Nitrogen

In my soils lab this week we were taught that nitrogen levels in drinking water is monitored to prevent the levels being too high. The EPA sets a limit of anything over 10 parts per million being considered hazardous for human consumption, and can cause methemoglobinemia—“blue-baby” syndrome.

To see what the levels of nitrogen in water are here on campus each student obtained a water sample from six different water sources in and around the Benson building. We then measured 10 mls into two clean bottles; into one we kept as a control sample, and to the second we added a reagent powder to react and show the nitrogen in the water. We then used a spectrophotometer to measure the nitrogen levels in the sample. This is what we found:

So, apparently if you need a quick drink and are only concerned with nitrogen levels, as long as you don’t filter the water through a plant you’ll be okay. Please remember however, this was only testing the levels of nitrogen, not bacteria, E. Coli, or any other nastys that could be lurking in the toilet. Yuck!

"Suck Up"

Today in my soils class I learned a rather valuable lesson. Plants don't "suck up" water. Bro. Willis demonstrated this with a simple hose, a pond, and gravity. See, in the Benson building (the building I practically live in on campus) there is an indoor pond right by the stairs leading from the first to the second floor. It's an open area, and you can look down into the pond from the second floor. Standing on the top level, we took the tube and draped it over the walkway railing into the pond. Then Bro. Willis challenged the class to suck the water from the pond, up to the railing--about 12-13 feet. He was offering 20 extra credit points to anyone that could do it. Greg, a classmate of mine volunteered first, and with determination he achieved the feat--with puckered lips to prove. I wanted in on the action too. Not only for the points, but to say I did it . . . this is what I got:



My lips swelled up from the vacuum created in the tube.



It was like I got botox injections. I can't believe people pay to look like this! I couldn't even get my tongue to touch the top of my upper lip!



This is the best picture I could get of another classmate trying the feat. Only Greg and I prevailed though. At least you get the concept of what is going on, right? Sorry it kind of sucks (no pun intended) these are all taken on my phones camera.



Yep. My lips were uber swollen. I had a lisp when I talked, and couldn't whistle.



Here is a picture two hours later. At least the swelling is going down. As I'm writing this, it's been eight hours. My lips are still swollen, and the upper lip has what Jessie and I affectionately call a lipickie. Basically it's like a hickie on your lip. Or what others might call a blood blister. Rob refuses to kiss me because my lips feel weird. He's also asked me to never get botox injections. He says my lips are "perfectly kissable just the way they are." :) So now I have not only some very interesting bragging rights--but I'm also the ultimate "suck up".

The weekend . . .

This weekend was a blast. Here's a quick rundown:

Friday night--Rented 27 Dresses, ate popcorn (MMmmmm . . .) fell asleep on the LoveSac . . .
Saturday--Slept in, had AMAZING French Toast for breakfast, lazied around the house, napped, tried to go shooting, but our "spot" had campers there. :( Watched (and napped through) Bladerunner.
Sunday--Great hair day. Church, napped, took two hours to cook up a batch of Chicken Chili (my FAV--it's WELL worth it!), welcomed my Mom, Dad, and lil' sis Teri visiting from Utah, looked at Rob's and my wedding pictures, helped Teri set up a blog, etc . . .
Monday--Slept in, the most hilarious dream of my Mom's, more AMAZING French Toast, actual shooting with the homies, napped, watched Super Size Me and ate popcorn . . .

Please notice, this weekend included no homework whatsoever. That's right. It was filled with popcorn, shooting guns, chillin with the fam, movies and napping. It was a good weekend. I do want to expound in more detail a couple of the highlights . . .

The Movies:

27 Dresses was okay. I'm glad we Redbox'ed it. Rob has wanted to see it for awhile . . . I think he liked it more than me. Bladerunner is a classic Sci-Fi that we started watching on TV earlier last week, but didn't finish, so we actually rented it. It was interesting. I'm glad we didn't buy it out of theWalMart $5 bin a couple months back when we were feeling spendy . And Super Size Me--well, I love this movie. When I had my "all you can rent" setup at Blockbuster, Johnny and I must have rented and watched it about 5 times. Rob had never seen it. He liked it, and it reminded me of why we don't eat out too often.

My Mom's dream:

When I woke up Monday morning I went out to see how my Mom and Dad slept--they opt'ed to sleep on the LoveSac, instead of the blow-up mattress we offered and expected them to sleep on; so I was hoping the night went well since we didn't hear the air-mattress pump in the middle of the night.

"So how did you sleep Mom?"

"Really well, except the rattlesnakes . . . "

"Um, excuse me? Rattlesnakes? Did the sprinklers keep you up? Or were our neighbors being noisy outside?"

"No . . . it wasn't the sprinklers or neighbors" It was then that the wind started blowing through my cracked living-room window, shaking the venetian blinds so quickly that it sounded like a rattler.

"Ahhhhh." Apparently that sound kept my Mother terrified for the better part of the night about there being rattlesnakes in my living-room. She dreamt about snakes all night until it started to get light enough outside that she could see where the noise was coming from. We laughed.

Shooting:

Basically, I've decided that we need to get a .22 pistol. One of our friends brought one, and I killed with it. I also kicked some butt with another friend's .22 rifle--through the iron-sites. His scope was off, and was mounted too high for me to see through anyway. I also shot a .45 pistol, which didn't kick as much as I expected, and Rob shot a .308 high powered rifle. It was a fun day. Best part was when five of us all lined up and tried to take out the same target. Another friend was behind us shaking up cans of soda, and then chucking them into the air at our shooting range. We then would all release as many bullets as possible until the can gloriously exploded! I took out four or five of the cans--out of the dozen that were thrown, so I'm feeling pretty awesome about that as well. That's right, I'm awesome with a gun. ;)

Daisy Daisy . . .

Just another fine display of my awesome school schedule.



I'm so cute!

My .22 Experience

One of the last times Rob and I were at my parents house we asked if we could borrow my Dad's bolt .22 rifle with a scope. He figured that would be cool, and this morning we took it out for a hundred rounds or so. Rob shot the caps off some water bottles, and here is my target page.



I'm feeling pretty hot rockin awesome about it. The first shot I got off was directly through the upper-right target center, so having not shot a .22 for probably about 20 years, I'm feelin' pretty cool. I've never seen Rob so proud. Well, okay, I have, but he is pleased as punch to have married such a great marks-woman. ;)

Happy Birthday Boys!

My youngest nephews turned one today, here are the cute birthday boys!



Derek and Riley, eating yummy home made oreo cookies!



Derek loves those sweets!



Here is Riley. Aren't they adorable!

Pacific Ethanol Inc.

Today I went on a field trip with my soils class to the ribbon cutting ceremony at Pacific Ethanol, Inc. in Burley, ID. I ended up sitting on the front row in front of the stage, so I was lucky enough to snap a few shots with my camera phone. Honestly, it was a very interesting experience. Something interesting I learned was that the making of Ethanol isn't actually diminishing the food supply. Apparently the corn used to make Ethanol at this particular plant would regularly be used as cattle feed. In the production of Ethanol the process only extracts the starch in the corn; then everything else including nutrients and proteins are made into a pulp that the Ethanol company will sell as cattle feed. The advantage to this pulp is that it's actually a more nutritious for the cows than straight corn. COOL!



Here is Idaho's Governor, Butch Otter welcoming the plant to Magic Valley. He seemed like a pretty decent guy!



The Ribbon Cutting ceremony . . .



And it's official!



Here's a view from the top. Crazy thing about it is that the entire plant can be run by four people at a time. There are only 36 people on the payroll, and this plant will produce 60 million gallons of Ethanol a year. It's was an awesome field trip--the only downside? It stank like rotting corn and alcohol. Imagine that!

My "Science" Major . . .

For those who might not have caught on yet, I am really enjoying my classes. Here are a few examples of my delights: First off, in my floral design class we've been doing corsages.



Here is the first corsage I did in class. I have of course worked with flowers before, so I tried to work in some element of design, for those who might know what the Hogarth curve is, do you see the S?



Here is the second corsage I did. We were working with color tool, so I "painted" these carnations purple and green--they were originally white. Also, I went for a C-curve in this one. It may not be the most attractive grouping of flowers in the world, but it's one of those things where it's so bad, it's awesome. :)



In my landscaping design class we started out with using pencils to draw trees for designs. This was not originally my favorite task. It's funny. In my horticulture class in high school, drawing up the landscape plans were my least favorite part . . . in all honesty, I was kinda dreading this class--taking it in my first semester so that I could get it out of the way.



And then we started using markers. The markers ARE AWESOME. It's so much more interesting to put the color down on page than the pencil.



How exciting! I'm not perfect at the markers by any means, but I'm loving using the color. It's so interesting to see how these designs can come to life with just a bit of color. Next week in class we'll actually be planting out in the schools gardens, which I can't wait for. Man, school is awesome!

Bow Rodeo!

Today in my floral design class we had our bow rodeo! In class we have been practicing making bows the last couple of weeks, and today we put our skills to the test and timed ourselves a few times. My classmate Tara however took the creativity to the next level. She decided to make an arrangement out of another classmate, Brooke. This is the beauty that developed:



It started as an innocent headdress--Brooke is quite the head model--no? Then about half the class donated their bows . . . and Tara became even more confident in her designing skills.



I think it has a beautiful shape Tara! And look at those bows! Great job class!



Tara and her creation. It looks fabulous ladies!



Here are all the bows that came off Brooke's head. It was so hilarious! Who thought getting an education would be so freakin fantastic! I'm surprised it took this long for another human being to be displayed as a piece of artistic expression on my blog!

Things to look forward to!

This week in my floral design class I found out that in upcoming classes for my major I'm going to be able to create ART! Check this out!



These are created on CARDBOARD with GLUE and SPRAY PAINT--err, um, flower tool . . .



I totally love it!



Mine probably won't be this amazing, but it's something to aim at, right?



SO AWESOME!

No More Markers

Welcome to storytime boys and girls. I've come to tell you all about how funny my husband is.

Rob is a very attractive man. I swoon when I'm near him, and think he's uber-sexy. He, like many men grows hair on his chest. Thats normal. What I find a little un-normal however is that he has one single hair growing out of the area where his throat meets his chest--right below his Adams apple. A few times in the past I've asked him, and then plucked out this solitary hair. Tonight when I asked him if I could pluck it, he clutched his throat, and ran into the bathroom trying to get away from me so I couldn't get to him again.

"It wouldn't bother me so much if it had friends! Maybe someday you'll grow more hairs there and I won't want to pluck it anymore!" I cried!

So this is what he did:



That's right. He drew more on. With permanent marker. We laughed. I can't believe him sometimes!

Garage Sale Saturday

This is our living room.



Here are our sweet two chairs that used to be in our living room.



This is our awesomely reto new couch.



My cute husband Rob on our new couch.



Any questions?

This Weeks Highlights

Well really, the highlight was last weekend when my Snow grrrls and I got together with our families for our Annual Hoo-Hah. I linked to Jessie's blog, because she already posted about it and it's easier. :)

We came home Sunday afternoon, and took the Preston route, vs the Tremonton route from Logan. I never realized how much faster it really is! Crazy thing is that Google maps tells me it's 13 minutes quicker to go through Tremonton, but we shaved basically an hour off our drive through Preston. Anyway, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, so we stopped at a rest area just south of Idaho Falls for a nice picnic, and "hike" around some lava fields. Very cool.

Once returning home, as tradition continues I got sick. Again. Last time we spent time in Logan I came home with a stomach bug, and poor Rob puked his guts out for the better part of a morning. This time I have a horrible sore throat--so much that I even went to the doctor today. It's been absolutely terrible. Dr. said that it's not strep--yet, but they'll keep my culture growing over the next few days to see if anything develops. In the mean time I can alternate Tylenol and Ibuprofen every three hours for the pain, and to continue with my salt-water gargles--which I started on Tuesday. BTW--if you have TOO MUCH salt in the water it makes you gag, and basically want to throw up. I found this out the hard way and thought I was going to yak this morning in the shower. ICK! Good thing I hadn't eaten or drunk anything yet. :)

So I'm sick, Rob has THANKFULLY (knock on wood) avoided the ickness. I've come home every day from school and taken about a 3 hour nap, and haven't done homework in three days. Lucky for me I can get away with this because I'm totally ahead in all my classes. With just a little reading this weekend, and by writing up a lab I'll be totally back in the game. Best part about it is that I have ONE class tomorrow; I'm out of school by 8:45 AM! Huzzah!

One last thing--we bought our car last summer knowing that the air conditioning didn't work. We've meant to get it fixed, but never have. So a couple of weeks ago I got an email from the automotive dept on campus looking for cars needing repair, I jumped on it and volunteered willingly. Basically, it is now blowing clean, cool, refreshing air for the low bargain price of $38.50. Nothing like getting students to fix your car, while charging no labor! We are ecstatic!

Why buy expensive toys?

In reference to Britt's post about Preston talking, I was reminded of this adorable baby. Not adorable as Preston though, just because I get to have his cute, chubby, little fingers all over my face this weekend . . .


Rob and I laugh our bellies off every time we watch it. It's even better at 2 AM when you're exhausted and need sleep.