Resolution Success and Failure

If you remember my blog posting on New Year's Day, I posted several resolutions. Since I have achieved one of the goals I set out for myself.  So, here is an update:

1. Spend one month as a vegetarian: Well, I haven't started my month yet, but I have been working up to this, eating a lot more tofu and vegetables and really limiting the meat that I have been eating.  I have gone several days where the only animal products that I have had is the Dashi (Ground dry fish) that is in the miso I like to drink.  It's not that I wan't to be a vegetarian, I don't (I really do enjoy eating meat).  It's just that I want to live a healthier lifestyle, and this is a way to ease into it.

2. Log at least 200 miles of exercise (walking and jogging) on my pedometer: DONE!!!  Since January 1, 2013, I have logged 204.3 miles (see below), and  I'm also happy to say that I have put on a lot of those miles jogging instead of just walking.

3. Loose the other 30lbs that I'm trying to take off:  Oh extra pounds, why do you want to stay on me so much.  I think we really need to separate, I don't want you around anymore.  So, I dropped about 15 lbs so far, but I haven't lost an ounce in the last 8 weeks or so, despite my best efforts.  It is starting to get really difficult to stay motivated, but my BMI is still higher than 30 (obese) so I still have a long way to go.

4. Make at least one new friend:  The intention of this was to make a new friend outside of the internet, since I make friends easily on-line, but I am pretty shy in person.  I still have 6 months to go.

5. Jog 5K without stopping:  I was able to do 3.1 miles (5K) once, but I haven't been able to repeat it (so I don't consider this one accomplished yet).  I try to jog at least 6 miles a week (over 3 days), but I normally tucker out at around 2.2 miles (3.5 km) and need to stop.  If I could make progress with #3 (above) this might be easier.

6. Post a blog post at least every two weeks:  I have totally failed at this.  but I can try to be better.

I've also added another goal for the year.

7. I want to be able to do the front splits again:  I have been stretching every day, and doing Yoga, so I'm hoping I can achieve this by the end of the year.

Super Science Girls

So, my two heroes for this week is Sara Volz of Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado and Sylvia Todd of Auburn California.

Sara Volz just won the Intel Science Talent Search and pocketed $100K for her project entitled Nitrogen Stress and Artifical Selection as Methods to Induce Lipid Synthesis.

For those of you who don't speak "Science Nerd", what this means is that this clever girl was able to selectively breed alge to increase their production of oil (Lipids).  The way she did this was to use nitrogen (In the form of the weed killer sethoxydim) to stress her alge cultures, which forced a sort of artifical "Survival of the Fittest" type of evolution in the alge.  Kind of like the way an antibiotic kills bacteria cells.  Then she was basically trying to breed alge that was resistant to the weed killer in much the same way bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. The alge cells that were able to survive the Nitrogen stress, also produced more oil.  So basically she bred alge that is designed specifically to produce oil for biofuels.


So, she designed an build the bioreactor when she was in 9th grade (OMG like wow!).

Sylva Todd is the host of the YouTube channel Sylvia's Super Awesome Maker Show.  In this show she uses everything from Chemistry to Electronics to  make really cool stuff. Oh, and did I mention she is only 11 years old.

She uses the plethora of stuff that is available these days to make really amazing stuff, like the Arduino board that I talked about several months back.  She makes things like Silly Putty, Digital Clocks, and even her own printed Circuit boards. 

She likes to build robots and recently won a silver medal at the international robotics competition, which also included a trip to the White house to show off her robot that paints pictures.

Keep up the great work ladies.

zebra nails?

I totally love having fun with my nails.  I put this mani together using a base coat of Play the Peoneese (By OPI) and the stripes using Licorice (By essie).

I was kind going for zebra stripes By I think they look a little bit more like cow spots.  Nevertheless it is still a fun mani.