Authentic AND Local

I have my head in two places at once --> or maybe they are actually one.  I'm looking to the job market while at the same time focusing on doing a good job at the job I have.  But either way, I'm career-focused right now.  When I wake up in the morning, I feel energized at the possibilities of the day, but at the end of the day I am tending to feel like I didn't get enough done and I am trying to get up to speed to get to everything without any losses of time, but you gotta eat and you gotta sleep, ya dig?

I am writing about things that I'm happy about here.  My sister is visiting right now with her husband.  I have already attended the first seminar in the Fall 2012 Keck Seminar series.  My student presented her poster at the Summer Research Symposium.  I introduced myself to the ~80 new students I am teaching General Chemistry.  My car is amazing.  I love my doggies.

I am writing here about things that are upsetting me.  My back is hurting again.  I worry that I don't have the strength to do all the stuff I want to.  Between running and biking and home-gym-ing it with my husband, I had trimmed off a few extra pounds.  I wanted to be in shape when the school year started because for me, teaching is a very physically demanding profession.

My new classroom(s) are different sizes than the one(s) I had last year.  In one of them, there is so much furniture that I can hardly walk around.  In the other classroom, it's so spacious with staircases that I have to be very stable on my feet to walk throughout the space to pass out papers and interact with students 1-on-1.

What I wanted to write about today is the idea that I like to eat produce that is authentic (organic) and local just as much as I like to meet people of the same variety.  I like a diverse mix of people, just like I enjoy a salad with a variety of things in it.  I am brainstorming words that describe me (for the purposes of my job searching) and I would say Authentic is one big one.

I've spent time finding myself and my core values and I am genuinely myself.  I am nobody other than what I am.  I represent me.  I would also say that I am a locavore.  I love things that are locally grown or made.  I love growing and making things using materials that can be found in my local area.  If anyone is hiring, I am here in Glendale, locally.

complacent

I'm giving myself free reign today.  It's a holiday.  Technically.  So I will begin working after my #madwriting session.  I was thinking of a title for my post.  Something short that would summarize my general state.  I would say Complacent.  I typed it in to dictionary.com and got some ideas for why my brain would have come up with that particular word.

The first definition that popped up said "pleased, especially with oneself or one's merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied: The voters are too complacent to change the government." With synonyms: "smug, unbothered, untroubled."

I was thinking BINGO that is how I feel about many things in my life right now.  I feel like there is a lot of noise in my headphones and it's my job to turn down the noise and turn up the signal.  This is why I've been doing #madwriting more often, but in a private journal like Julia Cameron suggests.

But sometimes, it seems, you have to focus on the noise for a minute.  Like acknowledge it during your morning pages and then it clears you out for more creativity and focus later in the day.  I've been preparing for the academic year to begin for the entire month of August it seems and classes start tomorrow!

This is a bike-centered blog so I want to share some bicycle noise with you.  I didn't make it out to some bike-related events in the area that I heard about and wanted to check out (or check-in to), but didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) spend the money, fuel, time, etc. devoting an entire weekend to a recreational pursuit.  One: Festival of Bikes, Two: Tour de Lake Arrowhead, Three: Swap Meet, Four: Public Outreach.  I guess I'm just not that into the lifestyle that I can devote a weekend to biking and forsake all other events.

Last weekend, we attended a Car Wash to raise money for John Morlock who we met through facebook.  He is a veteran who rides in events with other veterans.  He is part of an organization called Ride2Recovery that supports veterans who can be provided bicycles (with adaptations if necessary to accommodate any injury) to complete long (~600 mile) multi-day rides.  The idea inspired me to stand streetside waving a flag for an hour in Burbank, while dear husband was soaping, washing, and drying cars with a group of young marines at the American Legion.  We met another veteran Robert Kugler who also rides a Ride2Recovery-issue bike, who was there along with his wife Charlie.  Both of them are from Nebraska, like me!

I encourage anyone who understands how awesome cycling is to consider how you might support the Ride2Recovery organization or participate in their events.  I believe there is no better way to heal yourself than to train for and achieve an inspiring tour, especially if you are doing it with your friends (who become your heroes before you finally believe in yourself).  I learned in the power of group cycling by riding with the Riverside Bicycle Club.  There are scientific papers that show you can tolerate a higher level of pain when you are training in synchronization with others.

This is why I love group events, cycling or running.  I'm so stoked to do the Color Run in San Diego.  I think I'm more looking forward to it because it forces me to train (at least a little) and the actual event is all about having fun.  To me, that's what fitness has always been about.  I've spent many years punishing my body, trying to twist it into ridiculous positions and defy the laws of physics.  I've fallen down from exhaustion in a dance studio, and I've fallen off my bike a few times.  I think doing the color run will be less about competition, and more about being with my friend Sam, whether we feel like we want to walk or run to get through the course.  I'll definitely post a report when we get back.

I have to spend some time on Clitoral Mass.  I mean Critical Mass.  It's one thing that I shout in my head at cyclists that I see not wearing helmets.  It's totally silly that I shout in my head at cyclists I see with no lights on.  I never want to go on group rides in Los Angeles because I hear that everyone's taking drugs and doing dangerous things.  I heard someone always leaves in an ambulance.  What kind of ride is that?  Who wants to get together on a weekly basis and say, "hope I'm not the person who leaves in the ambulance on tonight's ride."  Or maybe they say something like, "I'll never have a manuvering error when we're hammering through a densely-populated area at night on drugs and I'm 18-years old."  I'm not that age anymore, so I just can't go on those rides.

In other bike-related news, I tuned up our old bikes to get to the Farmer's Market and the bicycle parking is off Central Ave now not on Caruso Ave.  It's great to be able to lock your bike to a solid rack in the shade right next to the security office with cameras pointed at it.  As my friend pointed out, if I were going to steal a bike, I would steal that new fixie over there.  Well I love the bikes we have, and I hope we have them for a long time more.

Also, the little shop we got Mike's shoes & pedals for the Performance, and seat for the Trek has gone to new ownership.  I love to support local bike shops, because how far do you want to have to walk if you get a flat near your house?  If you don't support your local shop, you'll have to go all the way to a big-box retailer on foot (assuming your bicycle is your main mode of transportation, but who in the US would be in that situation?) Anyway, the new owner calls the shop simply Glendale Cycles and he is very calm and unassuming.  He has a mountain bike, a road bike and a BMX bike for himself.  He's had the shop just a few months now, but don't be afraid to go there if you are ever in the area.  The phone number is 818 937 9440.

1053 words. #madwriting.

BBB update

In this blogosphere I had become sidetracked.  I had to actually split my personality, but still sometimes it overlaps. This post had me writing about science (nanotechnology) as it crosses with cycling.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/nanotechnology/carbon-fiber

In other news, I made a donation to support Bikes Belong on July 21 to honor my girl Heidi Swift, the awesome Rêve tour author and rider.

We've posted our best hikes, bike rides, and runs here. Find courses with maps by region and distance.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/fitness-awareness/available-routes

Two Dog Parks Ride

Met the Bodaceous Bike Babes July 1st at Golden Road Brewery.  Will join a group ride soon, either that or Wolfpack Hustle, or ride my bike to work day again.  Truth: we have to get used to the speed of LA traffic and riding a bike in this town is CRAZY.  Not sure if all the education would be worthwhile if I splatted myself on the pavement.

I left this blog alone for 3 whole months and in its absence, I have been sad and quiet and catching up on my reading and putting on weight.  Is this a good thing?  When does relaxation cross the line into depression?  Well at least I feel better now!  I'm trying to find that balance.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/fitness-awareness/finding-balance

I gotta get back to some kind of dance class.  This is when I was cycling for my commute (May 2011) and then I gave myself ballet classes for a month as a birthday present last year (July 2011) at Riverside Ballet Arts.  This year, I haven't been cycling as much, but I took those ballet classes at Inland Pacific Ballet.
Hoping to get that started again.  My posture will thank me as long as I don't injure my calf again.

Not as weightless as life on a bike would make you seem...

Migrating Content

Compiled Blog from Grad School
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/biographies/grad-school-blues
Enjoy!

#madwriting

The fact of the matter is, I can't sleep.  People used to tell me that I sleep so well because I have a clear conscience.  Maybe tonight I am feeling guilty.

ANTM ~ Cycle 16 ~ Episode 8 (2011)

I'm thinking negatively today.  Instead of thinking of the world as my oyster (and what does that mean anyway?) I'm thinking of it as a garbage dump.  Like a vast wasteland, it doesn't matter if I put forth energy into cleaning it up, it's so massive and polluted that it doesn't make a difference what I do.

Instead of believing that people are altruistic, I'm believing that everyone is selfish and greedy and that's no kind of world that I want to live in.  I'm thinking about long-range missiles and oil-consumption.  I'm thinking about John Edwards and his love-child.  I know it is useless to toss and turn over things I cannot control.

I'm also thinking about myself.  I preach about reducing waste and recycling, yet I drive a gas-powered vehicle 400+ miles per week and drink coffee out of styrofoam containers daily.  Some people think about the world as something we have no control over, like it doesn't matter what we do, entropy of the universe is always increasing.

On a good day, I imagine each person making small changes that add up to a big difference.  I imagine the ideas spreading by education, "teach a person to fish and he eats for a lifetime," something like that.  But then some days hormones take over and I can't do anything but cry and look around for the nearest exit.

My previous post described public/private.  A doublet of talks I attended last week by Uma Chowdhry furthered this line of thought.  I heard that corporations are now allowed facebook pages (with the new timeline feature) which give them the appearance of being equivalent to a person.  Corporations hold certain values and skills, for example DuPont has core skills (polymers, fluorine chemistry) and values (safety, teamwork), but they are not a human-like entity.  Although the buzzwords of sustainability can be found everywhere these days (did you know that 7% of Americans eat fast food daily?) its hard to believe that corporations care anything about solving the world's problems.  Unless you think that making money for shareholders is the most important problem to solve in the world.

Stephen Wolfram ~ Singularity Summit 2011 ~ Rule 30

Given that I watched a talk by Stephen Wolfram about finding a computer program that explains all the complexity of life out of all the programs in the world (and all combinations thereof), I asked if DuPont would move to share non-patented non-published data with the public, such that it could be mined at large, and the answer was NO because the intellectual property of corporations are their bread and butter.  I can understand that.  She said that it was simply too much data, and it would not be likely that anyone would be able to make sense of it.  I simply do not believe that.  I would much rather like to believe Wolfram and the power of possibility.  Hey, I might not be a gifted computer scientist, but I do like searching for patterns in nature.  With the wealth of chemical-biological information tied up in corporations like DuPont and Monsanto, I wonder if we (ALL OF US: industry, government, universities, tinkerers) could better make sense of nature if we had more data.

Therein lies my public/private theme.  Putting a happy face out for the public, while keeping valuable information private, puts a big frowny face on this bitch.

ANTM ~ Cycle 9 ~ Week 6 (2007)

And another thing that keeps me up at night is trash.  Speaking of fast food... I spent Earth Day 2012 at Disneyland in Anaheim.  The amount of waste generated there must be immense.  The amount of electricity to run the park is staggering.  For entertainment?  What's it all about?  I was reading about recycling of aluminum and although Americans are recycling more cans, they are recycling less food packaging.  When you eat at home, you cook the food in re-usable pots/pans and eat the food off of washable ceramic dishes with metal utensils, then store the leftovers in plastic/glass reusable containers.  What about when you eat on the go?  Or outside the home?  Bingo!  Waste!  When are people going to get the message?

If you want to use the words "sustainable" it doesn't follow that you are a corporation who only cares about making money (hello First law of thermodynamics) not everyone can be making money all the time unless money equals entropy (hello Second law of thermodynamics).  But by what law is it true that the universe is constantly expanding and there's no way we can control or understand it?  Is that faith?  And if we are guided entirely by faith, who is to set down the rules?  And if we follow one set of "rules" or dogma, does that mean everyone else is wrong and they should be put to death?

Another talk I went to was Tim Steimle.  I really liked some of what he was saying, but he always has a great way of making me feel really stupid.  As he starts to drift into the lexcion of hard-core spectroscopy, my thoughts wander, and then I remember, "Hey pay attention, this is why you don't get this stuff!"  It's great to be a "forever student."  Like a cycling mentor once told me, "You gotta ride with people who are faster than you.  If you never get dropped, you'll never get faster."

I forgot to mention that the fireworks at Disney brought tears to my eyes.  Twice.  That Tinkerbell was something else.  If wishes and dreams can come true, I hope to feel better tomorrow.  Thank you and goodnight.  

Swimming or Swept away?

Thinking I could maintain weekly posts was ridiculous. The current is too strong.

Omaha skyline and Missouri River

Speaking of which, I heard a very powerful story about a baseball player who tried to swim across the Missouri River while in town for a game against the Royals (something every Omaha-an has thought of doing at some point). Now being married to a man who has a family history of male relatives ending up 6' under due to boating/water-related accidents, the possibility of something going terribly wrong on the water is very real to me at least.  Undertaking this post-doctoral teaching experience was like jumping into the river without knowing anything about how it flows.  I feel like I don't know where my career is taking me, except that I am trying to stay on the "fast track" and it's an exciting ride. I'm just hoping the undertow doesn't overpower my will to fight to stay on top of it.

Since my last post, I've administered a midterm, celebrated Easter with family, and obsessed about getting "caught up" which has very little chance of happening (see prev. paragraph). I actually took a week of quiet time at home. My husband and I took some major steps toward making our little house more liveable. I turned down some opportunities to attend seminars. I just felt like I needed rest. My family and friends started to buzz with worry. Then that worried me. Should I be worried about myself? Is there something going on that I can't see?

P4 activation by group 3 metal arene complexes

23 January, 2012

Wenliang Huang and Paula L. Diaconescu

Chem. Commun., 2012, 48, 2216-2218

This week, I had dinner with two women profs who have survived the tenure process. It was refreshing and inspirational. I also sat on a panel of profs representing different choices regarding graduate school, there were 6 women Ph.D.s on the panel in neuroscience, ecology, microbiology, organic chemistry, physical/biochemistry and analytical/biochemistry (me). It was interesting to be a member of the panel, hearing the other prof's advice, meeting the personnel from career services, and fielding students' questions. With their level of experience, it is even difficult for juniors and seniors to know what to ask, and this is why it is so hard to make a solid (informed) commitment to a graduate program right off the bat.

I also attended NSF Day @ USC, which presented junior faculty and staff with an overview of the federal funding process. The program officers were informative and approachable, encouraging us in every way to submit our ideas to the review process. I'm looking forward to getting some of my/our ideas down on paper and translating that into resources for my research group, which has grown in number to 3 students!

Merging chemistry and biology is a message I shared with my students this week as we talked about the chemistry of life (made up of just a few elements: C, H, N, O, P, S). This is part of the superpowers harnessed by the being known as Swamp Thing. It could either be a living mass occupied by the soul of a former biochemist, or perhaps one could think of it as the research love-child of the Alec Holland and his wife Linda, fictional comic book characters who invented a Bio-Restorative Formula that would solve any nations' food shortage by allowing plants to grow even in a desert. Seriously, this is right up my alley! Abiotic stress and plants' ability to survive it via metabolic reconfiguration is exactly what I study and it was great to share that with my students, along with the cutting edge research we are exposed to via seminars.

AND, we are doing some outreach this week in celebration of Earth Day! I'm looking forward to seeing my students (college age) interact with elementary school students, as they make green cosmetics.
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Chem_p022.shtml
http://pbskids.org/dragonflytv/show/makeup.html
I'm so proud of what this cohort of freshman has learned in Chem 14/15.
Cool pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/55505874@N08/sets/72157629332257440/

¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

Also coming up is the 2012 VEX Robotics World Championship at the Anaheim Convention Center and we're going to Disneyland.  Just like my Smart Car, smaller can be better, as Mus musculus has known for 4 million years, or thereabouts.  I'm looking forward to seeing the innovations of our country's most talented youth.  Go Robotics!

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!