Chemistry in the Rain

Friday was spent standing on a pebbly spit beside a stream in the middle of the woods surrounded by twenty five high school seniors (17 years old). The kids were testing the stream water for: fecal choliform (eewwww!), organophosphates, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, two temperature readings, turbidity (cloudiness) & some other stuff. The park ranger says the stream is the standard for purity in our area because it flows through both the park and the military base beside it, which means the land around it is protected from development & thus protected from pollution. The weather was chilly and drizzly, made worse by pouring rain the all the previous day.

Fortunately I was dressed warmly and I made sure I stayed dry so it was fun. I love the woods. One of the boys nearly fell face first off of a log into the water trying to take the upstream temperature. I have to be honest here and say I laughed, although it would've been a serious issue if he'd actually fallen in. Stupid kids are always afraid of not looking the part or whatever, so only one of them was dressed warmly- the rest of them were in t shirts or other thin shirts and sweatshirts, no warm jackets or (heaven forbid) raincoats. No hiking boots or wellies for their feet, sneakers all around. They all spent the entire morning whining about how cold it was & how they couldn't wait to get back to school because it was warm!!

Luckily the teachers ignored this & wandered around making sure they finished all of their experiments. She only had one parent chaperone (ie: me), so she had to ask one of the administrators to accompany us so she didn't have to cancel the whole thing. The park doesn't have the funding to support this type of event, so a nonprofit called The Alice Ferguson Foundation steps in to provide an extra resource teacher/biologist and all of the equipment the kids used for the experiment. It was really neat watching her lead the kids along to recognizing that all of the development they enjoy can damage the environment and thus the water they drink, bathe in and cook with.

It was a relaxing if chilly way to spend the morning watching the kids play in the water & realize that in science, as in many other things, one must follow the directions to get optimal results or else start all over. LOL :)

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Yeah, nothing new happening here re: regular 'pleasure' reading. I'm behind the scheduled readings for my Tuesday class. The Monday night class textbook won't be in until this morning, despite the fact that tonight's the second class meeting. :( Plus I've a H1N1 research project due Thursday, but this time I'm a little ahead of the curve and have actually completed more than half of the assignment already.

Tomorrow ma chere maman will visit most of the day so I'd like to be ahead of the curve if possible so I can relax and enjoy her company. :)

Off to the mines. Have a great day! :)

OMG- where did the time go?!

My first two weeks of classes has flown by! I can't believe it. Mostly because I also had to start prepping the kids for the beginning of school and it was our anniversary. My head is spinning so much I can barely remember my name. The kids are off for the first day tomorrow & our anniversary was this past Saturday. #22! Can you believe it? Neither can I.

That leaves school. It's intimidating to enter a classroom & realize that most of your classmates are young enough to be your children. :( Luckily for me the prof is a very genteel Southern lady who gives off what I call "nun vibes"-gentle and sweet looking on the outside yet very no nonsense when you scratch the surface. She wore the neatest raspberry colored suit the first day of class. Anyhow. The Husband bet me I couldn't keep my mouth shut even on the first day- I barely made it. What can I say? Idiots annoy me & teenagers who think they have the answer to it all are especially annoying. *shrug* I didn't have to whip out the mom voice until the second class, so I guess I won the bet. Problem is we can't remember the stakes. LOL :)

As for books I'm way way behind. What else is new? I have three books for the international relations class, one of which I'm supposed to have finished by Sept. 15th. Haven't read more than 75 pages out of 600+. LOL :) I can catch up pretty quickly- it's a Thomas Friedman, so it should go pretty fast once I really get going. Anime Queen somehow has me hooked on Fruits Basket. Why and how I really don't know, but FB has totally caught my attention. How much of a contest can there be, honestly- between T. Friedman and Fruits Basket?

So there you have it. My first two weeks of class, getting the kids prepped for school, our anniversary & remembering I have homework now. Very calm & quiet life I lead, huh?

New Adventures

I've signed up for two classes at our local community college. I took a computer class in the spring of '08 and I didn't do very well trying to juggle home and work and school along with a long commute. I've been out of the Supermom game for a while and it took a lot out of me. I enjoyed it though. So this time I'm taking international relations and 'culture and geography'. Should be interesting I think.

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