So my friends are gone now. The best part of the weekend had to be when I woke up randomly from where I was sleeping on the inflatable mattress with Joanna and I looked over and saw Justin asleep in my bed with my stuffed loaf of bread in his arms. It's just so... squishy and lovable!


In other news, how do Enrique Iglesias be so fine?????

You call me on the phone
I act like nothing's going on
We're driving in my car
I pretend that you don't turn me on

In other other news, everyone seemed to like my presentation on the nucleation of bubbles in magma chambers leading up to explosive eruptions. You see, when you boil water, there are three ways that it can start turning into a gas. First, it can just start evaporating off the top, coming up as steam. This only happens at the interface between the water and the steam.

Second, bubbles can form homogeneously throughout the water. This is difficult because not only must the water gain enough energy to turn to steam, it must also gain enough energy and pressure so that the bubble can push and hold back the water once it is formed (it has to overcome the viscosity of the water in order to push it). Thus water has to be at way more than 100 C in order for this to be able to happen. They call that "overheated" or "superheated".

The third way is that bubbles can be nucleated inside tiny cavities in the container (or in anything floating in the liquid) that are due to imperfections in the surface. This is because the pressure and temperature inside the cavity may not be the same as in the liquid in general, allowing a bubble to form without as much energy required. Eventually it grows enough in this environment and fills up with enough gas that it can escape the cavity into the liquid. As it rises, the pressure decreases and the bubble grows, finally reaching the surface and popping. So you'll increase the size and number of the bubbles if you decrease the pressure confining them (see: popping the cork on a champagne bottle).

Once you have a lot of bubbles, the way to make the mixture explosive is to let all the bubbles coalesce, so that instead of having some bubbles floating in a liquid, you suddenly have liquid suspended in a gas. Sometimes you'll get really strong bubbles and they'll be touching but they won't coalesce. You can speed along the process if you want by reducing the surface tension on the bubbles. Organics are very good at doing this in water. For example, have you noticed that when you're cooking pasta, at one point the pasta, which was nicely boiling just a minute ago, suddenly goes crazy and boils like nuts gets frothy and spills all over the stove? That happens because the organic molecules in the pasta have been leaching from the pasta and they reduce both the surface tension of the bubbles, as well as the surface tension at the surface of the water, allowing all of the bubbles to break through it and froth over. An ingredient with a similar effect is present strongly in Mentos, which means that if you drop one into a beverage with a lot of bubbles waiting to be exsolved, it will cause them to exsolve and coalesce... and become explosive. See: YouTube videos.

When they make champagne flutes, they blow the glass for the flute and then they pull it off at the base of the bowl. This means that most of the imperfections will be in the center of the bowl at the bottom. So when you pour champagne in the class, the bubbles nucleate there at the bottom and tend to spiral upwards to the top. They actually care to construct these flutes in this way so that you'll get a classy bubble pattern when you pour your champagne.

So what am I saying? If you have a flawless pot then it will take a lot longer for your water to boil? If something takes a long time to boil, it's going to be much hotter when it finally does? If you're very flawed and under pressure you're more likely to explode?

Nah.

I think I'm saying that it's not your fault that every time you make spaghetti your pot boils over.

And also that sometimes having a few flaws here and there can make for a gorgeous glass of champagne.

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WAAaaHH I was making hot fudge and I made it way too hot and then I accidentally touched the side with my finger and then my finger had burning hot fudge on it and I couldn't get it off because hot fudge is so sticky and viscous and so I finally washed it off and OWWWWW that's hot and now I have a gigantic blister on my finger the size of a roly-poly. ooooowwwwww

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Here I am, it's 10:09pm on a Thursday, during the summer, and I'm at work. I was at this 80s party but there was nothing really to do and then my friend needed a ride to the train station otherwise she wasn't going to be able to get home tonight so I drove her there. Hopefully she made the train, it hadn't occurred to me that my car's clock is a little slow. She was all glammed out, with a fuchsia sequin dress with these gold sequin criss-cross holes on the sleeves. She has really curly hair so she blow-dryed it and it was biiig. She said that she'd gotten the dress from her mom, who had worn it to a formal sometime in the 80s. Her mom was getting rid of some stuff and she asked Leah if she wanted to have any of it. Leah was like, "wow, I definitely need this for this party I'm going to in a couple of weeks". and her mom looked really hurt and said, "You want to wear my dress to a costume party?" and she was like, "hahaha, mom, let it go... just let the 80s go."

Anyway, because she was late, she had to wear this ensemble HOME... like... she was going to have to look like an 80s glam rocker all the way home on the 30 minute train ride. HAHaHA.

But I'm here because I have all this work to do, sort of. I have to make a power-point presentation about bubbles in magma, and how they make their way to the surface, and how that played a pretty big role in determining whether or not the eruption is violently explosive or not. It's pretty interesting, but for once I'll spare you and not go into it now. I also have to write a little ditty about how my last semester went, which should go pretty quickly if I ever just sit down and do it. Maybe I'll just do this all tomorrow.... but I have to do it before lunch because that's when Justin comes and I have to pick him up at the train station (and it's all due in the afternoon). And I have to clean the floor, because when Chris did it last week (for the first time EVER... he had to borrow all my supplies and ask me how to do every step), he left all of the sticky cleaner on it and every fleck of dirt known to man just stuck to it.

Forget this noise, I'll do tah-mah-row. oooo ::shiver:: that's my worst fear... picking up the Rhode Island accent. But... I can't help it... it's happening already.

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During the Planetary Science conference this year, one of the main headline makers, one of a pair of scientists who rocked the community by discovering that the gullies in the craters on Mars may have had running water in the last six years, was unable to come to Houston to present his results because he had the flu.

Another presenter couldn't be there because his aunt was dying.

And as I sat there in my chair near the back of the auditorium, my notebook covered in doodles and sleep heavy in my eyes, it occurred to me that no matter how famous you are, no matter how many Phd's you have, no matter how many people have to kowtow to you on a daily basis, your carnal self, your body, still has the ability to trump every other concern. You are still a veritable slave to your health. Like that quote that I put in here before from Marcel Proust:

"It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body."

And wrapped up in our mortality is the fact that you can gain as much knowledge as you would like during a lifetime, and stack up degrees all you want, but when you die, all of that work that you put in learning all of that stuff, is gone. For nothing. I wonder if parents feel that way, if they have the terrible misfortune of losing a child. What if they've just put this kid through college, through law school maybe. All that money, all that time and effort, 24 or so years of worrying about the little guy, building him into a balanced, capable, employable human being so that he's ready to take control of the rest of his life and in an instant it's all for nothing. Of course that isn't true. Think of all the lives you've touched, just in the short years you've already lived? Sometimes I think the noblest ambition is to seek to be at least a mostly happy memory in the minds of all you've met. Everybody, even random people on the street or in the bank or at a restaurant. You can't make everyone happy, usually if you try to do that you eventually make the people you love much more sad. That's why it's a 'mostly'. Because if you make someone sad temporarily because you love them and it's best, they will eventually see that. As far as all this knowledge that you're gaining... perhaps if you have long been a professor and you've published dozens of papers, then all that knowledge was for something and it will live on. But most of the time we aren't professors who publish in the field or industry innovators who release a world-changing product on the market. All of that knowledge seems to serve to make us money so that we can get by. Just get by. Is that enough? I think in the end, the most important thing that you can do with knowledge is pass it on to someone else, keep passing it on, generation after generation, so that it will never die.

Can you imagine how much faster our civilization might have progressed if instead of dying, we lived for hundreds of years and just piled knowledge on top of knowledge? As it is it's like trying to get out into the ocean, with every five steps you take forward you are washed four steps back. However, there is that old saying... "Science progresses one funeral at a time."... that is, you sometimes need people to die so that other people with new ideas can explore them without being crushed by The Institution. This is why children are important, even if at first they don't seem to be a financially sound endeavor. You'll never make your money back on them, that's for sure, but money is another one of those things that you just can't take with you when you go.

---

In other news, I've been playing some crazy soccer, I might join the rugby team, and I am now one of two department representatives to the Graduate School Council. ::the EVIL coun-cil!::

mood: sore
watching: About a Boy
listening to: Keith Urban- Live to Love Another Day

Summers come and summers go, and I keep walking down this road
It's all right, it's ok
I'll live to love another day.

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The USA is the world's leading producer of:

Almonds
Blueberries
Cow Milk, Whole, Fresh
Cranberries
Grapefruit and Pomelos
Green Corn (Maize)
Indigenous Cattle Meat
Indigenous Chicken Meat
Indigenous Pigmeat
Indigenous Turkey Meat
Maize
Nuts
Sorghum
Soybeans
Strawberries
String Beans

The US is the second-highest producers of:

Apples
Cherries
Game Meat
Hen Eggs
Honey
Hops
Lettuce
Mushrooms
Oranges
Pistachios
Spinach
Tomatoes
Walnuts

The USA is the world's third-highest producer of:

Asparagus
Avocados
Carrots
Grapes
Hazelnuts
Linseed
Oats
Onions, Dry
Peaches and Nectarines
Pears
Peas, Green
Raspberries
Safflower Seed
Sugar Beets
Wheat

And the USA is the world's fourth-largest producer of:

Chillies&Peppers, Green
Garlic
Groundnuts in Shell
Pumpkins, Squash, Gourds
Tobacco Leaves
Watermelons

France, in comparison, is the world's leader in only duck meat (edging out Malaysia!) and sugar beets, while Germany is the world's leader in hops.

So who then is edging out the US in apples and many of the commodities where they are listed second? Not Russia, whose world-leading products are sunflower seeds and gooseberries... but of course China, who is kicking the tail of the US in sesame seeds, groundnuts, and reelable cocoons.

Take a look for yourself!

You may be interested to know that Burkina Faso is the world's second largest producer of "Indigenous Ass Meat"

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Today the Secret Adventure Club went on its second official adventure. This time it was to Purgatory Chasm, a crazy jumble of rocks and trickling waterfalls and mossy banks in southern Massachusetts just a little ways over the border. I went with Thalweg of the Admirality Islands and her boyfriend Graham. We had giant cookies and chocolate soymilk for dinner and then we were off. We found some pretty sweet KAl2(Si3Al)O10(OH)2 (muscovite) and some orthoclase, and a lot of smoky quartz that came in great veins the girth of an elephant's leg. Muscovite always comes in very thin sheets. It's named after the Muscovy region in Russia where it is very common. There the muscovite grows in sheets so large that townspeople would pull it out of the ground and use it for windows back in the olden-days before everyone had glass.
We did a lot of climbing even though I had crappy shoes on. I should learn to be more prepared, because you never know when adventure will strike. Graham climbed the Devil's Pitchfork, and we sang from the Devil's Pulpit, and Teresa sat where the Devil had Shat, but eventually it dried.

Then we spent some time pretending we were that kind of dinosaur like in Jurassic Park when he's purring and the guy comes close and then he opens his hood and hisses and spits in the guy's face!!! If only Justin Clark knew how far his legacy has spread. Of course the most famous time must surely be when we actually accidentally spit in some girl's face when Ranor and I were wearing capes and running around the second floor of smiley. But she still thought it was funny.

Then it was necessary to run around like raptors and ambush Graham from the sides while he was distracted looking forward (classic raptor technique! He should have seen that coming!). A raptor fight ensued between Graham and Teresa, and I was impressed, because any 32-year-old guy whose first thesis draft is due on Thursday and who can still come out in the middle of the forest and run around like a velociraptor is surely a man to be admired. In the end the night grew dark and Graham led us across a river on a slippery log, and when we had climbed the rocks and swung on some swings and imitated Steve Irwin to our hearts' content, we piled in Graham's station wagon and went on home, our adventure and the daylight exhausted for the time being.

But NEXT TIME..........!

I had written Sam telling him that once again for the zillionth time I can't come to the bar for beer and wings. I told him that I was going adventuring to a place very far away and that I probably would not be back in time.

He wrote back simply,

"What's his name?"

What can I answer..... Thalweg and Graham?

THE DEVIL, PERHAPS?!!?!?!!?

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::Edit:: "He" and "She" aka "They" are two of the 8, sometimes 9 people who live in my house. :::


So we went to the movie Bridge to Terabithia. Don't read if you don't want to hear about the ending.

"We" as in me, Him, Her, and Her Friend. He didn't have any cash, as usual (last we he and I went to see The Last King of Scotland and I had to pay because they don't take credit cards--- it's ok because he bought me that bottle of Tylenol the one time.) Don't see that movie, by the way, the Last King of Scotland. I highly recommend never seeing it. You pretty much hated all of the main characters and you sat there waiting for them to do one thing (just one thing!) that would make you like them or be sympathetic towards them, and it just never happened. Instead, it got worse. So instead you sat there waiting, and hoping, for them to meet the deaths they so richly deserved.

SO anyway, I didn't have any cash either, after last week, so I paid in dimes. She had enough for Herself, but not enough for him so he had to borrow money from her visiting out-of-town friend. Awk. Ward. Her friend was totally cool though, we got to talking.

He led us to a row where we were sitting in front of a bunch of little kids. Awesome. The father clucked his annoyance because we were 15 minutes late for the movie (NOT my fault) and we we're all taller than his kids. I immediately slouched down in my chair so the kid could see over me and he rewarded me by smacking the top of my head. I was just like wtf? And I slouched lower, for the whole movie. ow. You couldn't even see my head above the seat.

Just as the movie was reaching one of its most important parts (I've already read the book, you see, that's why I didn't even want to see the movie in the first place, but I didn't think I could accurately explain why I didn't want to see it without giving it away, so I decided to go see it anyway since it's only two bucks) He and She decide that they're going to leave, and they make a commotion getting out of their seats in front of the children. The Friend leans over to me and says, "They said that they're going for a walk." Despite the fact that this girl is friends with Her, I can't help but exclaim, "WHAT?!?!" But I recall that he has often told me that they've skipped large parts of the movies because they go and talk, and sometimes they never return at all. She doesn't like movies that are unpleasant in any way, which sometimes precipitates these "walks". So they leave. Pretty much everything important that happens in the movie happens during this time. Like, including Terabithia being awesome and then the freaking girl DROWNING IN THE RIVER. I told you I was going to ruin it, don't come crying to me. Then the great emotional parts of the movie go by, I mean, it's BtT, come on, I cried when I read it in 6th grade, I cried again tonight (O how I wept!). Then They come back. Once again a ruckus is raised getting them back into their seats, and He says that he almost didn't recognize our row because I looked like a twelve-year-old. what??? What happened? She asks. What happened? What HAPPENED? WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 30 MINUTES THAT YOU WERE GONE FROM THE MOVIE THEATRE!?!?! You've got to be kidding me! "Did she die!?!?!" She exclaims. He chimes in, "Is she DEAD?!" The Friend answers yes, she is dead. They watch the last five minutes when her family moves out, and then the boy builds the Bridge to Terabithia at the end. When I look over, She is crying, her tears brimmed over with emotion. WTF???? How can you be crying? You just saw a little girl meet a little boy, and then at first not like each other, and then become friends, and then you went for a THIRTY MINUTE WALK, and then someone TOLD YOU that eventually she dies, and you see her parents move out, and then you're CRYING?!!?

They were full of praises for the movie after it was over, but He said that he didn't care for it much because "fantasy stories are really boring. I mean, some fantasy is good, like Lord of the Rings, but really most fantasy is so boring."

OK, first of all, I have to disagree with him. Fantasy is not boring, thank you very much, but ok, I guess that's a matter of opinion. SECONDLY, THIS WAS NOT A FANTASY MOVIE, AND IF HE HAD ACTUALLY WATCHED IT, HE WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

But then we went home, and he told us all again the rollicking good story about how he saw this young girl get grabbed by some hoodlum from the side of the street near her broken down car while she was talking on her cell phone and then he saw them fighting and she kicks him in the nuts and then he punches her in the face and then she gets thrown into an SUV, and how he bravely drove like hell away from there and rounded up some Providence Police from the Dunkin' Donuts. Ok, so I made up the Dunkin Donuts part, but it's probably true. He said that she was a nice pretty, young girl but you never know, maybe she was a prostitute and that guy was her pimp, and so why should he intervene? But he did tell them that the SUV had Georgia plates. What a hero.

Earlier today we were standing around talking about my friend who used to be kind of anorexic although I still don't know if she admits that. One day she and I were talking about our "spare tires", or that little bleb of fat girls have right above their pants from their belly button, and she told me that even at her very skinniest, she still never got rid of it. So she told me that it was pointless to worry about it, because it was just going to be there and you had to accept your body the way it was. At this point in my story He got very thoughtful looking and said, "Actually, if I took her into one of my plastic surgeon friends, it would just be like snip, snip, and then it would be gone! And it would never come back."

I think he missed the entire point of my story.

Anyway, in case you were wondering: Bridge To Terabithia: Very good. But sad. And I only paid $2, so there you go. And I think it should be spelled "Tarabythia" and I think it should be pronounced "Tera-BEETH-ia" instead of "Tera-BITH-ia".

I'm sooo getting new roommates this fall.

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Yesterday I got a package from my old high school boyfriend, Brett. He's teaching English in Japan right now with i-jet. There was no card, simply this:



Rlook! A roaf-u of ba-readah! Kawaii! ^-^;;

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