Finally putting my foot down

I have learned to say no. It has been quite a process from saying no to people that beg for money on the street, to saying no to professors that ask for help. I've done a lot of saying no this semester. Today, or rather, last night I said no to being played. My so called friends from ag. club thought it would be fun to play a little trick on me. They told me some juicy gossip to see how long it would take to spread around the group. It backfired. Not only did I not tell a soul, I caught them in their lie. Well, it's quite a relief to not have those friendships to try and maintain anymore. I guess it means more time and energy that I can spend with my family.

I have experienced so much clarity lately. I can see what is important and what is trash.

After being up till 2:45am this morning working on algae lab reports as well as tutoring by text my friend in my math 90 class, I became keenly aware of how badly I needed an energy drink in order to fulfill my responsibilities for the day. I woke up to the sounds of laughter of my two little boys at 6:35am. Oh good, I can sleep 15 more minutes, that is if my brain will turn off. 6:55am, in the shower. It's too bad that caffeine is such a nasty drug because, man, I love how it makes me feel on a morning like this. I can't remember how long it's been since I got this much done in a morning. I guess that's why I like coming here in the middle of the night. No distractions.

I'm running a test on using Urea Vs. NaNO3, mainly concerned with a good source of nitrate. I ran the numbers over and over and kept getting it wrong. Finally I put a call into the a friend in the Chem. department at school, I figured it out just before he called me back. He's not even my professor yet and he called me within an hour! It's so nice to be surrounded by dedicated professors. I love my school. I think that after I graduate and pay off all my school debt I want to donate to I.V.C. I have been inspired by every professor I've encountered on that campus.

Any way, I replaced the 2.5g of NaNO3 with 1.17g of Urea in our solution and ran two groups: a control of our origional Carbon Capture medium against the Urea solution. Hopefully the Urea one does just as good as the Carbon Capture medium. If it does than we can cut our production cost in the summer by quite a bit. I'll let you know how it turns out in two weeks.

Today is my day off and all I can think about is work and school and cleaning my house. I have a study group coming tonight to work on math, and I need to study for my fertilizers class. We have a quiz on Wednesday that will cover the 17 essential elements that all plants require for life. The three atmospheric nutrients are H, O, and C which can be pulled by the plant from the air. The six macro nutrients are of course {N,P,K} something you will find across the bag of near every major fertilizer and the secondary are S, Ca, and Mg. Finally the micro nutrients; Fe, Zn, Mn, Cu, B, Cl, Mo, Ni. If any of these are lacking a plant can not survive. I've had this as well as Leibig Law of the Minimum running through my mind all week.

I'm starting three papers right now. The first paper is for my health class; I'm required to pinpoint one of my faults and start a behavior change project, which is really hard since I have as many things as I do that I would like to change. I've decided to start my report on chewing with my mouth closed. It's a habit I've had my entire life and it drives my husband crazy. This will be great because it will improve my relationship with Jason. I hope you appreciate it honey!

Drowning in Priorities

Saying no is not the only thing that challenges me; I'm not very good at prioritizing. I try create schedules for myself to follow and list of what I should do in what order but somehow I miss some simple step. My boss informed me that I forgot to turn off the scale on Wednesday night, and there have been several small missteps along the way. Today I wrote a list of things that I must do when I come in and when I leave for the day from the lab to hopefully prevent any further damage.

Today my priority at the lab was to clean, fill, add solution and inoculate one of these large ponds. I didn't complete my prerogative but the pool is prepared to transfer the algae into on Monday. The plan is to have a large pond to harvest from by mid March. The harvest so far has been successful considering the cool weather and the challenge of drying algae without direct sunlight. Today it started to rain on us as we shoveled rock hard bicarb from 1 ton bags into buckets for the new pond. I was grateful for the chilly weather as I ran back and forth with the wagon.

The sky was strange, half filled with lumpy "Simpon's" clouds and the other dark like the ocean floor with light trying to break through. I love days like this.

Even with a pile of lab reports due by Sunday, my priorities change from work to family. I'm thrilled to spend a few hours with my husband and kids.

Just Say NO

I've come to a realization that I can't say "no". I think that if I keep doing everything I that is requested of me that I will have an easier time when I get to grad school and an easier time getting into grad school. I know that I must participate in the Ag. Club as an adviser to help give me the edge I need for grad school.

I did some research into different ag. programs at different colleges today and I found that Chico State has a great bachelors program for me but it's about 4K per semester, where as if I transfer to Cal Poli it's half that and if I decided to go to UCSD it's 15K per year. Where to go is one thing, it's another task to physically get there. My husband has a job here, I have a job here, we can't just pick up and leave. At least UCSD, we can stay living here, but gas and tuition would be murder. It would be cheaper for me to go to Cal Poli and live up with my sister during the week. In the end, I will need financial assistance. We can't afford to pay for it by our selves. Maybe because I have said yes to all these things, perhaps a couple scholarships will say yes to me.

The insanity begins

This week, on February 14th, my spring semester began. I spent every hour and a half rushing to the next Math 90 class to crash. I crashed a total of 6 math classes that day. I got there at 8:10 and left around 6:00 so that I could run to another campus and try to crash a Math 90 class in Brawley at 6:30. I did manage to get into the final math class of the night, however it ended up having major scheduling conflicts with one of my Ag. classes (I can't skip a single Ag. class because each class is only offered once every two years, and only in the spring and fall semesters). Tuesday went much better, crashed a health class that I got into, crashed an English class that I got into and finally got into a math 90 class. THANK GOODNESS! There was a night class open. So, bye bye Poli Psy, hello Math 90. By the way, the math professor is awesome. No book! In the end, I don't have a single class on Monday or Friday and I only have two classes on Wednesday both in Ag. I'm taking 17 units and I don't feel overwhelmed at all. I know I will get strait "A's". I have to.

Thankfully I got to spend some quality time with the boys last week at the lab before the insanity began. Cael caught this one.

Meanwhile I have completely neglected the algae lab. I went in really early on Tuesday morning and then did half a day on Wednesday. I only have about 6 or seven experiments running right now. A week ago I had over twelve. I'm not sure how many more Ill have running at a time because we are starting to harvest from the ponds. The harvester is really interesting. We have a pump that sends water into a rotating barrel screen that rinses the algae and then sends the rinsed algae down the pipe to a rotating shake screen that takes all the water out and the water is sent back into the pond. Finally the strained algae is sent to a bucket. I then take the bucket and put it on a rotating dry-rack screen where it is segmented for packaging as dry flaked fish food. Because we aren't cooking it, only drying it, it the Spirulina doesn't loose very much value.

I did get re-elected as Ag. Club Vice President again. I wasn't expecting it this time. I was up against a couple good friends and I felt bad for wining. At least now I know who wants some added responsibility.

Well, I better rush off to school.

Chips with that?

Back at the algae lab. Today I ate a Spirulina chip that we dried. At first it tasted good, like a potato chip, maybe a stale potato chip but soon a piece got stuck in a cavity of one of my back teeth and oh my, it was bad! I started trying to loosen it with my tongue with no luck, Yuck, yuck, yuck! I start to become keenly aware that this taste is not dissipating, and my boss is trying to explain some chemistry something or other to me and I don't here a word he is saying. Finally he say's, "This really doesn't matter yet till are ready to harvest our first set, are you ok? Do you need some water or something." I'm relieved, I start to rummage through a cupboard looking for a clean beaker to get some water as he walks into the grow room. Good I can rinse and spit this stuff out. The first rinse is dark green, like something out of one of our jars in the grow room. I keep rinsing till he walks back in. Oh man this is bad. It tasted like buggers or blood or something else no intelligent human being would purposefully put in their mouth unless they were on a game show. I ask how much he ate, "I only ate as much as i needed to have a taste of it." Mine was the size of a dime and it's still stuck in my tooth! We start to walk out to the ponds so I grab a paper towel to pick at it in my teach. My boss keeps laughing at my misfortune.

Well now the taste has finally left and I'm eating my lunch. At first I didn't think I would have that much to do today but at the last minute he threw a bunch of stuff on me. I'm so glad to have a job I love in the horrible economy. My husband has a job he's not crazy about but it pays the bills. Mine just pays for school. I wish I could put every penny I make into an account just for school but we have found need of it more often than we would like to. I've found that I am much better at spending money than saving it. I should probably try to do something about that.

I start school next week. I'll be crashing many classes and I hope to convince Dr. Fisher to let me take his chemistry class without the prerequisite. I didn't test out of Math 90 like I was hoping. I studied really hard for the Accuplacer exam, I even hired a tutor. At least my algerbra class should be a walk in the park after all the studying I did.

algae lab

I've worked at the spirulina algae lab now for over three months. I love many things about this job. For one, it offers me lots of freedom on time. I can come and go as I please. I choose the days and the hours that I work. I get to bring my kids to work as often as I please and they fish for long hours in the pond. I get a list of things to get done and all I have too do is complete them. I find many aspects of the job fascinating, some of which have nothing to do with the algae it's self. The other day I came across a huge harry spider that was not a Tarantella. I was both intrigued and mortified. I've also found several very thin, very skinny worms that live in the ponds. They added some great conversation to my entomology class last semester.

Did I mention that I have gone back to school. I am a full time student at Imperial Valley College. I.V.C. is a small community college in the county of Imperial California. We have a great agricultural program.

The days on the algae farm are filled with beauty as well. Surrounding our lab are several wheat crops, alfalfa crops, as well as Sudan grass crops. We also are very close to a bird sanctuary which has brought several snowy egrets and ducks to our pond.

I don't know why I am writing about the algae lab except that it is charming and makes me so happy I want to share it with those that read this. So, enjoy!