Camping Adventure #1

Soap- It's Amazing! no joke

After a frustrating few weeks with no luck on the job front -despite close to 20 applications- I finally might have a possible summer job as a pollinator for corn research through Ag. Reliant. Although working outside in a field six days a week in July and August isn't necessarily going to be fun or easy, at least it is better than nothing, and I'll be busy instead of dusting shelves or waiting to assist customers- hey, and I can't forget mentioning the farmer tan! Looking at it now, I am actually really lucky that I didn't get a job while in my organic chem. class. Although it is elementary organic chemistry instead of regular organic chem., it has been a challenge especially since it is only an eight-week summer and at a faster speed with four to five chapters in two weeks. Today we had our second test, and there are only four more weeks to go. To celebrate, I am going camping this weekend with one of my roommates and her material engineer friends.

In the chem. lab we have twice a week, I think I am holding the record for the most breaks and spills, but there might be one other guy who is trying to catch up. I sure do write and awesome lab report, though! Some of the labs we have included isolating caffeine from beverages to see which one had the most per volume, hydrogenating vegetable oil into margarine, and turning corn oil into soap. I guess our soap was pretty basic on the pH level, so washing with it could have been a little painful for the skin. Hey, who said beauty was pain free? Anyway, I think I'll leave saponification up to the professional soap makers, but I did find the chemistry behind making soap and how it works to be really interesting. Who knew so much happened with that little bar of soap?

If you are interested, here are some links about soap that we used to aid our lab reports. I know some of you are teachers or interested in science and might find it helpful.

www.cleaning101.com/cleaning/history
www.pharmj.com/editorial/19991218/articles/soap.html

VERB: It's What You Do!

This was my first Dam to Dam race. Nicole, Robert, and I headed down to Des Moines Friday for registration. To tell you the truth, I was more worried about driving downtown with a manual transmission than running the 20K, but luckily the "Ladybug" didn't have any problems- or I should say me, the driver, didn't have any problems and we made it successfully to Robert and Lori Cramer's place for the night. The next morning, Mom drove us up to Saylorville Dam at 5:30. There were almost 7000 runners total just for the 20K with ages from 11 to over 70. This isn't including the several thousand runners for the 5K later that day. During the race, I felt like a lot of people were passing me which is true- several hundred women alone. However, there were quite a few behind me, too. I was 644th out of 3167 women and 26th in my age group.

I recently joined VERB, a community organization to help tweens get involved in physical activities, and went to the first event of the summer. It isn't very organized right now because there is a transition between the previous head of the program and the new one. Because of this, there is a lot of mis-communication, and I was the only one able to actually go to the hiking event even though I had never gone before and had never been to the park. After a dash to get the paperwork and supplies I would need along with driving out to the park after getting a little lost, it turned out that none of the 300 registered kids had shown up. Since I was already there and it was really nice out, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and went hiking with the two hiking guides from the Story County Conservation Board and enjoyed a nice traipse through the trees and mud. If VERB doesn't work out, at least I was able to get a cool shirt through the deal and was put into contact with Story County Conservation.