A Bottle of Chateau St. Michelle, for the Earth of Course

As you all celebrate Earth Day tomorrow, as I'm sure you all are, take a minute to think about what you are eating and drinking. May's National Geographic has an amazing chart regarding your carbon footprint as related to a purchase of a bottle of wine, and it really got me to take a moment to reflect about my diet.

Think about it. If truck emissions are much greater than container ship emissions, then when a Seattlite (is that how y'all spell it?) buys a bottle of French wine, the shipment of a single bottle of wine from France to Seattle puts out 3.0 pounds of carbon emissions. This accounts for the shipment into the Great Lakes and the drive from Chicago to Seattle. An even bigger footprint of 4.4 pounds is placed on a shipment of Napa Valley wine to New York, since there is no ship involved, just trucking.

You can take that knowledge and apply it to all of your food and beverage. The farther it is trucked to your table, the larger your footprint of your meal or cocktail. I heard another very unpopular theory today from a climatologist that says that the larger you are, the greater the carbon footprint you make. He directly linked Western obesity to global warming, not only from the shipping aspect, but from the impact of grazing and corporate farming. It's a very interesting theory if you think about it, and a great reason to go on a diet if you care about the Earth.

I hope everyone finds a way to celebrate Earth Day tomorrow! As promised, here are the photos from the Rosario Beach Marine Lab and of the new baby!


This is Rowan Z - my first great-nephew


This is every man and teenage boy in my class on children's playground equipment, and the professor yelling at the minors to get off.


Deception Pass


Duh! My most favorite sign ever.


Here is the beach at the marine laboratory - my favorite picture from the weekend.

Life at the Beach and Babies

Today is the first day back to my "real job" in a week. Despite all the work and activities I did last week, it was a rewarding and relaxing vacation. On Wednesday, we dropped off a huge food donation to the Darrington Family Resource Center, and could not believe the reception we received. I can't stress enough how much local food banks and resource centers need donations right now. Please, if you have anything to give, they could really use it.

On Friday, I left my family to spend the weekend at the Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory on Whidbey Island with my Physical Geography class. We visited many West Whidbey beaches, tracking with GPS, and measuring the tides. The info was compiled into ArcGIS and layed over a UW Ocean Topography map, a 1970 USGS map, and a 1914 US Survey map. Later this week, we will compare our tidal information with the maps, and explain the differences in the energy of the individual beaches. In a few weeks we will use the same technology to compare the current glacier on Whitehorse with data from the 1970 USGS mapping.

Our class was given a good weekend to bond, and it was funny how during free time, the age groups split up. We five girls in the class also got to know each other really well, and it was nice to be able to discuss family, work and school issues with other women who know exactly how I feel. Our teams also got some good teamwork time in, since each team was responsible for at least one meal and cleaning in the huge industrial kitchen and common building. I got to make hash browns over a huge flat grill, a restaurant experienced I missed by working for the Parks Department after high school instead of McDonald's. I also got to say, "five minutes chef," and really mean it J! Being one of the drivers for the class, I got to teach 3 guys 19-22, the history of the rock and roll we were rockin' out to. It was so funny how many questions they asked about music, while we were riding around from beach to beach.

I finished off my weekend watching Marley and Me, and made the hubby watch it, too. I cried just as much as I did with the book. I realized that despite being a dog person, that my Marley is my Lynx Siamese, Fokker. I have never bonded that much with a cat before, but he is such a smart, loyal and trustful kitty, it will be so hard to let him go when it's time. The hubby agreed, the cat will be our tear jerker. I think it's because we decided not to have any kids together, and really treat him like our little baby.

Because of the field work this weekend, I didn't get much sleep. It really was so nice to sleep in my own bed last night, and not on the floor of a cabin in a sleeping bag. I'm still really tired, though, and have to start my workweek already exhausted. I really hope I can hold my temper with the OxyMorons and VicoHeads today.

And the best news of all from last week? I'm a Great Auntie! Welcome to the world Rowan Z! Congratulations Cate and Z – I wish I could be there to celebrate with you and meet him.

I'll post some pictures this week from the beaches and of the baby.

This is a Vacation?

So a month ago, the hubby asked me to take a four day vacation from work this week for a trip to Spokane. A week ago, he changed his mind. Now I'm at home, "on vacation" and so far, it has been a trip of its own.

Thursday was a crazy day of not enough computer lab time for the class work given in both of my classes. So yesterday, I had to stay after my Geosystems class to finish my ArcGIS Map lab and finish Tuesday's CAD homework. In the middle of my last CAD model, I get a phone call from Tay saying the youngest had called the cops on her while they were home alone, because they were fighting over her new phone. This was the absolute last straw as they had been fighting constantly since she got the phone for her birthday last week.

Luckilly, we live in a small town, and the sheriff balled him out for calling over a sibling fight. He also proceeded to tell him a story about how his sister had broke his nose when they were kids. I will have to drop off some Kettle Chips at the Public Safety Center this week as an apology from us. As for the kids, knowing my daughter probably instigated whatever he did to her phone (as she finally admitted later), we grounded both of them for two weeks. She also lost her brand new phone for a month, and the youngest lost his GoPhone for a month. Bummer Dude, but that's how I play.

I also got some sad news from the local news yesterday that Joe's is going out of business. Does anyone else know how hard it is to find Lady Carharts for women under 5 foot 10?! Not every chic that works outside looks like Brunhilda. Joe's had so many sizes of women's outdoor clothing for work and play, and they offered them at decent prices. Now I'm stuck with trying to find a small size of ugly work clothes at the Co-op, or over-paying exhorbantly at R.E.I., Cabella's or Eddie Bauer.

My 50 Daffodils I planted last fall are all finally blooming today, but it's pouring down rain, and not a good photo opportunity. I'm hoping we get some sunbreaks soon, so I can get a good shot for my Sustainable Design portfolio. For those of you on the East Coast, sunbreaks are Pacific Northwest speak for, "look, the sun came out of the rain clouds for 5 minutes! Quick everyone outside!"

Here's to a better ending for my vacation.

I Hate Tugboats and Other Random Rants

Vent #1 - I hate tugboats. I don't care how cute they make them on Thomas the Tank Engine, I've hated them since I was a kid. The drivers are pricks. I understand they have a large load of logs (or trash depending on which coast you're on), and little boats need to get out of the way. But there is no need for the excess waking - planing up and down as they pass by with a smile, but never looking directly at you. We only got water in our crew boats and sculls when tugboats went by, and currently, is it really necessary to bring a load of logs into Steamboat Slough of all places during rush hour?

Vent #2 - Steamboat Slough (a.k.a. Meth Harbor) - clean it up Marysville! Gross!

Vent #3 - Intro to a computer class without getting computer lab time. It's called Intro to CAD, not intro to how to read coordinates and picture things in your head. I thought we were supposed to be past all that, so we could learn the computer program. So far, we've had about an hour of lab time from 12 hours of class time. My homework is now late, because I am teaching myself how to use CAD. Most of these guys already work at Boeing or are ex-Bayliner, and can use the program, but can't do the math. Argh!

Vent #4 - No I will not Twitter or Tweet. To the few of you who have asked me to, it sounds like something a very happy, gay man would do. I'm sure I will have to eventually do it for school purposes, but until then, I will not Facebook or Twitter until I have to. And I really don't care what everyone is doing at every moment in time, unless I am working with them. And if I do - hey, I'll call you. It really isn't that bad waiting to watch the news or read the paper, either. Call me old fashioned, but I don't have that kind of time, people.

And Vent #5 - Obama needs to stop being a media whore and lock some people in the Oval Office until they can fill their open positions, and get some plans in writing. You can only talk about these things for so long, until people get frustrated. I don't want to see a surprise tax pop up in a few years to pay for everything, just be honest and hit us with it now.

Aaahhh. Much better. Now I can go water some plants and do some yoga.

Refuge From the Mean Public

It's really weird, but I feel like I have found a refuge from work at school this week. Not that pharmacy workers regularly need a refuge, but we had one of the worst Mondays in a very long time. Mondays are tough enough with the high volume of prescriptions, but we just seemed to have problem after problem on top of our regular Monday. Not only did it seem as if every customer that got a regular narcotic prescription was calling hourly to see if their doctor had returned our fax, but the military's insurance computers were down, and so we couldn't bill anything for them. Then Kusler's called several times for several transfers and asked us to fax them, only to find out that their fax machine wasn't working after they called and rudely complained about us not sending them. Note it was no fault of ours, but two of their technicians were beeahtches about the whole matter.

Then to top off my Monday, I got chewed out by one of our pharmacists because an acquaintance of mine transferred a prescription out of state to a pharmacy that didn't know sh** from shinola, as my grandpa would have said. That pharmacy didn't even understand what she wanted filled, but yet she called my boss and, as he put it, condescendingly bitched him out for the other pharmacy's incompetancy. And finally to conclude the problem festival, we ended the night with a 20 prescription list from a patient that called them in 30 minutes before closing, when we only have two pharmacy staff members working. This customer is on disability and doesn't work, so it's not like she didn't have all day to call them in when we can actually handle that volume of a request.

I was so happy to look at the schedule yesterday to find myself in the nursing home packaging pharmacy, because there's limited contact with the public. However, about 2 hours into my workday, the out-patient pharmacy's printer shredded a paper inside of it during a paper jam. They called the IT people, and scheduled an expensive maitenance call for today, but they were using my printer way too much, and so I helped them fix theirs. These engineering classes are coming in handy. I actually took that sucker apart, cleaned it out, and put it back together. Of course that took 45 minutes out of my day. Just 3 more years, just 3 more years.

This morning I got to play with GIS maps and started a zoning and planning project. I really like GIS and I'm so glad I found my niche. After 1 week of this GIS/Geosystems class, I'm no longer afraid of making bad planning decisions, because the technology is just so much better than 14 years ago when I first attempted this degree. It will be really cool to expand the knowlege into my WWU classes next year. I'm so glad it's a school day today, did I say that already?

Doggy Diabetes? No, It's Cushing's.

I once swore I would never prepare special food for an animal, no matter what. Now here I am preparing hamburger and white rice twice a day for the little dog, because my husband doesn't understand what's wrong with the dog. We took him to the vet on Thursday, because he was lethargic, drinking excessively and had started breaking housetraining. I knew something was really wrong, because for a good year now, he didn't want to play much and he had been putting on so much weight. The vet called me yesterday with a diagnosis of Cushing's Disease which is an excess production of the stress regulating hormones ACTH and Cortisol.

I understood 95% of what he tested for and the results found, so when I got home, I pulled out the old faithful, gargantuan Biology book and found out it can be caused by one of two things. The most common cause is a pituitary tumor that doesn't respond to excess cortisol in the endocrine system, so production of ACTH in the pituitary doesn't stop. The excess ACTH causes even more cortisol to be produced by the adrenal glands. The other cause could be an adrenal gland or kidney tumor that is causing excess production of cortisol that doesn't respond to ACTH levels in the endocrine system. In layman's terms, the biological feedback loop that regulates stress hormones in the body is damaged by a tumor, and so the dog's body thinks it needs to respond with excess fat storage in the abdomen, and unsatiable hunger and thirst.

Then I went on to the WSU Veterinary School website to see the treatment and prognosis of canine Cushing's, and to be frank, treated or untreated lifespan is the same. Untreated, he will eventually get pancreatitis, diabetes, seizures, congestive heart failure and kidney and liver failure. The treatment improves quality of life, but does not prolong lifespan. By the time the disease has progressed to the point where most dog owners notice something is wrong, their immune systems are already shot, and most dogs that actually respond to treatment, end up eventually dying of a quickly progressive form of the disease once the medication stops working.

We guess he's had it for about 3 years, if not more. The early signs were desperate guarding of food, garbage raiding, gradual lethargy, a potbelly and lumpy, calcified fat deposits on the torso. He's had those symptoms for a few years now, and we just attributed them to his age and stress before he came to live with us. He's not really our dog, so we agreed no lifelong medicine or surgery, but the hubby thinks he'll be okay living in the garage and can eventually go back on dogfood and stay inside. Since the dog is in the later stages of Cushing's, this is not going to happen. I am going to have to keep preparing his food, his bowel control is only going to get worse, and I listed the eventual progress of the disease above.

The dog's feelings are already hurt now that he's been banished to the garage at night and when we're gone. I say get him a giant cheeseburger meal, take him to play what ball he wants to play, and let the morphine take him into doggie dreamland. My mom made my sister's dog live outside after it lost its control, and the poor little thing shiverred through the whole winter. It was blind, had no bowel control and was obviously in pain, and banished to the yard. I can't imagine what the dog must have been thinking after living inside for sixteen years. I don't think I'm being the cruel one here, but if we're not going to treat him, how is that not cruel? I'm in a real dilemna.

Amazing Pictures from Earth and My Front Yard

If you haven't seen the video of the underwater volcano erupting near Tonga, you really need to check it out. I'm excited to start my Physical Geography class with two volcanic eruptions occuring. NatGeo also has pictures of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska which is also erupting, although it's not quite as spectacular as the underwater eruption. Some local fishermen in Tonga are now saying that they can see a small amount of land forming on the water. If that's true, then that makes it even cooler!

Here is some color for this so far dreary PNW spring...

Mini Irises

Pink Primroses ala amphibians

A perfect Welcome pot for Spring