Consider the Alternative

For every consumer choice, there is an alternative "greener" choice.  I have been wanting to write this post for months (at least since September 2012) when I thought I would title the post "A House Divided" because of how my household voted in the election.  But not only that, we have different choices in terms of household goods (soaps) and sources of nutrition (food) and whether or not it is worth sorting out the recycling.  In our house, marriage means compromise and I am so happy to be using a composter and driving a Smart car that I can only do so much for the environment.

Finally riding the Fuji again

But regardless, here are a couple things I/we do to be "greener":

(1) Natural soaps in the bath for hands, face, hair, body = CT Organics

(2) Natural soaps at the sink for hands, dishes = CT Organics, Seventh Generation

(3) Natural soaps as cleaners for tile, tubs, toilets = Pine Sol, Baking Soda

(4) Natural soaps as cleaners for bicycles, countertops = Simple Green

I am attempting to battle against the alternatives:

(1) Bar soaps, body washes, shampoo, conditioner = detergents

(2) Antibacterial hand soaps = detergents

(3) Chemical cleansing = Formula 409, bleach, Comet

(4) Chemical cleansing = Windex

Buying eco-friendly cleaners

You might ask why I would crusade against these alternatives to "greener" choices... I have some sense that the synthetic molecules will eventually build up in the environment.  I worry that our rate of manufacturing, use, and excretion of detergent into the environment far exceeds the rate of its fate in the environment.  I imagine that these molecules persist in the order of 10,000 years, but maybe I'm wrong and I've been meaning to do some more reading on the subject.  Maybe during 2013 sometime.

Another thing I'm doing to be "greener":

(1) Buying local = farmer's markets, homemaking, friends/neighbors exchange, walking to downtown

(2) Living local = "day without a car" at least one day per week

(3) Commuting socially = Metrolink

(4) Commuting sustainably = Bicycle

Taking the train

I am attempting to battle against the alternatives:

(1) Buying supermarket = food out of season, trucked 10,000 miles, swollen for market

(2) Gasoline addiction = cars are status symbols and lifestyles are unrealistic for our children's children

(3) Commuting solo = lonely, stubborn, type-A

(4) Gasoline addiction = cyclists are not esteemed in our culture, safe cycling should be a respectable option!

I feel like I live in a bowl of mixed nuts.  I want all the nuts to taste well together but not every flavor is to every guest's palate.  I'm meeting lots of new people these days with classes starting up again.  It's fun.  Regardless of that I feel like a hypocrite up in front of a classroom of young idealistic people preaching about carbon dioxide emissions while driving on the freeway 80 minutes per day.

New Year's Resolutions

Yesterday I did some #madpainting, actually I painted all day and got totally exhausted and fell asleep early.  But then here I am up early in the am.  I am having a hard time putting pen to paper these days so I thought maybe putting electronic keyboard to work would flow more smoothly.

I feel like I'm not ready for the new year even though I compiled a summation of my awesomest status updates from 2012, I do not feel like it's 2013 yet.  I remember taking down 2012's calendar and posting up the new 2013 calendar and thinking, wow I didn't think I would live to see this year in history.  I had been determined to live such an amazingly controversial and dangerous life so as not to live this long.  Hey history! I've been trying to distinguish myself all these years and I'm still just a thread in the great quilt of life.

I'm not really into resolutions, but I do reevaluate my lifestyle on a quarterly or semesterly basis, one of the perks of being in academia.  You clear the decks and set a new standard for yourself and your students for the new class.  Never fails by the end of the semester everyone is back to their habits.  So why do we do it? Well this semester I resolved to commute by bicycle 2 out of 5 days in the week.  This is due to a calculation that I ran, assuming I saved or "stored" carbon credits for being a cyclist while in graduate school.  Well, now I have already used them all up by driving back and forth to school (37 miles each way).  So I will attempt to involve a bicycle in the means by which I get from my house to my office.

Got to spend a good deal of time with family this year.  In that sense our harvest has been abundant.  Our garden right now is paused with the exception of a wildflower mix that is going crazy!  The student garden is in ??? shape.  I visited it on Friday before winter break and the squash leaves had frost damage.  I guess winter is here.  On Christmas morning we ate squash from the garden.  For some reason this was important to me.  I also learned that just because it's called field corn doesn't mean you can't eat it.

Finals Week

It's hard not to get caught up in the nostalgia of the season, not to mention planning hubs 40th b-day party and a monster road trip for Christmas.  Made a calendar of my dogs last night.  The momentum of the season and all the cookies and candy are supposed to give me enough energy to finish up all the gifts, bake all the cakes, sing all the songs, grade all the labs, tally all the points, drive all the miles, well it will all be worth it, and it should be no surprise that we will get there, we've done it before, right Mel?

Melle (in 2004)

This semester has been most epic.  It's just like any kind of training, you have got to keep taking yourself to another level.  When I searched for the word on my mind I got: HigherEdJobs, Higher education, and the following song: Taio Cruz - Higher ft. Kylie Minogue - YouTube (2010).  The songs that I had in my mind were:
Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder (1973)
I wanna take you Higher - Sly and the Family Stone (1969)
Both of which are much more amazing than the modern chart topper.

But why is it called higher education?  Higher than what?  Why do we elevate ourselves?  How?  We solve relevant problems and encourage others to join us in the endeavor.  Why not integrate problem-based learning earlier in the curriculum?  Wonder if there are any out there for Chem 15.  Wouldn't some kind of environmental analysis for Earth Day be a great activity?  I'm also needing time to plan for the invitation of Southern California's undergraduate researchers in Chemistry and Biochemistry to Keck for a symposium.  Will there be prizes awarded?  If so, what should they be?  Will we have a keynote speaker for the students to interact with throughout the day?  Whew!  We have to make an announcement soon.

Thankful

I am definitely thankful to have the classroom experience I am able to at my school.  My classrooms are lively and fun with a sense of security and organizational structure.  Students freely ask questions and listen actively during lectures and discussions.  I am a no-nonsense lab instructor who can work with students' musical tastes.  Safety is my #1 concern in the laboratory, other than that I appreciate students engaging freely with new equipment and techniques.  Often found wearing bright colors and personal protective equipment (PPE), I am easy to spot in a classroom.  A brief pre-lab discussion on the basic purpose of the experiment, the new procedures, waste disposal, and safety hazards specific to the lab is always provided at the beginning of the lab period, after pre-lab assignments have been turned in by students.  The teaching assistant, an undergraduate student, is asked if they have any general feedback for students before it's "goggles on" and everyone is encouraged to begin the procedure immediately.  Throughout the lab I am doing rounds like a lifeguard and enabling small-talk of a scientific nature by engaging with students about classes and extracurricular activities and how those may integrate with their experience of chemistry; how chemistry relates to other aspects of their lives.  It's been really fun working with teaching assistants, supplemental instruction leaders, and graders to bring the students a peer-peer interaction.



I am thankful for my family.  Although I have been spending most of my energy toward my education, I still appreciate the strength I have gained by my strong roots.  I have had many strong influences in my life that gave me the ideas I currently hold.  I appreciate the efforts they put into pushing me forward in my own understanding of the behavior of atoms.  I am still working towards completely crossing myself with my husband, but we're still looking to put down roots ourselves and just working towards the ultimate goal of a very green lifestyle.  I'm thankful for what we're able to do right now, farming in our yard and at school.  Small yield but enough for a small household.  I am crossing every muscle fiber in my body, hoping we can collapse our wavefunction to a much smaller box.  Right now we are delocalized over a large area and it is costing us too much energy.  Our carbon footprint is huge in comparison to where I would prefer to be.  Mathematically I know that if each and every person would work towards using less energy and consuming/producing more locally, we could all live more in harmony by connecting with each other in our communities.


Find more photos like this on My Green Riverside


I am thankful for friends.  These past few months have brought me closer to my friends and I appreciate their support and coaching during this transitional time for us.  The sun is coming up in my neighborhood right now and it's a beautiful sight.  The sight of the inside of our house is revolting since we have not put much energy into fighting the entropy lately, but so thankful for a long weekend to recover my momentum.  I have to set my own pace, that's the lesson I learned from long distance races.  It's never what's best for you if you run at someone else's pace.  But that's what's so fun, when you run a race with a friend, you get compromise and what really hits home as far as fitness is challenging the body to do something different.  If you do the same old workout, you will keep the same body.  If you want to change your body, you cross train!  So thankful for the advice of colleagues and friends at this time, for cross-training me.




I know I have too much going on when the number of tags exceeds the limit: career, ceiling tuesdays, century, community, distance, education, fall, family, goals, green, interdisciplinary, love, meditation, motivation, mountains, nutrition, ocean, plants, positive, running, Santa Barbara, science, shoes, teamwork!

Color Run ~ Race Report

If you have never done a Color Run, I can definitely recommend it.  The one I attended was EPIC.  There were 22,000 people traveling in cooperation, all wearing white.  There were hundreds of volunteers in goggles baptizing us in all the colors of the rainbow.  Then at the end everyone huddles together and sprays their color packet into the air and cheers!  There's no timing and no winning.  It's organized in waves.

The course I ran with my friend went around Qualcomm stadium in San Diego.  We went halfway around the stadium and then came back the same way we ran, since we started in the second wave, we saw the first man and first woman, running just as fast as they pleased!  There was a drumline from the YMCA that made me totally cry.  It reminded me of so many old high school memories, when life was simpler and all I needed was a beat and space to dance with my friends!

Life has been more than hectic lately.  The job search is moving forward.  I took my Nano Fashion Show on the road down to San Diego to carry out a mission of outreach and celebrating chemistry!  I stayed at the historic Sofia Hotel, a Neo Gothic architectural gem built in 1926 and operated during prohibition as the Pickwick Hotel.  En suite bathroom!  Very nice staff.  I was driving our 2003 Honda Civic which we fondly refer to as "the battlecat" and the valet guys were doing rock/paper/scissors for who would have to park it.

Monday, August 13, 2012, 7:28:56 PM

I missed the colors down there, there's a reason it's called The Jewel (La Jolla).  We had a great LOOOOOOOONG walk along the coast.  It's so soothing, we sat down on a bench and watched the waves come in for a long time.  Very restorative.  I've always loved the multiculturalism reflected there.  We walked about 3.5 miles after having run 3.2 miles.  That's what I love about San Diego, it supports outdoor activities.  Don't worry I was wearing sunscreen!

Back here in Glendale, not much is going on.  My squash is still flowering in the backyard but my front garden is suffering, with the exception of the succulent clones from Riverside.  And the spider plants.  I had intended to plant radish, chard, and more squash.  The pots are ready but the weather has been so crazy lately.  Dear husband bought me a Farmer's Almanac so perhaps I will find answers to life's persistent questions there.  Kind of like a CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics for gardeners.

The corn at my Student Garden is almost as tall as me!  You can see it in parts of this video.  An article is also here.  I have really been letting my colors fly lately in creative and scholarly activity.  Preparing a lab "Wish List" is so exciting, I had no idea this big step in my life would come so soon.  It's funny when you are young it seems your future can't come fast enough.  Then when life hits you with a big step, it seems like I'm unprepared for the magnitude of it.

Recovery Food

Since this was (and still is) my original place to vent all the randomness inside my mind, I will return to it for some #madwriting now.  I'm enjoying an apple cider cause it's fallish-weather and we're out of coffee.  I'm planning a little service outreach project with my general chemistry students.  They seem enthusiastic about it.  It's a way to bring in other types of people to get excited about how science can impact our lives.  I've been putting off announcing it because I can't get a hold of the person at the mall where I want to hold the event.  I've left countless voicemails but I have not yet visited the office to argue my side.  A friend says I may instead be running up against apathy in which case I want to proceed with the event.  I feel like any small space would work and I would hope to create a learning environment for both the students and the audience.  So I guess I kind of decided that I would bike to work on Monday since I am not teaching and arrange this show with the Montclair Plaza.  Where will it be and can we pass out fliers?  Is there a noise limitation?  What is the maximum number of people we can accumulate before fire codes are violated?

I labeled this post Recovery because we are now recovering from some horrible germs that were exchanged starting at the beginning of when students arrived on campus and worsening until the first round of midterms.  Maybe since we're on fall break now everyone will come back relaxed and healthy.  Or maybe carrying more germs.  In any case, I wanted to post about a common household chemical HClO also known as bleach.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach
I was so proud of myself for finally getting around to bleaching some containers for fall planting, then I heard that you don't want to plant winter crops until November 1st in Southern California because it tends to have heat spikes that cause the plants to bolt prematurely.  This is what I was hoping for with my late fall planting in the Student Garden, which is blooming quite nicely.  For photos of that project, see here: http://mygreenriverside.ning.com/profile/KaylaAKaiser

Rather than acting like I know everything about chemistry, I will admit I went to read the Wikipedia article.  I think a wiki is an interesting thing because it's natural like a tree that has branches and it grows along with the group (community) that curate it.  I've been involving students in building Wikis for three semesters now.  It's only a tiny bit of coding that has to work for the generation of new pages, but I think the students should delve into that type of knowledge early on.

Since this is a cycling blog, our latest cycling adventure led us to need disinfectant in a large bottle and tape and gauze and wrap for several weeks.  Amazingly enough, the patient (who shall remain nameless but was not me) has recovered from a bicycle accident.  Luckily we were close to home at the time and there were three of us so we managed to get everyone a beer and then a way home.

This also got me thinking about the household uses of peroxide, another chemical important for our modern standards of living.  As an oxidizing agent, it destroys molecules that are colored.  When used as an antimicrobial, it destroys a wide-range of pathogens.  What potential we have in our household!  Well I guess I'm out of time and I do feel more relaxed now.  Sometimes I hold so many stories in my head and I have such big plans that it really crunches my brain.  Although I am not getting much perspective (not cycling or running or walking or swimming long distances) I am doing more yoga.  Maybe the time is ripe to focus inward.  I'm still obsessed with the Three Sisters.  It's so fall-y and comforting.  I've been trying to eat Squash, Corn and Beans together or separately throughout the day.  Pumpkins are plentiful and Corn is at the Farmer's Market.  Beans (green) or any type from a can have been in our diet these past few weeks.  Supposedly nutritionally balanced without meat.  We've been adding different onions, kale, dill, sage, all manner of spices, peppers, and cheese.  We've been so sick and tired that we've been eating cooked food just to stay alive.  Almost the consistency of baby food.  But it's comforting and sustaining.  And in some cases locally grown.  I'm looking forward to the Color Run, the Mission Inn Run, and possibly a trip to Santa Barbara.  Then we will give thanks!

What's your recovery food?

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.