between the sheets

This post is about the following

• Point #1.  public vs private
• Point #2.  healthcare, drugs, wellness, holistic medicine
• Point #3.  fashion, art, beauty, youth, hotness

Point #1. I've been "working from home" which has been amazing.  I'm getting back in touch with Glendale and how much I love it.  All this resting and being sick has made me reconnect with my pets and the things I love about our little house.  Seeing my neighbors and saying hello is a simple pleasure in life.  Spending daylight hours in the house and watching my garden grow have been a part of my days over the past few weeks and I am loving it.

My Biking Friends Tom and Kenilynn Bongiovanni

I just read an article in the USA Today about sharing personal health information via facebook.  The article was about women who share that they have miscarried on facebook to their closest 500 friends.  I wondered what health information I would put on facebook.  I wore my breast cancer awareness ribbon to class yesterday in honor of my friend Kenilynn McGuire Bongiovanni who shared on facebook this week that she has cancer.  She is so strong, I am sure she will be counted among the beautiful survivors.

I'm enjoying being inside my house.  Does that mean I am a private person?  I do really enjoy having alone time to listen to the sounds of nature all around me.  There are so many birds in this neighborhood, probably because we are near a water habitat (the LA river) and a sanctuary (Griffith Park).  I'm also a public person, I love being around people.  I was considering taking my grading down to the Glendale Galleria.  There's almost nothing I enjoy more than camping out at a mall with wireless internet and catching up on schoolwork.  The work that is tedious, repetitive, yet instructive and important can be made much more enjoyable with a scenic, continuously changing backdrop.

When my mom was visiting, she confessed how much she liked eavesdropping on people around us.  I guess I do too, actually I really like seeing other people interact.  I feel like I'm learning about humanity in general.  One time, I heard a manager (male) giving career advice and mentoring to a younger (female) manager.  His language was so strong and commanding, her language was so diminuative and I could see why she was an unsuccessful manager.  She counteracted every one of his strong arguments with a weak one, and hardly listened to the advice he was giving her about how to solve the problems between employees at her store location.  So that was an aside, but forgive me, it was a good story.

So what I mean is that we're all public when we're out in public.  We can be public when we're in private via the internet (sharing).  Where's the room for privacy?  Is it still there or is it a myth?  Is it important?

Point #2. Everything involving these topics to me is scary!  When a medical problem (symptoms) arise, generally people are advised to go to a doctor.  The doctors can pass you around (referrals) until eventually one of them gives you a program (prescription).  You are to go home and administer this medication (drug) to yourself and watch yourself for side effects.  In follow up appointments, you are asked to self-report any symptoms (and people are usually untruthful).  I feel like our medical system overall is broken and I'm hoping never to get ensnared in it.  The costs are enormous now because medical technology is amazing (expensive). We can save lives now.

Dr. Kayla A. Kaiser says... commute by bicycle!

What I'm interested in is something more preventative.  A long-term comprehensive solution to our healthcare issues would be something to address the inputs (food calories) and outputs (physical and mental activity) of our daily routines.  We should take into account karma (transportation sometimes 10,000 miles for food to travel from where its grown to your plate).  We will soon have the power to browse our own genomes, and possibly epigenomes.  Here we can also turn to molecular therapies (biological drugs) to compensate for errors at the genetic level.  Another area to explore is data collection.  When the realtime acquistion of biological data (proteomics, metabolomics) can be combined with data mining (bioinformatics), biological (physiological) outcomes may be predicted and an emergency physician can be automatically notified.  This is where I hope we are headed.

I think we can also do better in the area of education.  I think if we can get people cooking, buying more responsibly, carrying their own groceries the distance to their homes (no burning of fossil fuel), perhaps even growing their own food (container gardening is possible).  In the 1950s, Americans grew 50% of their vegetables in their own backyard.  In my dreams, I see myself with much more land.  But seriously, by teaching people to take that labor upon themselves, perhaps we can see the diet change on its own.  People will be proud of what they have grown, they will eat with pride, share with their neighbors and grow together in love.  Well, that's why I plant seeds.  Seeds of chard and seeds of knowledge.

Pitzer College: Provida futuri, Mindful of the future
Claremont McKenna College: Crescit cum commercio civitas, Civilization prospers with commerce
Scripps College: Incipit vita nova, Here begins the new life




Point #3. They say youth is wasted on the young.  I think I lived my youth pretty well, thank you very much.  I may still be in it right now.  I have always had the impression that I wouldn't live very long.  Maybe because I had a brilliant, talented, bright, beautiful cousin who died while jogging while still a very young woman.  I always think of amazing, inspiring women who died (or disappeared) before their time.  Therefore I always try to maximize my life, live each day as if it really was my last.  It turns out that this is pretty hard on my body.  I tried to go for an epic hike and gave myself a water-borne illness by leaving a packet of EmergenC in there and not bleaching it (or tossing it) out before using it again.  I rinsed it with dishsoap, but apparently this is not good enough.  Then after vomiting for 12 h and eating the BRAT diet for 4 days, I tried to jump right back into a normal Monday.  Ok well not a normal Monday.  And not after a normal weekend.  Anyway I sprained my calf by doing rapide grand jeté at the end of my adult ballet class and getting a massive pain in the lower leg.  I'm still limping a little and it's been a week + 2.5 days.

Fertility, Agriculture, Seasons

Anyway, part of the reason I push myself to go on crazy hikes and ballet classes is to maintain a size 8.  See that little hourglass shape of the number 8.  If you turn it sideways it looks like infinity ∞.  Anyway, I am trying to preserve these "child-bearing" hips and keep a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 for the purposes of fertility.  Although I don't wear makeup and sometimes I don't put any product in my hair (the benefits of being a chemist) I do worry about keeping my body in shape.  I've been playing a little game with my students.  For every piece of glassware that is left out on the benches, we must do one push-up or one pull-up.  My husband has noticed my arms are growing in size, be that from eating at the drive-through window (since my leg sprain) and skipping workouts, or be it from actually doing these push-ups and pull-ups.  I certainly noticed it was easier to move desks around in my classroom yesterday so that all of my students could sit and take an exam together.

Having spent some time at the Getty museum, and watching re-runs of QE on Netflix, I feel I want to say something about art and beauty.  Definitely ballet qualifies as using the body to make pretty pictures, in 3D, that's one of the reasons I like it.  I think career-wise looking young may work against me.  Sometimes I feel like people are helping me too much, like they don't think I can do it on my own.  But that's part of being young, accepting help from those who are more experienced than you.  How did the great masters become great?  By apprenticing in the studio of a master!  So that's why it's fun to think that I'll be starting my research up again with an apprentice of my own.  YEA science & art.  Let me be fertile in all areas.  But also let me remember that I occupy a physical body which has certain requirements and limitations.  Help me to be patient and remember that it takes time for the body to heal itself after injury and that the process of building muscles and bones is continuous.  Bodysculpting is a lifelong art.

So I called this post between the sheets because I am trying to value resting.  And procreation!  Happy wedding anniversary my love!

upping the ante

I have literally experienced so much in the time span since my prev post, it's hard to know where to start.  The highlights go a little something like this: (Spring Break) catching up on organizing papers and cleaning house, 4 mi hike (Food Poisoning) sick for 2 days.  Mom comes into town (Horse Races) and we go sight-seeing (Getty Museum).  My cousin raced in the rain (Team Swift) and we saw some stars (Griffith Observatory).  We were planning to go to the Chinese Theater and Beverly Hills but the LA Marathon was going on so we hit a cafe (The Trails) instead.  Got to hang with my aunt also who educated me about Einstein, Tina Fey, and great organizations such as http://www.farmvetco.org/ that she is putting her brand architecture skills to work on.  The visual story about seed swaps warmed my heart.

This past week at school I heard the research talk of Eileen Spain.  We also met in my office to discuss being a woman scientist married to another chemist (which we have in common) and I shared my passion for outreach and teaching general chemistry with her.  She got me thinking about fluoride and fluorine chemistry.  I heard the research talk of Matthew Benoit.  He called our neighbor's cat Fluffy a fathead.  He studies evolution of cats by measuring various skull points and graphing the data in such a way that divergence between genus and species can be seen.  It's called multiphasic allometric analysis.  Various types of comparisons can be drawn from large datasets to support classification and evolutionary conclusions.

I also heard a talk at the Athaneum by Oran B. Hesterman.  He shared his personal struggle with ulcerative colitis and how it caused him to have a paradigm shift in his thinking about food.  He teaches agronomy.  He founded http://www.fairfoodnetwork.org/ which is to aid food suppliers in connecting with social workers so that federal food assistance dollars can go farther and directly into farmer's hands rather than to Wal-Mart where people more likely purchase pre-packaged foods.  It was a call to action, he was recruiting us to become part of the solution to the obesity epidemic as well as spending more federal dollars on ag research and public education rather than spending it on subsidies for a limited number of crops.  He acknowledged that food solutions are going to become increasingly more necessary as the global population continues to rise.

I sprained my left calf muscle at adult ballet class.  It was impossible to walk on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I had to take baby steps and kind of crab-walk (sideways) to avoid stretching the calf.  It was awkward, but nice at the same time to be forced to slow down.  I spent more time enjoying the birds and squirrels on my walk from Center Court (CMC) to Humanities (Scripps) to teach my lecture on Wed and Fri.  Luckily by lab on Thu and Fri it was feeling better.  This means no hike, run, or bike this weekend.  Massage tomorrow! Want to eat junk food these days.  Want to bake scones and coffee cakes.  Why am I so stressed?

Fitness Fridays!

Considering weekly posts.  Thinking about plants, reproduction, scalability.  Keep them safe, and let them learn. This is how I got addicted to twitter and neglected my blog, along with complete sentences.  I am on "Spring Break" and awaiting a visit from my parents (separately, of course).  I've attended so many amazing seminars, I can't keep track of them all.  My summer student has been funded!

2012

Mar

8

09:39

Thu

I looked up at the moon and thought, what a great night for an evening walk, the moon was amazingly full.
I attended a seminar by an accomplished geneticist who is a professor at University of Southern California on Feb. 29th at the Women in Science dinner at Scripps College.  What an amazing experience!  She encouraged all of us to be ourselves, to embrace our inner "bitch."  Ahem-on-a-bike!  I heard a talk at the Athaneum at Claremont McKenna College by a professor at Singularity University, and a 'restless inventor,' who pointed out that with regards to technology, we can expect exponential progress leading ultimately to a crossover point where humans and technology become one.  It's already happening.

I heard a talk from a scientist at Pioneer/Hi-Bred which is part of DuPont who uses DNA shuffling (every day he's shufflin) to identify key amino acid residues in proteins responsible for efficient detoxification.  In this way, farmers can use selective herbicides to target weeds without harming their crops.  I went to a workshop for Writing Intensive courses in the Sciences.  The professors of English were constructive and gave me the courage to try a Cypher with my students on the last day of class before spring break.  Thermodynamics, it's a rap!

Looking forward, I see the San Dimas Road Race (18-Mar), the RBC Time Trial (8-Apr), NSF day at USC (12-Apr), and the Verdugo Mountains 10K (6-May).  Looking forward to the Commencement Ceremonies (3 in one day) on 12-May.  I see the the IGERT Symposium (15-Jun) the Pagent of the Master's (8-Jul).  I'm celebrating my 32nd birthday in Chicago!  Speaking of which, I hope to run tomorrow morning in the Downtown Dash... gotta run!

I may not be reproducing myself right now, but my chard is adorable.  I got some 2 L bottles from the Water Quality Lab and blinged them out using superglue.  Then I transferred my seedlings into them and voila!  These are seedlings from seeds produced by plants that grew to maturity at my roommate's house on Leafhill Pl in Riverside (33.960421,-117.343296).

The title of this post: Fitness Fridays! refers to a concept my husband and I developed while working in different cities all week. Now, we live under the same roof but work quite hard all week.  So it's the idea that to break the tension and let go of the stress, we do some kind of fitness.  We crank up the music, and get some wacky YouTube videos going and crunch it out.  I had a sweet rotation going last night between crunches, pull ups, and push ups.  I told my student, who is on the ballroom team, that I am in training for next year's 'Dancing with the Claremont stars.'  I love motivation.