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.

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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.

Utah

I am in Utah with Paul for the week.  He has family here and we're just hanging out, eating, playing games, drinking and sightseeing.  We've had Christmas and we're going to have a New Year's Eve party.  These people know how to party.  It's a very good time.

We're in a small town outside of Salt Lake City.  The geography here is so new to me.  For one, this is my first time in Utah. I'm used to traveling through states where I've lived and I know basically where the major cities are and what their suburbs are.  That is not the case here.  Also, I'm used to mountainous regions being to the west.  Here, we're in the middle of Utah Valley and there are mountains all the way around us.  Another thing -- we're right next to the Wasatch Range.  It's kind of odd to look up and see a mountain peak soaring 11,000 feet above me.  In Denver, you're so far away from the mountains that you can't get a real sense of how big they are.  And once you get closer, the foothills are so huge that you've lost sight of the mountain peaks and still can't see how tall they are.  So this perspective on mountains is quite breathtaking.  I'm loving it.

Last night we took the UTA Trax system into Salt Lake City to see the lights at Temple Square.  I took lots of pictures.  I am, by no means, a photographer and my camera is rather puny but last night we worked quite well together.  I got some good shots that I'm pleased with, especially considering the lighting that was available.

Here's the inside of the train.  They are nearly identical to the Light Rail cars in Denver so I felt right at home.  This particular train was pretty empty.

Some of the scenery out of the train windows.  I was kind of excited to go to Sandy.  You see, one of my favorite television shows is the HBO series, Big Love.  It's set in Sandy, Utah and I thought that Sandy was a fictional place until Paul told me it is, indeed, a real town.  Not only is it a real place, that's where we got on the train.  So I had to take a photo of this sign.

This is the shopping center where we got coffee before walking to Temple Square.  It's pretty and it has lots of cool shops in it.  If I appreciated shopping and crowds more, I'd probably really enjoy a place like this.  But I don't so it's mostly good for people watching and coffee sipping.  And photo snapping.

A pretty cool mural in the Union Pacific Train Station.  I love real train stations -- you know the ones where people can get on an Amtrak train and it takes them hundreds of miles away, overnight with dining cars and sleeping berths and stuff.  All of them are old and very cool with granite floors and big, carved wood moldings and these cool murals.

A cautionary piece of advice that is posted at almost all street corners.  It made me giggle.

Some other cool shots of downtown Salt Lake City.  It's very pretty and there is a lot of striking architecture.  I was just in awe.  I think Christmas is a particularly good time to experience new cities because they're all gussied up for the holidays.  This way, I get to have these beautiful first impressions as my only impressions.

And now, the main event for last night:  Temple Square.  I must preface this by saying that a friend-slash-co-worker recommended that we "go to Temple Square to see the lights" and I kind of went, "Oh. Yeah, I guess that sounds nice."  I mentioned it to Paul in passing, not really expecting that we'd go because 1) we're neither one religious, and 2) Paul was, at one time, LDS and doesn't have much inclination to revisit that.  So I didn't think there was much reason for us to go.  But when I said it, he was like, "Oh yeah!  We should do that.  The lights are pretty fantastic and the history is interesting."  So we went.  And I am so glad we did.  It is beautiful!

See what I mean?  Gorgeous, no?  I am simply amazed that my camera took photos this clearly at night.  It was really something.

After we finished with our lightseeing (get it? Lightseeing instead of sightseeing? Ha ha!) we got back on the train and headed to a place called Trolley square.  I hear that there is lots of history surrounding that place as well but I'm unclear on most of it.  Anyway, here it is:

Yes, it's a crappy, crappy, crappy picture.  The rest of our group was running across the street while I was taking this picture and I was in a hurry to take it so I didn't get left behind and then a car almost hit me.  Oops.  But I'm okay.

We decided to eat at Old Spaghetti Factory which is inside the shopping mall at Trolley Square.  This is what the wait line for Old Spaghetti Factory looked like.  Lisa, Paul's sister-in-law, went in to ask how long the wait was for a group our size (8 of us) and came out to report that it would be at least an hour.  So some of the group went off to shop and the some of the group went off in search of beer.  I went in search of beer because I am not a shopper.

We actually ended up waiting about an hour and 20 minutes for our tables but it was definitely worth it.  Old Spaghetti Factory isn't exactly original or authentic food but it's very tasty and a really good deal.  I ordered an entree that was easily enough for both Paul and myself.  It came with iced tea or coffee, all the bread I wanted, a side salad and, the best part yet -- spumoni!  Yumyum, yummy, yummolicious!  I would have taken photos but the lighting was terrible and nothing would have shown up.  I did get a picture of the trolley car that is inside the restaurant, though.

Pretty cool, huh?

When we were done eating we walked back to the train and I got some more photos of things that I found to be interesting.

This was pretty neat.  It was at the stop where we waited for one of our return trains.  It's a poem written by a 14-year-old girl named Ruby, I believe.

 This was a funny little train seat all by itself.  Cole called it the lonely hobo seat.

And this is what greeted us when we arrived back in Sandy.  It was freezing fog -- quite the interesting sight.

Anyway, as you can see, we're having a fantastic time.  There is lots of great stuff in store for our remaining days here, too.  I'll be meeting Paul's mom tomorrow and maybe meeting an online friend on Thursday.  I hope the weather cooperates.  We're under a severe winter storm warning right now and it doesn't end until Thursday night or Friday morning.  Gah.

Yay for Arkansas!

Yay for the people in Arkansas, anyway. At least some of the people. This is a good time. All the siblings, I repeat all, are here. That's no easy feat considering our circumstances and geography. We are having a blast.  So, until I can devote more time to a follow up post on this subject, I'll leave you with some word snapshots -- a toast to the matriarch in honor of her graduation; rounds of Boggle with iPhones at the ready for proving or disproving a word's legitimacy; a dozen chatting, laughing people crammed into the kitchen because that's where we always end up. And there's so much more to come!

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I'm Too Emotional & Too Cynical

Found this video.  Watched this video.  Teared up over some of the footage, giggled at other parts of it.


As it ended, I felt affection for this world and all its inhabitants and our interconnectedness.  And then I thought to myself, "This is really just a commercial for Google."

Thanksgiving

Whoa.  Thanksgiving.  It's my favorite holiday because I love to cook and I love to eat.  I love food, period.  Christmas is my second favorite holiday because it has all the same foods (at least, in my family it does) but it also has shopping which I'm not nearly as fond of as cooking.

Anyway, Thanksgiving.  It was delicious.  I made a turkey for the second time.  Last year was my first and I brined it with a pretty sweet brining solution -- "sweet" as in fruity, not as in a surfer dude's "Hey, man! Sweet waves today!"  (Although, surfers usually surf in salt water and brining solutions do contain a lot of salt.  But this really has nothing to do with Turkey Day.  Sorry for that brief foray into my distracted thought process.)  This year I went a little more savory.  There was nothing wrong with last year's brine but I wanted to try something different.  This year's brine was still sweet but more tempered with things like bay leaves and peppercorns and rosemary.  It was so good.  My mouth is watering thinking about it again.  Also, the turkey was huge.  We had to brine it in the massive pot that Caleb uses to brew beer.

Jennifer and I went in together on the cooking and food prep at her house because she's the only one with enough space for that sort of thing. I love her kitchen.  It's huge.  On Tuesday night I went to her place with my car full to the gills with cooking utensils, ingredients, baking pans and my mixer.  We set up the brining situation and called it a night.  (Another plug for living in Colorado -- this turkey and its pot were so big there is no way we could have fit it into the fridge but it was cold enough that we could leave it to sit in the garage all night!  Yay for temps in the low 20s!)

On Wednesday I went back to Jennifer's house, changed into some comfy PJs, poured a glass of wine and got busy!  We chopped veggies and nuts, shredded cheese, mixed pie crusts, mashed potatoes, whipped up pie fillings, dried bread crumbs and had a grand old time.  Friends from Texas arrived late that night and the children had a great time playing video games and chasing each other all over the house.  The adults opened more wine, turned up the music and continued food preparations until 3:00 am.  It was so much fun!

Thursday morning began bright and early with more cooking, roasting, boiling, baking and stirring.  We finally ate around 2:00 pm.  Everything was really good.  I wish I'd had the ability to eat more food but even that night when everyone usually eats the first of the leftovers, I was still too full.  Bummer.

After the meal we sat around the dining table and had a nice Pinot Noir tasting.  The friends from Texas brought a couple of Pinot Noir wines from New Zealand (they lived there for 9 months last year!  Lucky!) and Paul brought over a couple of Colorado Pinot Noir wines.  We all sampled and critiqued and tasted.  Then we opened a dessert wine and a honey wine to try with our desserts.  It was a superb time.  We should do it again before next Thanksgiving because we deserve to eat like that because it's Tuesday sometimes, you know?

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing Carcassone, one of our most favorite board games.  I think I can mark this holiday down as one of the best ever; it ranks right up there with the first Thanksgiving after The Divorce and with the New Year's Eve I spent alone with my homemade pizza and sangria.  Yum.  Truly can't wait to do it again.

List of Stuff, Updated

1. Like I said previously, I am tired of 'random' and 'rambling' so this post is not called that.  It's also not called that because it's an update of a previous post so it's named after that one.  Got it?
2. Antibiotics.  Solomon is taking his horse pills grudgingly, with much choking and coughing and gulping of orange juice.  He has a flare for the dramatic, in case you couldn't tell.  Samuel eagerly awaits the next dose of "the pink stuff" and asks at least a dozen times per day, "Is it time yet? Please?"
3. Miriam woke up Thursday with a supersuper sore throat.  We went to the doctor.  She was diagnosed with strep also.  Big surprise there.  I'm still scratching my head over that one.  /sarcasm
4. I'm even closer to the end of this semester's classes!  Double yay!
5. I did not go to Starbucks to do homework because Miriam camped out on the couch with a pillow and the remote.  Instead of homework, I paid bills and worked on The Budget.
6. My favorite Starbucks drinks are still the whole milk latte and the peppermint mocha.  I went to Starbucks yesterday to do homework and had a cranberry bliss bar with my whole milk latte.  Those were the best tasting calories I had all week.
7. It's been very quiet at "Neighbor's" house since Wednesday.  I can hear her still over there.  She's been vacuuming and still slams doors and cupboards frequently but I haven't heard kids or screaming.  I'm not sure what to think.
8. Still planning to write about Thanksgiving.  I'll get to it eventually.
9. The entire 5th grade took a field trip to the middle school yesterday as a teaser for the orientation, I suppose.  Solomon proclaimed it, "Awesome!"
10. And again, that's all the stuff.  I don't have to pee this time but I do have to go fold some laundry.  As usual, I'll write more stuff again later.  See ya then!

List of Stuff

1. I would have called this post "rambling" or "random" but I'm tired of those words.  "Stuff" is sufficient.
2. Solomon and Samuel were diagnosed with strep throat this week. I'm alternately loving and hating antibiotics. Loving for the obvious reasons -- my kids won't be stricken with rheumatic fever or kidney failure.  Hating because Solomon gags and nearly vomits both the pink, liquid stuff and the quartered horse pills.  Gosh, my life is glamorous.
3. Miriam went to bed tonight with a sore throat.  I reallyreallyreallyreally hope she is not worse in the morning.  I don't want to deal with another round of antibiotics if I can help it.
4. My classes are almost finished for the semester.  Yay!
5. If I'm not taking Miriam to the doctor for a strep test tomorrow morning I'm going to spend most of the day at Starbucks working furiously on the nutrition assignments I have neglected for the last 2 weeks.
6. My new favorite Starbucks beverage is a whole milk latte.  Well, at least during 10 months of the year.  From November to December it's the peppermint mocha.
7. I reported "Neighbor" to CPS yesterday.  For realz.  That's the first time I've done that as a concerned citizen and not as a mandated reporter.
8. Thanksgiving rocked.  It really deserves its own post and I'll do that soon but I couldn't leave it totally unrecognized in this List of Stuff.
9. I got a note today from the middle school welcoming my soon-to-be middle schooler and me to the campus.  We are cordially invited to attend an orientation for the 2011-2012 school year next week.  I had a miniature heart attack.  And then I recovered and added the date to my calendar.  And then I had another miniature heart attack.  I might have another heart attack next week.
10. That's all the stuff.  Well, it's not really All the Stuff Forever but I kinda have to pee so that's all for now.  I'll most likely write more stuff later.

I :heart: Tofu

Who'd have thunk it?  I started eating tofu several months ago because I wanted to expand my food horizons and all that jazz.  I was wary but I quickly discovered that when prepared correctly it's quite tasty.

Correctly prepared consists of draining thoroughly between towels and two weighted plates for several minutes, preferably an hour.  Then I slice the tofu into small cubes or triangles and marinate them in olive oil and either soy sauce or balsamic vinegar and whatever spices and herbs suit me that particular day.  I've sauteed the tofu in a skillet with mixed results.  I think I've discovered that braising chunks of tofu in the marinating liquid is best.  It provides the greatest consistency in texture.

Two of my favorite tofu-containing dishes, for your drooling pleasure:

This is quinoa, prepared in a tabouleh salad.  The recipe is from T.  She's an awesome cook.  I haven't actually eaten any of her food but the pictures she posts of her food make me wish I had eaten it.  Lots of it.  For the purpose of full disclosure her recipe did not have tofu in it but I added some because I wanted to.  Also, I put mushrooms in it this particular time because I was lacking some of the other stuff that I would normally put in it.  Yum.

This is spaghetti squash, recipe courtesy of me.  I roasted the squash in the oven.  After the strands were separated out I tossed in some sauteed onions, garlic and mushrooms.  There are also tomatoes but I don't saute those because they get too mushy.  Instead I remove the pan from the heat and add the tomatoes so they are just barely cooked by the heat of the vegetables already in the pan.  I added in an alfredo sauce which was quite creamy and delicious.  (And yes, there is a chip on my plate.  Please ignore it.)

I have also made pita sandwiches with tofu that was marinated in olive oil and lots of red pepper flakes for a spicy kick. The tofu and wheat pita were accompanied by shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, sliced avocados and sharp cheddar cheese. Those were really, really good.  Unfortunately, I did not take any photos of those.

Anyway, those are a few of my recent forays into tofu consumption. You should try them. You know, if you've never tried tofu but have been curious about how it might fit into your diet. Or not. I suppose it's not necessarily for everyone.

Other Worlds? Or No?

Last Post re: Samuel's Pockets (Maybe)

I decided to document the growing pile of crap on the top of the dryer.  If you can't stop the madness you might as well join in, right?  So every week after I did a round of laundry, I photographed the pile of stuff and captured the new additions.  Here they are, in order.

Here we have some pebbles, a Starburst wrapper, an arm from an action figure, staples and some other unidentifiable stuff.

This week we added some silly bands, a weird bolt/screw thing and a bobby pin.

This time we found a dollar!  It was quickly reclaimed.  There are also a hair clip, part of a broken earring, a day-glo spider, a tiny bubble wand and more pebbles.

More of the same.

This week we added the remnants of a busted balloon animal, beads and more pennies and pebbles.  

How does one kid find, become attached to, and collect so much crap?