAD+, respectively.  The added electrons are then passed through the electron transport chain.  A total of 2 ATP are produced by the Krebs cycle.

The electron transport chain is located in the cristae of the mitochondria.  Here, the extra electrons of NADH and FAD+ are passed down a series of transporters.  These transporters are arranged in order from higher affinity for electrons to lower affinity for electrons.  As the electrons are passed from one transporter to another, protons are pumped across the cristae.  This is called a chemiosmotic mechanism.  It creates an energy potential that is collected by ATP synthase and converts ADP to ATP.  The process is called oxidative phosphorylation.  About 32 ATP are created here.

Glycolysis produces 2 ATP, the Krebs cycle produces 2 ATP and the electron transport chain produces 32 ATP for a total of 36 ATP in eukaryotic cells.

At least I hope so, because this is what I'm putting on my first microbiology test in 4 hours.

Last Week's Produce Box

It was so beautiful I decided to take pictures to show you all.

The first peek into the box.  The aroma was incredible.  Everything smelled delicious and fresh.  And just look at those colors!  Yum!

Under the first layer of packing paper.  There are avocados there but they're difficult to see.

And finally, the bottom layer. Can you believe all this beautiful goodness?  Fingerling potatoes, spinach, peppers, apples, mangoes and carrots!

Too Crazy to Pass Up

Look what I found in the dryer this weekend when I washed a load of jeans.

As nearly as I can tell it's part of a traffic cone.  Also, my mouse is a regular sized mouse, not one of those miniature ones.

Winter

Winter has finally arrived. It took a while but it made it and it is not messing around.  We had a high today of something ridiculous like 14F.  Crazy.  These are icicles on the bumper of my car.

I'm sending this from my car while the windshield thaws out.  There is actually frost on the inside of the glass.  Brrrr.

IloveColoradoIloveColoradoIloveColorado.  I really, really do but there are times here that I must remind myself of that over and over and over again.  It's not unlike dealing with a truculent child.

Pantry Project

A few weeks ago I discovered that a nearby grocery store was going out of business.  They had all their groceries marked down by 30%-50%.  I made a trip there and spent about $90 stocking up on pantry staples.  A couple of weeks later I went back because I knew there would be bigger mark downs.  I spent $60 or so and got some great deals on canned fruit (not a fan myself, but it makes a quick, cheap, easy snack to pack up for the kids at school), cereal, green chiles, flour, frozen chicken and dried pasta.  It was awesome.  My geekness was in full bloom.

One of my receipts.  This is the $60 one; the $90 one was way longer.

Just some of the bags from one of my trips.

My pantry and other food cupboards after those trips.

Yesterday Paul picked up our beef order.  One-hundred-forty-two pounds of pasture-raised, organic beef.  We sold 20 pounds to Jenn and Caleb so that left 122 pounds to divide between mine and Paul's respective freezers.  We contemplated buying a deep freeze the other day but decided to risk it.  And you know what?  It all fit.  And I still have plenty of room in my freezer for the chicken and frozen vegetables previously purchased.  Paul said he still has lots of room in his freezer as well.  So 142 pounds isn't as much as we thought it would be.

So the Pantry Project is this: not to buy any groceries except dairy, eggs and fresh produce for A Very Long Time.  We'll see how long A Very Long Time is.  Also, I'm going to do my best not to buy produce outside of the Door to Door Organics box.  That may prove to be a little tough because we eat a lot of fresh carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, apples and oranges.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Useless Information

Is there really anyone out there who needs directions for an electric hand dryer? People who really don't know to press and release the button? To rub their hands lightly? That the machine will stop automatically? Really?

7 Billion. For Realz.

This video reminds me of the time I was 9 and our family sat around the dinner table one night talking about how big a million and a billion are. Dad had come up with some awe-inspiring amount of time that it would take 1 million people to walk in front of our mailbox, one right after the other. I can't remember it now but I remember the feeling I had trying to comprehend that then. It's the same feeling I had just now trying to comprehend 7 billion people here.

Paul Rocks When He's Not Scaring the Bejezus Out of Me

We arrived home from Utah late on Saturday night and I didn't want to go home to my house because a) it would be cold and dark, b) I'd have a long hike up 3 stories with heavy luggage in the cold and dark, c) I had no edible food in my refrigerator and d) I wanted to stay at Paul's house. So I stayed at Paul's house.  That meant I had to go home yesterday morning to leave all my luggage, warm up the house, start some laundry and do a quick fridge inventory.

When I got home it was 43F in my apartment.  And a second smoke detector had gone on the fritz and needed a new battery.  When I got home from Arkansas a couple of weeks ago the smoke detector in my room was dead and beeping.  Yesterday the main one in the hallway that controls all the others was dead and beeping.  That one beeps even after the dead battery is removed so that you can't get any peace until you feed it a live battery.  I dumped out an ounce of sour milk, half a dozen single servings of leftover peas, lasagna, guacamole and other assorted rotten foods.  I started a load of laundry and wrote a short grocery list.  Then I left to pick up the kids.

I spent the rest of the day driving to southern Colorado and back.  When we got home we were tired and a little hungry.  I forgot all of that though when I opened the door and saw the Christmas tree lit up.  I knew I had not turned on the lights that morning because I remembered looking at it a couple of times and thinking how sad and lonely it looked with no lights on.  And even if I had turned the lights on, I would have turned them off before I left because I am both paranoid and cheap.

Immediately, my mind raced to all those horror stories about people coming home to strangers in their houses.  Because, you know, an intruder waiting to rob and kill you will always turn on your Christmas tree to lure you into a sense of security, right? Right. I considered sending the kids out into the breezeway so they could get a head start running while I searched the house for the bad guy but it was about 15F out there and deep down I didn't really believe there was someone waiting to jump out and grab me.

Instead, I called Paul and said, "Did you come over to my house today?"  I figured there were a bunch of reasons he might have needed to come over, like to get some wine or to borrow a baking dish or maybe he left a jacket or something here last time he was over. Lots of reasons.  And that's why I've given him a key and such.  Paul said, "Why do you ask?" so I said that my Christmas lights were on and I wanted to be sure I wasn't about to be murdered.  He said, "Maybe Santa Claus did it."  By this time I knew he had been over and so I was going about my business in the apartment, taking off my coat and turning on lights and stuff.  Then I saw my television on the floor of my bedroom.

I went back to the living room.  I opened the television cabinet.  There was a beautiful Sony 32-inch, 1080p, plasma screen HD television sitting in that cabinet.  And it had a cute little red bow on the corner.  It was all connected to the Roku and everything.

I began to freak out in a minor way and the kids around me began to freak out in a major way.  Paul was laughing and saying, "Breathe, breathe, you have to breathe!"

See, I had been planning to buy a new tv for our family with the bulk of our Christmas budget.  I told the kids about it but I told them that it would wait until after the holidays were over and things settled down and I could find a good deal.  But I hate shopping for this kind of stuff.  I know nothing about electronics or what constitutes a good deal.  Plus, getting it home and hooking it all up are things I do not excel at.  If fact, I quite stink at that.

So Paul took care of all of that for me.  Isn't he awesome?  It turns out we got a lot of tv for relatively little money because it was an open box item at Best Buy and Paul is good at the haggling bit, too.  It cost just a tad more than what I was planning to spend so I'll pay Paul back what was in my budget and we'll call it good.

And you know what else?  Paul replaced the batteries in my dead smoke detectors, too.

P.S. This blog is 3 years old.