zygomatics

The adult recommended intake for vitamin B12 is very low. Vitamin B12 comes primarily from animal-derived foods. A diet containing dairy products or eggs provides adequate vitamin B12. Fortified foods, such as some brands of cereal, nutritional yeast, soymilk, or soy analogs, are good non-animal sources. Check labels to discover other products that are fortified with vitamin B12. Tempeh and sea vegetables are not a reliable source of vitamin B12. To be on the safe side, if you do not consume dairy products, eggs, or fortified foods regularly, you should take a non-animal derived supplement.

http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/nutshell.htm

HA LAURA!

Time wounds all heals.
-John Lennon

deltoid tuberosity

Life has stolen all of my potential energy lately and I like it. School has been really time consuming and should probably be given even more time, and I have been more physically active so I pretty much want to sleep all the time. I ran for a long time yesterday and felt like I could have kept going for a while so I'm thinking this whole ambitious marathon training might be possible, we'll see how I feel when school starts again...

I also have been trying to develop my relationship with my parents. I know I take advantage of them everyday and I am really lucky to be given something that people try and find all of their lives so I want to appreciate it more. At first talking to my mom was kind of hard, we often talked about politics because I have a bad habit of making fun of her for watching Fox News and those conversations never seem to go very well. Lately it has been getting better. Today I mentioned to her that after I graduate I am considering the Peace Corps and she didn't spaz like I thought she would. BIG suprise. My dad will definately spaz. Talking to my dad is a lot harder and even just being around him is hard but I am slowly getting better.

I have a yearning to create and think I will get on that soon. I plan on writing a letter later tonight to an elected offical and I think I am going to try and make a habit of doing it once a week, or at least once a month. The once a week thing is probably a little bit too ambitious.

I really don't have any cool statistics or anything useful to say like Laura. Sorry. Well actually in my english calss we had to read the Glass Menagerie by Tennesee Williams and I really liked the line,

Time is the longest distance between two places.

I mostly agree, mostly. But seriously, I think speaking of distance in terms of time makes a lot of sense.

Oh also my mom and I were talking today and she was telling me about some Hindu guy that was aparently a really big deal (I am so ignorant about the world it's not even funny) and how when he died his body took a really long time to decompose. It is believed that his body decomposed more slowly because his soul was so pure and he was so close to God. Saints bodies are also supposed to decompose more slowly. I thought this was pretty interesting and I want to read about it in the near furture.

senior citizen prom

For work, I've been looking up different projects local schools could do for community service. On their own, I guess, so if they didn't want to always volunteer with an agency, they could start something on their own. My boss let me do a piece on recycling (I found some great high school recycling programs! The world is going green!)

Let me just take a moment to say that I love the green movement. Terri wants to come up with another phrase for the movement, but regardless, I love the idea that America is starting to reduce, reuse, and recycle their purchases (though maybe not necessarily in that order)
Glen pointed out the other day that he hadn't realized up until recently that reduce, reuse, recycle is placed in that order for a reason. Basically I'm just really excited about reducing, reusing, and recycling in my life. I have big plans for the dorm room next semester!

Anyway, going back to what I was saying earlier: a lot of high school students are involved with community service, plan amazing projects, and really help out. I'm annoyed with myself, because I had the opportunity to do all of that, but I blew it off, and didn't do anything. In high school, I was the project co-chairmen for NHS. I didn't really plan projects, I didn't exert myself into the job, and am not really sure what motivated me to run. A lot of my projects fell through, kids would show up at agencies, and the agency would have nothing for them to do...
it was a mess.
But what gets me is we never branched out. The NHS sponser gave us a list of contacts, and that's all we did. We stayed with the same four agencies, and never tried to do anything different.
I wish that I was this passionate about helping in high school, so I could have done something instead of playing band and sitting at home.
ANGST
But now, Terri and I get to do this with Seva.

In other news, I've been spending a lot of time with my family this summer. It's amazing, because for the first time, I want to talk to my mom every night, and talking with my dad is easier than talking with a good majority of my friends.
I think I've changed a lot this past semester. Angst.
oh well, we have to grow up sometime.
My dad gave me some advice, and I would like to share it.
1. Worrying about time only makes it go faster.
2. Dogs are happy to be dogs.

Green Tip of the week

Hello Everyone! I think I'm going to start posting a "green" tip for the week. That way we can slowly cut down on habits that waste energy and are generally bad for the environment.
This week's tip is: don't use screen savers on your computer!

here is an article as to why you should do that:
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/forecastearth/49/you-don-t-still-use-a-screen-saver-do-you.html

anyone notice how much frapping energy that could save?

recycling stats

I cam e across some stats, and they uplifted me slightly, because at first I thought that only 30% of the nation recycling, was bad, but now it seems better?

• In 1999, recycling and composting activities prevented about 64 million tons of material from ending up in landfills and incinerators. Today, this country recycles 32.5 percent of its waste, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years.

• While recycling has grown in general, recycling of specific materials has grown even more drastically: 52 percent of all paper, 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging, and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled.

• Twenty years ago, only one curbside recycling program existed in the United States, which collected several materials at the curb. By 2006, about 8,660 curbside programs had sprouted up across the nation. As of 2005, about 500 materials recovery facilities had been established to process the collected materials.

I got this information from:http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/recycle.htm
and they also said:
For recycling to work, everyone has to participate in each phase of the loop. From government and industry, to organizations, small businesses, and people at home, every American can make recycling a part of their daily routine.

RECYCLE!

she never stops, she's a go getter!

HAPPY FREAKING BIRTHDAY LAURA!!!

Thinking you're all cool seeing Chris Hom like you do! I'm glad that your Mom pushed you out of her vag (and probably ripped a little bit) this day 20 years ago. Oh and the title is a line in a Beatles song that always makes me think of you!

we really need to update this more often

what to say...
This week I have participated in a teen camp for my job. The goal of the camp was to promote leadership, team building, and promote volunteering in the community. Did it work? I don't know. I had an amazing time though.
My boss let me do a 5 minute recycling presentation each of the five days we had camp. I started out with this landfill activity, where the kids through away anything they had in their pockets, along with some plastic bottles, cans, paper, etc. I told them that this is what a landfill looked like (except it wasn't really round) and said that at the end of the week we would see what decomposed, and what didn't.
I talked to them more about what actually happens when you recycle (my mom had some really cool broken up glass, because Lubbock has it's own glass break down machine. You guys know the glass broken up in front of the underwood center? That's right. Recycled glass. She also had some spongy recycling cardboard that is really cool looking) and what the recycled products are turned into. Recycled plastic is used for surfboards! Surfboards! And Tennis balls! I also told them about what it saved when people recycled. Basically, a lot of oil. Isn't that cool? When you recycle you save oil, which means gas. Though gas is really bad for the environment, I know that could be an incentive for people to recycle.
At the end of the week, one of the girls stood up and said, "I was thinking of it, and there is really no good reason for people not to recycle."
A 7th grader said this! I am so inspired.
I also told them about how to get started recycling at home, and in the community, and had several talk about going to their principals to start a recycling program at their own schools! Isn't that cool! I know that some may not, but I believe that some will! And it's a change! And it will help the environment! I'm just so excited, because the majority cared! we recycled all week long, and they would hold up their gum wrappers and Styrofoam cups and be like "can we recycle this? What about this?"
THERE IS HOPE! I don't think generations go down hill. I think they just change and we don't like change, so we label them as bad, instead of different.
I also know that I was with the "leaders" of the different schools, which probably don't represent the mentality of the majority, but I don't care, because if I got even one person to recycle, that made a difference in the world.
In July, I get to go to another camp and make a 30 minute presentation about recycling.
Everyone, we are going to make Lubbock green.

I wish I was writing now. I haven't written for awhile.

In other news, though, I recently finished Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was good. I hadn't read a fiction book in a while, and it was nice to sink into something well written and deep. He had a really complex vocabulary, and I had to read with a dictionary close by. It was good. The jist of the book dealt with waiting for love, and wasting your life staying "devoted" to a person who isn't going to love you back. (I say devoted because even though one of the characters loved this girl for all of his life, he had a lot of affairs)
I don't want to ruin the ending, but it was powerful, and worth the read.
I don't really understand much of what cholera had to do with anything. Just Oregon trail. Always frapping died of Cholera in Oregon trail.

I've been looking at the Dreams for Darfur website, and I have a few comments. Their site is basicallly asking everyone to boycott the Olympics, because:
1. China is supporting Sudan's government more than any one else
2. Because China is offering this support, the government can still function, and kill it's people.
3. Why is the government killing it's people? I've been researching it, and I can't find a good answer. Not that there ever is a good answer when it comes to murdering another. The most I've found is: oil. For the past 50 years the government has led attacks on some section of its country because it does not want that section to have shares in the oil. At least that is what I have gathered from my research and readings. Please correct me if I am wrong. I know that it isn't just oil, and the problem is so much more complex and screwed up than that. But oil plays a large part.
Which is why I'm glad gas prices are going up. Now people are interested in finding different fuel sources, carpooling, and thinking twice where they are going and if they really need to. It makes me sad that it took gas prices being high, not an overall concern for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming for people to realize that oil may not be the best energy source, but whatever works.
The high price of gas has made me stay home a lot more, and I really don't mind. I'm spending more time with my family, with Glen, and with Kristin...at home. We play card games, talk, and have gotten into Eternal Sonata. I never thought I would be playing RPGs, but this one is AMAZING. I can't do it justice by explaining what it is about, but it has so many different levels of the game. It's a lot better than dungeon runners. Just know that.
And the game is about Chopin! The background music is so pretty. I fell asleep hearing it in my head (is that weird?) and slept peacefully.
Pretty much I'm really happy right now, and I'm tired (yes Terri tired) of trying to do things all the time and not just being. I'm still trying to find things to do all the time at home, but at least I'm not running all over town doing it. Does that count?
Also read XKCD for the past couple of days. Hilarious!

I'd like to be under the sea, in an octopus's garden in the shade!

So this has been a really amazing week!!

Summer classes started at PJC and I really am glad to be back in school! I'm so lame!!I also get to swim with the old people again! It makes me so freaking excited!! I LOVE swimming with them really early in the morning! It is probably the only thing that really wakes me up in the morning.

Carpooling and eating lunch with my mom is pretty cool and I am starting to talk to her a lot more than I ever used to. My mom is really great and I have always taken advantage of her and the fact that I even have a mom so I'm trying to stop. The other day we were making fun of this profesor guy at my sister's math and science camp thingy... it was a reception for parents and I had to go with her. It was funny though! I also found out that she had bees in college during the time when she was a vegitarian and ate only organic natural stuff and she really liked honey so she had bees behind her apartment! Weirdo. I think it's really cool though! I think my Mom was probably really weird in college. She doesn't talk much about it but I am trying to find things out...

I am volunteering at the American Red Cross in the afternoons answering phones for them and I am going to get CPR and First Aid Certified! That makes me excited too and I was definately not expecting that!

My friend Raquel called me from the Air Force and I'm really glad to be talking to her again!

Everything just seems to be falling into place lately and it's really great.

So this post was really kind of irrelevant.... all I know is that knowing how cells work makes my brain hurt really bad and I am very glad that I am an art major and I have even more sympathy for everyone that studies this crap all the time... crazy kids. Also I have decided that I don't believe in mitochondria.

Sorry that I haven't updated recently. I have been busy, but it isn't an excuse, and I've mostly been working. I've started to dream about work. I don't like that. I always do that with my jobs, and it is really freaking annoying.

Tonight was beautiful in Lubbock. The high was 84! (A week of temperatures in the upper 90s, low 100s, really makes you appreciate an 84) and the sun was gorgeous as it set. My mom, cousin Michael, Glen, and I went biking (they biked, I jogged) and it felt really good to have a cool breeze...I don't know, the little things right?
All we need now is rain.
I have been doing a really miserable job of educating myself this summer. I got as far as the Rwandan genocide, and still aren't completely done with that. It's horrible. It truly is horrible what humans are capable of doing to each other. But on the other side, (take it on the other side) we are capable of so many acts of love as well.
Breedlove, for example, is a dehydration plant here in Lubbock that takes excess produce from Farmers, makes it into soups and other types of foods, and sends them to third world countries for really cheap prices. I bought a shirt from them a week ago, and fed 250 people. The shirt was 10. Isn't it pathetic that two cups of coffee and a scone for us is dinner for some people.
Just to depress everyone, here's some statistics from their website:

1 person dies every 2.9 seconds somewhere on earth because of hunger related causes.

Hunger and poverty claim 25,000 lives every day.

Of those, almost 16,000 are children who die from hunger related causes-one child every five seconds.

Worldwide, more than 1 billion people currently live below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day.

Every other child in the world is living in poverty

640 million children in developing countries live without adequate shelter: one in three.

400 million children, one in five, have no access to safe water.

854 million people across the world are hungry.

The World Health Organization estimates 1/3 of the world is well fed, 1/3 is under fed, and 1/3 is starving.

Research shows that free school lunches can increase attendance rates by 100 % and boost performance.

More than 1/2 of all child deaths worldwide are caused by malnutrition

More than 153 million of the world's malnourished are children under the age of 5

Poor nutrition & calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities

The risk of death for children with even mind malnutrition is 2.5 times greater than for children receiving adequate nutrition.

Pregnant women, new mothers who breastfeed infants, and children are among the most at risk of undernourishment.

19freakin84

Ok so I really really liked this book a lot. Thanks for making me read it Laura!

Honestly I don't really understand why it's supposed to be sad... explain that to me.

Ok I know that Newspeak was "bad" and all but I kind of liked some of it. I really like the concept of Doublethink... a lot.

I liked when he said that good books tell you what you already know.

All the talk about reality being only in the human mind and what truth really is was very interesting to me and made me think a lot... I think perception is way under thought. I liked the talk about the past and how it doesn't exist except in the mind and the idea of traing your brain to truly belive or not believe things.

I was really quite amazed that one person could come up with this entire world and develop such a society and language... I know that is what writers do so I guess I am really impressed by all writers. It just really made me appreciate the powers and creativeness of the human mind.

I also really appreciated that I have never been tortured.

I don't know what to say really except that I liked it a lot and I wish I could have taken a class in which it was required to read because I know there is a ton of stuff that could be discussed and thought about given the right direction. I wanted to read it again when I was half through it.

Mostly what I liked the best is firguring out that truly...

I LOVE BIG BROTHER!

Ok so this might be kind of out there… wherever there is.

So I feel like I had a turning point in my life yesterday. I don’t know why, how or even what but I definitely know that something really big changed.

I have felt weird since the night before last and it stayed yesterday I just felt completely different than I had ever felt before. I was lying in my bed and I felt very detached from the rest of the world, from even being a person. I didn’t really feel alive. I didn’t feel dead but if alive was a line then I think I was the line above it. I couldn’t really feel my body and none of my senses were really effecting me. I felt something but it was as if it was a sense that we don’t have. I was so completely relaxed that nothing could have bothered me. I really mean that too, nothing could have possibly bothered me. I felt like I was out of my mind and body and was somewhere I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know where I was, I mean I knew I was in my room but I really wasn’t, I was really far away.

It was a really nice feeling and I still feel it somewhat. I kind of wondered if I accidentally meditated or something. It was kind of like I somehow slipped out of time and space. I wonder if that is what it’s like to do drugs.

Everything that we worry about and get caught up in just seems very trivial to me. I don’t want to live mindlessly and keep myself constantly busy without knowing what I’m doing. I don’t want to live by our societal standards and obsess over my appearance, social life, possessions, and status. I don’t exactly know what the answers are but I think the way we live, as a society, definitely deserves some rethinking. I don’t really feel like one way or another is the right or wrong way to live or think but I do think it is different for everyone and I don’t understand why we all try to mold ourselves into a set standard. For a country that places so much value on individualism and freedom we sure all can be a lot alike. Shouldn’t we be defined by our thoughts and personalities more than by our appearances and material possessions? We are not really encouraged to think for ourselves, that is never advertised, but why would since you can’t market thought. Maybe we aren’t supposed to think for ourselves because if we did we would all realize the things wrong in the world and would want to change them. The people in charge probably wouldn’t like not getting to do what is best for them anymore.

Changing things involves time and effort and generally doesn’t make anyone money. It takes you our of your comfort zone and causes you to think about things other than yourself and doing what makes you happy. From a young age we are preached to do what makes you happy and that seems to always be the goal, to be happy, make yourself happy, but I don’t really understand the draw to self-satisfaction. What is so great about being happy? What is so great about constantly worrying about yourself and trying to find that temporary high? Why not think outside ourselves and try to make a positive change? I honestly feel like if we stopped trying to force happiness upon ourselves constantly it would take care of itself.

Life can get so complicated and it just really amazes me how. How can things possibly be so hard? I refuse to believe that life has to be this way and I want to think differently. I don’t understand being mad at people, holding grudges, having regrets, worrying, and not being able to forgive. I wish everyone would just chill out and relax. What are we so worried about anyways? Everything will be alright or it won’t and if it won’t then what’s the big deal? Why are bad things bad? I don’t think they are. What’s the worst that could happen? Death? What’s so bad about dying?

I don’t know if that made any sense at all and I know that it was all very scattered and I should probably elaborate on a lot of the things I was thinking for them to make sense, so I apologize. I just don’t understand a lot of things… well pretty much everything really. I have a lot of questions.

So I was reading this book called Mapping the Terrain. It’s a book about the history of public art told by the influential artists of the time. I really love how art can be used to create a positive change in people’s lives and in the world. This quote really made a lot of sense to me and is what I have felt but could never say so eloquently:


To search for the good and to make it matter: this is the real challenge for the artist. Not simply to transform ideas or revelations into matter, but to make those revelations actually matter.

-Estella Conwill Majoza