Wow, where to start. Today is Lisa’s two month birthday, whoa! And she weighs 9 pounds 5 ounces. Almost 9 and a half pounds, she is a growing! She holds her head up pretty good, follows voices, she grabbed for a Pooh toy hanging on her swing the other day!

She starts day care on May 1st. Funny story there… I called the Day care place, because when we went and toured the place it was still under construction and they didn’t have their accreditation for infants yet. Well we finally filled out the paper work, and I called them yesterday. And she said we have a class of 7 now, with one spot left for Lisa, we have her scheduled to start on May 1st. I was like wait a minute, don’t you think it would be a good idea to tell ME that she is supposed to start on May 1st. Anyways we found out, so no biggie, now we are going to go on Monday more than likely to visit with her teachers Ms. Bunny (yes like the Easter bunny) and Ms. Stephanie. Fun Fun…

I have spent the last month trying to fix a HUGE problem we have had in our back yard. When it rains we end up with a moat. Because the dumb dumbs that built our house grated the perimeter of our yard so that it slopes away from our house and yard. Well since the yards around us (mainly the one behind us) is on a hill higher than our yard, all this does is make a giant moat around our yard. Which is real fun with two dogs, and no grass in the back yard.

So anyways that was the problem, so to fix it, I seeded the yard, with the help of Carey (THANK YOU). That should take care of some of the mud, now to the moat. I lined about 3 feet out from the fence with that weed fabric stuff (the black stuff), and then put small river rocks (gravely sized) down, and lined it with larger river rocks, so it makes a dry river bed, or at least thats what it sorta looks like. Well that took FOREVER. I was going to plant some water loving plants in my “river” but Keegan has since destroyed them, so yeah no plants back there…. (you can see the pots in the pictures). Well the grass has finally started growing real good, and our back yard actually looks pretty decent. If you think it looks bad, everywhere there is light colored green-ness, used to be DIRT!!!!!

I also spend Easter Sunday water sealing the fence, and it looks really good now, its a pretty color!

While buying plants and rocks for the back yard I bought some bulbs and plants for the front flower beds too. I planted lots of day lilies, gladiolas, and two other kinds of flowers I don’t remember what they are, but they are blue when they bloom. Anyways my glads are starting to sprout, yay! Its always scary when you plant bulbs if they are going to sprout or not. Anyways the pictures are here.

While mowing my yard (makes the grass look better in the back yard, and keeps the weeds down) I found a rabbit hole. I have been dealing with this rabbit for a while now. It has been eating my cantas when they start to come up, and my tulips, anyways not so thrilled with this rabbit. So I mowed over the new rabbit hole (second one I have found in my yard). Then when I was weed eating, I was trying to get the rabbit fur out of the hole with the weed eater when I heard a horrid sound. Stopped the weed eater and realised there were baby bunnies in this hole, it wasn’t abandoned like the last one… So I had to gather up some gloves and a bucket, then I gathered up the bunnies, all 8 of them, and relocated them to a new home far away from houses or people (till it gets developed….).

I also applied for a job at the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Crime Lab, doing DNA casework! Its in Jefferson City, but it pays pretty good, which makes the 30 minute drive worth it! (Now lets keep our fingers crossed that I get the job!)

Categories: Science and the like, Animals and their Quirks, Life, Baby
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Two nights ago I lay awake for a long time with my brain mulling over so many things, such as global warming and oil consumption and misconceptions. Then today I got an email, and some how the email had 95 percent of the things I was thinking were not only in the email, but spoken about the way I wanted to say them, if only my brain had had the email two nights ago, I would have had more sleep. Well here is the email, so you can see where my brain has been.

Hurricane Katrina has been, first and foremost, a human disaster — a seemingly endless tale of suffering marked by lives lost, communities dispersed and families torn asunder. Our hearts go out to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people who are now struggling to piece some semblance of their lives back together.

NRDC is doing all that we can — as I’m sure you are — to aid the ongoing relief effort in the Gulf states. We’re also contributing our special expertise on oil spills, toxic pollution and drinking water in order to help meet the immediate challenges.

As the flood waters begin receding, Americans are also beginning to gain some much-needed perspective on our fragile place in the natural world. Few events in our lifetime have revealed so dramatically the deep interconnectedness between people and nature.

As an environmental organization, NRDC has a profound obligation to ensure that the environmental lessons of this disaster are not only learned, but that they are heard loud and clear in our nation’s capital. Hurricane Katrina destroyed
more than human lives and homes. She also blew away a decade’s worth of denial about major environmental problems that confront America.

Katrina destroyed the fantasy that we can blithely go on increasing our dangerous dependence on oil — whether imported or domestic. Our oil-addicted economy is just too vulnerable to supply disruptions, as anyone who filled up their gas tank last week discovered. The solution is NOT to drill and destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — or our beautiful coastlines — as many
in Congress are now suggesting. Drilling in the Arctic would not have any impact on gas prices until 2025, and even then it would only reduce prices at the pump by a trivial 1.5 cents per gallon. Our nation simply does not have enough oil reserves to affect world oil prices. The only way out of this mess is to reduce our appetite for oil by improving the fuel economy of our vehicles
(which consume 40 percent of our oil) and by relying on smarter, cleaner and renewable ways to power our economy.

Katrina also exposed the fiction that we can dredge, bulldoze and fill millions of acres of coastal wetlands without paying a price. Wetland ecosystems are Mother Nature’s perfect buffer against catastrophic storm surges. Destroy that buffer and you destroy the last line of defense, not only for New Orleans but for a host of other American cities. In this case, as in so many others, what’s good for the wildlife of coastal America is also indispensable to its people. We are part of nature.

Katrina demolished the pretense that we needn’t reckon with global warming. While no single hurricane can be directly linked to global warming, climate scientists agree that we are entering an epoch of warming oceans, rising sea levels and much more intense storms. We know full well what kind of pollution controls are required to reverse this trend. If we don’t act, Katrina will be our future. You can’t say she didn’t warn us.

Finally, Katrina tore the lid off one of our nation’s most shameful truths: that petrochemical plants, toxic waste sites, oil refineries and other industrial threats to human health are most often sited next to low-income minority communities. The rest of America regularly averts its eyes from this injustice. But with the poorest neighborhoods of New Orleans drowning in a
hazardous sea of fuel, sewage and chemicals, it’s hard not to notice just which of our citizens are paying the ultimate price.

Oil addiction. Wetland destruction. Global warming. Environmental injustice. You’re well aware that NRDC has been working for years to awaken America to these terrible problems and to champion urgently needed solutions. But Katrina has changed everything. The public is finally paying attention. And officials in Washington are looking to respond.

Our challenge is making sure our leaders take away the right lessons from this disaster and respond with real solutions, not with the old ways of thinking or business-as-usual giveaways to well-connected industries.

It won’t be easy. The Bush administration and congressional leaders have spent the last four years digging us ever deeper into a hole of oil dependence, wetland destruction, global warming pollution and environmental injustice. It’s unspeakably tragic that it took a deadly hurricane to expose this gaping crater.

There’s an old proverb that says, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Getting our leaders to stop digging will be a tall order. But with more hurricanes sure to follow in Katrina’s wake, we have no choice but to dedicate ourselves to the task at hand.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

Categories: General Information, Science and the like, Animals and their Quirks, Life
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Yeah so its been a while, sorry all. Update on the weight loss! Lost 20 pounds now since December, I also have lost 4 inches off my stomach about a inch off my rear, a half an inch off my arms, and about a inch off my legs. Those inches are from Feburary.

Other news, Dan and I are going to Missouri tomorrow to buy a house. Well to look at a house to buy. We are also having a yard sale next weekend so we don’t have to move as much stuff! Not much other news to report.

I did have a fun experience with Dan’s mom that envolved a mad goose chasing us. It was quite interesting, especially when the thing hissed at Dan’s mom, and I screamed and she thought it was a snake (this being before she turned around and found out it was a goose). It was quite horrifing, I feel like I lost a good year or two off of my life with that incident.

I do have other news, a few people know this but not many so here goes. I want to go back to school, I am going to get a Masters in Science Education, so I can teach high school Biology. Mr. Koorstad would be proud (my AP Biology teacher in high school who always told me I would become a teacher). I have decided that I can do so much more for the Forensic Field if I can inspire more people to join it! And then there are the advantages to being a teacher that Dan and I would be able to enjoy, such as summer for the most part off, for vacations and child raising! The best part is with the program at Columbia, it won’t really cost me anything to get a Master’s Degree, then I can be like Dan and have three degrees, Yay….. I might even get my three degrees before him, muhahahaha…. (granted he will out rank me but still……. I have to have some kinda bragging rights.)

Categories: Science and the like, Animals and their Quirks, Life
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I have done A LOT of reading on PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) the genetic goof-up I have. And I have LEARNED a lot. First of all people don’t seem to understand how something with Ovary in the name can have anything to do with life-style changes. Or how this one thing can affect your whole system. Well let me tell you how. The root cause of PCOS is a problem with insulin. The syndrome has actually been linked recently to chromosome 19 close to the insulin receptor gene. How exactly it happens is not known, but people with PCOS (and I say this because men can have this syndrome too) become Insulin resistant. Insulin’s main job is to be a “key” to let glucose (sugar) into the cells so the body has energy. If there is insulin resistance, there are fewer insulin receptors on the cells (the door insulin works as the key to open) so fewer molecules of glucose get into the cells, which in turn makes the pancreas produce more and more insulin to try and get the glucose levels down. Eventually over time, the pancreas can no longer do this, and the sufferer of PCOS becomes diabetic. It is this unnaturally high level on insulin in the body that leads to the many symptoms of PCOS. The one for which it is names caused cysts on the ovaries, because the ovaries can not decrease the number of insulin receptors on the cell surfaces, and the root effect is cysts. Another job of insulin is to regulate other hormones, especially the male specific hormones, like testosterone. It is the regulation of these hormones that when messed up leads to a lack of ovulation, which leads to infertility. In excess these hormones cause other problems like acne, and hair loss, and abnormal hair growth (i.e. in places women don’t normally have hair). So if you hear someone say they have PCOS, don’t just assume oh that’s a reproductive problem and you will be fine, just adopt…. Cause its NOT and it affects every aspect of a woman or man’s life! So what can be done about it? Well regulating the insulin actually can almost reverse or stop the symptoms of PCOS, but it has to be life long, this is not something that is just during the reproductive years, the insulin problem will be there forever, there is no cure just management. I plan on managing with a low GI (Glycemic Index) diet, and exercise, and potentially if the diet and exercise don’t fix it enough, taking a drug called metformin can help too.

So you are thinking ok Stephanie so you got a problem with insulin, what’s the big deal? The big deal is, this is a problem that has MANY long term issues, and is very scary and support, and understanding are what I need right now, not everyone saying well you should do this, or if you just exercise more you will lose weight, or if you wash your face more you will get rid of acne. I have a disorder, a problem with my insulin, which causes so many other problems. My body doesn’t know how to burn fat for energy or otherwise, it is solely using carbohydrates for energy, which leads to the incredible sugar cravings I have, because my body needs energy and it knows it gets it from sugar. There is no quick fix. And a low GI diet and exercise are not guarantees that my weight and other problems will be fixed. Mainly I am just looking for some understanding, which I don’t feel I am getting from several of my good friends.

Categories: Science and the like, Life
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The American Council on Science and Health publishes a review of unfounded health scares. This is the publication I read yesterday that caused my previous blog. Reading this made me realize how easily swayed the public is. Just makes you stop and think…

Categories: Science and the like
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