The Wonderful World of Polarity

I'm not sure if any of you were aware of this, but I think molecular polarity is pretty freaking awesome. You should probably agree with me, because it's true. I mean, it accounts for why tape works, how plants transport water and nutrients without a heart-like organ, why towels dry things so well (and why they take so long to dry), why water expands when it freezes (without floating ice, many aquatic species couldn't exist), how flies can walk on walls and ceilings, why belly flops hurt so bad, how the cell membrane (and thus all organism, including us) can exist, and much, much more. If you ask me, that's fantastically amazing. I had wondered for years why stickers are sticky, until last year my chemistry teacher introduced me to the exciting realm of polar molecules. I wouldn't shut up about it for a few minutes. Just ask Morgan and Sara; they were stuck sitting next to me.

So... anyway... I'm pretty much just finding anything to write about so I don't have to do a biology lab write-up or an English essay, but I should probably stop stalling and go do that.

"He Is Thirsty Though!"

I rode on the back of my homecoming float (Woohoo. Class spirit. Oh nine. Can't you feel the excitement radiating from me?) with two classmates who were decidedly more ghetto than I. It was a lot of fun! I had forgotten how much fun it could be to be around the gangsta members of society.

One thing I picked up from this experience was a whole new application for the word "thirsty". Don't think I've completely missed this, I know it's been around for several months already, I've just never heard it so frequently in such a short span of time. It can be used for pretty much anything, similar to the way the word "crucial" (shortened to "croosh" towards the end of it's life) could be used in a variety of ways (but don't even think for a second that thirsty and croosh are even close to the same). For example, thirsty can be used in ways that seem fairly reasonable: "those kids be extra thirsty for some candy". Seems pretty straightforward, right? But then you come to other situations, like when you see your former math teacher watching the parade in his dress shirt, tie, slacks, and well-shined shoes, swinging his hands back and forth nervously like he is wont to do, and Porcha cracks up as she says "Mr. Rahn is thirsty fo real tho in his tie!" and Trey affirms her statement by shaking his head and saying "He is too thirsty!" It was quite an interesting and amusing experience.

Happy September 23rd!

I hope you had a wonderful first day of fall!

Okay fine, it doesn't feel like autumn considering it was about 90º F out there, but fear not, for a cold front's a-comin' mid-way through this week.

Why You Should Avoid Baby Showers At All Costs

1. They're full of giggling old ladies (surprisingly, they giggle a lot more than the younger women)
2. They're full of pink (even if the baby is a boy you normally end up with a dash of pink)
3. There seems to be some unwritten law that baby products can only come in pastel colors, and those only have so much appeal
4. Pretty much everyone does their utmost to flaunt their girly-ness
5. You hear all sorts of unwanted stories about other women's past experiences with chil-bearing
6. There's no food, only sugary dainty little snacks and there's only a certain nuber of anything you can take before you feel like the veterans are looking at you like you're some sort of pig (even if apple slices are what you take more than three of)
7. You feel underdressed if you're not in a skirt or nice pants
8. You can tell that some of the women clearly don't approve of your purse/bag of holding type IV and its adornments (this one might not apply to most other people, but believe me there's comes a point where it becomes akward instead of evil-ly fun to see them hesitatingly comment on it)
9. Shopping for cards for baby showers is absolutely nauseating (do you have any idea how many say something to the effect of "your life is about to get cuddlier"?)

Needless to say, baby showers won't be becoming my favorite hobby any time soon. And the worst part is I most likely won't be able to avoid attending them because if I ever have kids one will be planned for me whether I like it or not. People don't plan their own showers and they can't keep them from happening either.

My White Girl Moves

Although I took ballet and tap dancing lessons for six or seven years and I went to more than half of the middle school dances, I'm generally opposed to dancing. There are some exceptions (for instance, when we hear the absolutely horrible music at the beginning of listening activity tapes for French, some of us can't help but dance in place to celebrate its atrocity), but I avoid it for the most part. However, I do have some moves in store for situations in which dancing is practically unavoidable or I'm so bored or slap-happy that there's little else to do. They fall into three categories...

The Classic "Hey Look at Me I Practically Glow in the Dark" Moves: These include timeless techniques that you've probably seen (and maybe even used).

• the sprinkler
• the lawnmower
• the shopping cart
• milking the cow
• scuba diver
• etc., you can probably think of others

From the Creativity of My Fellow Social Outcasts: This list isn't that long, but it's interesting. Not all of them are original moves, but they aren't as common at those on the list above.

• The Epileptic Fit/ Tourettes
• The Hair Dance
• The Eight Point Blocking Routine
  

And finally, for the moves you've all been waiting for whether you know it or not...

Og's Originals: These are high-quality techniques that are great for when there's no alternative to busting a move, but you still want to celebrate your inner nerd. They all have well evaluated names that have been pondered for at least a minute.

• The Happy Dance
• Dyslexia
• The Move from English Class for Which I Have No Name
• The Oscillating Universe (that one is my favorite and the favorite of many others)
• coming soon... The Dipod Shuffle

At some point if I run out of things to write about, I might try to describe some of the original moves.

A Day in the Life of a Druid

Yesterday was as gorgeous an early fall day as anyone could wish for, so I spent much of it outside being all druidy (maybe druidic is the right word there... but I like druidy better) like I am.

I studied the magnificent defense mechanism of the rose, as a particularly large specimen defended itself against my lopers and my skin. The thorns don't grow from inside the stem, they are attached to the very outermost layer of the plant and are composed of an entirely different type of tissue with a higher concentration of cellulose. They can detach from the branch without too much trouble, which I hypothesize helps the plant so that if the thorn gets lodged in the plant's attacker, the thorn will break off in the intruder rather than the entire plant being pulled along with the would-be assailant. Puncture wounds from thorns also seem to have an uncanny tendency towards mild infection (as I know from several first-hand experiences), which would further discourage animals from coming back for a second attack. In addition to how well these things work, thorns are beautiful if you inspect them closely, especially the mature, woody ones. They are so hard and sleek and they reflect the sunlight so that they look faintly iridescent. I also admired the ways thistles protect themselves, but not in as much depth as I admired the roses.

While pulling thistles I noticed all sorts of exciting things in the dirt. I always love digging through living dirt full of roots and bugs and nutrients and all sorts of other thriving things. The first thing I found wasn't alive at the time, but it must have been an absolutely stunningly pretty beetle at one point. I found the empty exoskeleton of a beetle about the size of my thumbnail colored like a pale turquoise gem of all shades of aqua. I'll post a picture when my cruddy camera is happy enough to take one for me. I don't care if nobody else has any interest in pretty exoskeletons, it's going up anyway. After the ex-beetle, I noticed something about grubs that I had never noticed before. Normally I kill them right off (they eat my plants' roots) despite the little twinge of guilt I feel about squashing them, but yesterday I just couldn't bear to snuff out their lives. Especially once they started uncoiling and moving. It's so much harder to kill something that shows definite signs of life. Anyway, back to why they were so intriguing. All six of their legs are under the front quarter of their body and they trail the other three fourths along behind them as they crawl. I also liked how their bodies were translucent allowing me to see all the dirt in their digestive tracts.

To move away from the bugs and back to the plants, it seems that crabgrass can change shades of green. I was looking for signs of the weeds to pull them out before they went to seed, and there were some plants that had the right growth pattern for crabgrass, but they weren't the same vivid green. I pulled one out to find out what type of grass it was, and it came out the same way the other crabgrass did (different plants behave differently while being uprooted; it's hard to explain) and had the same root pattern. Fascinating.

I also spent some time walking along the fence where the fall-blooming clematis grows, breathing in the sweet scent of its blossoms. Later I sat up in the gigantic white pine in front of my house.

All day long I enjoyed the wind. The cool, brisk breeze of autumn. Sometimes it danced across my arms and kissed me lightly on the face, other times it impatiently tried to shove me this way and that, but it was always welcome.

In the evening I lit a fire in the fire pit out back and tended to the burning wood while watching the ebb and flow of the frenzied dance of the flickering flames. I came inside smelling heavily of wood smoke, which is one of my favorite smells in the world. Unfortunately, society doesn't smile upon those who walk about smelling like fire, and my mom is part of society.

I fell asleep with my window wide open to let the chilly fresh air in and my nose and toes tingling from the coolness of the night.

It was a jolly good day in the life of a druid.

Of Angler Fish and Toothpickase

I meant to write this two days ago, but my computer has been misbehaving so it's just now going up.

As of 2nd/3rd bell on Thursday, I am one of the most efficient (perhaps the most efficient) toothpickase molecule, tied for champion of the First Spontaneous AP Biology Ice-Off, and an artist in a whole new medium.

After spending the past few weeks taking intense notes and trying to conduct and incredibly complex lab (which is so much more confusing when your group accidentally skips an entire page of the procedure), my AP Biology teacher decided we would just take about 20 minutes of relatively light-weight notes and then spend the rest of our double bell doing a fun lab modeling some of the factors that influence enzyme activity. The enzyme we used was toothpickase, the catalyst for the breakdown of toothpicks. The molecule had a curious structure comprised solely of the index finger and thumb from one hand. One person from each pair had to see how many toothpicks they could break using just their thumb and index finger from one hand under a variety of conditions. My left hand is officially the toothpickase master! I catalyzed the breakdown of 48 substrate molecules (toothpicks) in three minutes, setting the record for the three teams in my class.

One of the things we tested was the effect of reduced temperature on catalyst activity. To model this, the possessor of the toothpickase molecule from each pair of students had to soak their hand in ice water for two minutes (the lab originally said 10 minutes, but my teacher decided that we'd get a similar effect from two minutes and it wouldn't be potentially hazardous to our health). Everyone eventually tried the soaking anyway, and some withstood it better than others. I was one who endured the frigid waters without too much trouble (my distaste for shoes is good for something: I'm good at ignoring the cold). Upon noticing this, a classmate named Eddie commented that I was taking it more like a man than he was, and he challenged me to an ice-off. I'm not sure he was completely serious, but by the end of the bell there was a four-way tie between us two and another guy and girl. We went two by two and I was in the first round facing Peter when Mr. Breines commented that eventually he was going to have to put a stop to our little contest, because after a while it would make us pass out. At which point I started panicking. (I'm absolutely terrified to an unreasonable degree of passing out, although I've been getting over some of my paranoia. I no longer begin shaking in fear when someone mentions losing consciousness, I just get a bit fidgety and if the conversation continues a cold fear grips my stomach, but it's been a while since it made me panic.) He said that we would definitely notice dizziness long before we actually started to depart into unconsciousness, which reduced my fear considerably, but I think he began to lose faith in that statement because at 6 minutes and 18 seconds he told us to stop. He made Erin and Eddie stop at the same time too, so we had a four-way ice-off tie out. Breines said he might make an announcement about the four ice-off champions, but it hasn't happened yet.

After we were all done with the lab, we randomly decided to dip the leftover toothpicks into the mostly melted ice baths and use them as pens to draw beautiful artwork on the table. The table painted black so the water really showed up. First Joe drew a little fish. Then Eddie drew a big fish eating the little fish. Then the big fish got turned into an angler fish by Sara and me. When the little fish evaporated, the angler fish ate the little mermaid instead, thanks to Eddie. Somewhere along the line, Joe drew a circle under the angler fish which promptly got turned into a wheel attached to its stomach by Erin and I added spinners to the wheel. I created a manta ray and Eddie added a hunter that was drawn to hunt down the manta ray, but Erin didn't like the hunter, so he was blotted out with water. The entire scene was sprinkled with holy water thanks to Sara, which started a debate over whether the splashes were bubbles or blood. The little mermaid underwent several wardrobe changes, because we couldn’t agree on what she should wear. Joe drew a rainbow so I drew all the Lucky Charms while singing/chanting them. Sea urchins, starfish, rocks, sharks, alligators, stingrays and many other wondrous things were drawn. And of course, the most dedicated of us made sound effects while painting and gave a detailed play-by-play of the story we were creating. When the bell rang, one guy and I stayed to clean up since we didn’t have to go far to our next classes, and we couldn’t agree on whether the art was debris from a nuclear explosion or an oil spill spreading across the ocean when the ineffective paper towels smeared it everywhere. Five of the seven people in our class that day participated in the public art (including three of us with red hands that were still icy to the touch, so the other two claimed it was the ice going to our heads that caused us to start doodling, but that leaves both of them with absolutely no excuse). It was fun. The next day our teacher said he was glad no administrators came to visit that day because all five of us would probably have been taken to the office under the suspicion of drug abuse.

Today Is Random Day

Today I'm in a very random and unfocused mood, so I feel like posting random and unfocused things.

Today was an excellent story-telling day. Two or three times I got to recount the dramatic tale of how I sprained my hand on Sunday (it was more riveting every time). I got to explain for the first time in many months why I very rarely wear shoes and why the shoes I normally wear are flip-flops. I made up stories for all the doodles in my honors physics and honors pre-calc notes and told them to my friend Sara whether she wanted to listen or not. I also told the story of how crowded the bathroom is at 7:30 am at my house (five girls want to use it at once). My fellow art students heard about the tragic incident of the toad in the night-time. I regaled my audiences with tales of travel mugs, sharpies, pencil sharpeners, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and all sorts of other random things.

Today was a day of discovery. I discovered that if you add up the speed that the earth is spinning, the speed at which we rotate around the sun, and the speed at which the universe is expanding, we are all moving tens of thousands of miles per hour at this very instant. I learned that curly hair is the result of hydrogen bonding in the secondary structure of the protein keratin that causes it to take on the alpha helical structure and that when you straighten hair, you're actually breaking the hydrogen bonds holding the secondary protein structure together, causing it to take the form of the beta pleated sheet. When water from the atmosphere or a shower or whatever soaks into the hair, the alpha helix structure is restored and the hair curls once more. I learned all about the differences between the higher education systems in the U.S. and in Europe. I learned that I can b.s. my way through all my English book tests, because they're all short answer/essay questions and I can fake just about anything in that format. Layla learned that my hair is fairly curly, which she didn't know despite the fact that she headed the convince-Maria-to-wear-her-hair-down-more-often campaign of freshman year. I discovered that I don't know how to conjugate all the irregular French verbs. I discovered that spraining your right hand really sucks when all your teachers pick the same day to have you write down loads of stuff for the entire bell. I discovered one of the foreign exchange students at my school this year. His name is Florian and he's from Germany. I also discovered that the cafeteria's new cylindrical tater tots are far inferior to last year's star-shaped tots in every way imaginable.

I had conversations about things like structures of different tree species, jellyfish, nicknames, instrument cases, O Brother Where Art Thou, temperamental color guard girls, pretty names. and gobs of other things.

I doodled/drew Cheerios, Oreos, turtles (one of them talks and his name is Horatio the Splendiferous), houses, shoes, thunderstorms, and who knows what all else, along with writing out the French alphabet song and a nonsense nursery song in French about sea turtles dancing the samba in cursive on my math notes, which my teacher is apparently collecting tomorrow... He'll get to see my pretty pictures (he only gets Horatio and the French songs, plus a flame border around my name, but that should be enough to make him wonder what on earth goes through my head).

This is only a small sample of how random I've been feeling today. If this was it, this would just be a normal day that I wrote down for once. I just can't seem to stay focused long enough to think of what other random things happened today.

Fall is Coming!

I awoke suddenly this morning at the dark and dreary hour of 5 am, and had absolutely no idea why until a the sound of glorious down-pour of sweet rain began streaming from the heavens reached my ears through an open window that let in the cooler and drier air we've been enjoying the past few evenings! It was beautiful. I couldn't fall back asleep with such a gorgeous sound just begging to fill my ears, so I sat in front of the window and drank deeply of the smell of clean water pounding the parched earth and the noise of raindrops plunking all around. The drought has been broken!

I listened to the rumbles of thunder from the west last evening, hoping it would bring what I thought it would. I admired the trees that were finally beginning to put of their dresses of yellow, brown, orange and scarlet. The past few days have been spent enjoying the reduced humidity and the slightly cooler nights, waiting expectantly for the advent of autumn. Even though there may still be some muggy days in store, I think this morning's downpour officially commenced the best season of the year.

Fall brings with it all sorts of wonderful things. Rich colors, refreshing breezes nipping at you with the promise of winter, cool crisp aromas. Plus it has pretty much every weather imaginable. The early days still host warm days while the later ones usher in chilly temperatures. The sun can shine down through the thick blue sky or the crisper, paler heavens, or clouds can hang low, blanketing the sky. Drizzle, torrents of rain, and snow are all welcome. Biting winds, playful breezes, mournful gusts of wind, or still, clear air are scattered across the weeks.

In summary, fall is absolutely splendidly fantabulous. And it's on its way.

Ode to a Toad

Some time ago, I wrote a apology in poem form to a poor, innocent toad that I accidentally stepped on during the summer of 2006. I had an unusually high concentration of dead frog/toad or nearly dead frog/toad incidents that summer after the CIY where I met my little friend Crapaud the toad (I think there were four dead ones, including the one I smooshed, and another one that I almost ran over with a lawnmower).
Anyway... for lack of a better topic to blog about, here's the poem. But don't worry, I'm not a complete poet so hopefully I won't die young like all the ill-fated people Josh listed in his blog. Sadly, you don't get the full effect of the original formatting, because the blog ignores spaces placed at the front of lines.

Ode to a Toad
I hadn't yet seen you
I'm sorry friend
I never intended
To be your end
So distracted was I
By star-strewn skies
I didn't notice you
Hopping on by
Then I felt the soft splash
And heard the "pop"
When I saw you I thought
My heart would stop
So sorry am I that
The death of you
Could have been caused by my
Unyielding shoe
So now I do repeat
I'm sorry friend
I never intended
To be your end

-By Maria Gast, in memory of the poor amphibian soul who she sent to frolic forever in sunnier bogs

At Least We're Learning

"But remember, at least you're still learning."

This comment was made by a senior in one of my classes when I was talking to another guy from my grade about how odd our english teacher is. The senior had the teacher last year and knew of more of her eccentricities than we had seen yet, but he managed to focus on the fact that, regardless of her personal tendencies, she was teaching us, and that was the point. This guy loves learning, and he's good at it. He asks in-depth and sometimes completely random questions about everything and will never be contented with what knowledge he has. And I'd be willing to bet that he's smart enough to know that however he much he learns there will still be so much out there that's a mystery.

This is how we should be as Christians. Despite what unusual, and even painful, things we go through, we should always be focused on the fact that it's helping us get closer to God and learn about who he is. We should always be curious about him and seek to know him better and better, even though we can't possibly get to know him perfectly with our finite bodies and minds. Let us not be discouraged by that fact, but take heart from it, because it makes God infinitely bigger than us, and I don't know about you, but I want someone bigger and better than me governing the universe. It also means that we never have to stop learning about God and being awestruck by everything that he is. God will never run out of facets of himself to reveal to humans. This relationship and knowledge of God won't pass away either, like the wisdom and facts that my classmate spends so much time amassing.

19For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."[c]
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
-1 Corinthians 1:19-25