dusting off my brain

I did not take into account that my air pollution class might require me to reach deeeeep into the recesses of my brain and pull out equations from, what, seven or eight years ago? Like, calculating the enthalpy or those statistic and money questions from when I took the FE. I know what net present worth is, I didn't know I'd ever have to calculate it again. I mean, I can do it, but it's kind of like when you, say, used to ride your bike like all the time, and then years later someone wants you to ride--you are certainly capable, but maybe you need to steer with your hands instead of your knees and you'll feel a little shaky at first?

I dunno. It's how I feel, though. It gets harder and harder to find that knowledge in this head o' mine. I'm sure it'll work out though. I also have NO IDEA how I used to go to college and take 19 or more hours and manage to fit in having friends and a being in a sorority and senate and intermurals and um, everything else. Oh yeah, and study for all those hours. Seriously, I feel like any free time I have is spent reading or doing homework, and it is only the second class!!!!

(granted I have a full time job and he did assign about 40 pages to read by today and 30 pages by thursday plus homework, and I'm not accustomed to that, but still. anyway)

So, factoids I've learned that might interest you (and ones I didn't know/didn't occur to me)...

From "global warming" (or, if you are one of those nay-sayers, just pretend I'm talking about the very obvious temperature increase across the world)--the oceans have already risen a foot just from thermal expansion (how water takes up more space when it's hotter).

After the pH of a lake or ocean lowers to ~4.5, fish start dying. To put this in perspective, here are some pH values for common substances...

11.0 Ammonia
8.3 Baking Soda
7.61 Formula 409 Cleaner
7.4 Human Blood
7.0 Pure Water
6.6 Milk
4.71 Sunny Delight
4.5 Tomatoes
4.24 Sprite
4.0 Wine & Beer
2.6 Coke
2.0 Lemon Juice
1.0 Battery Acid

So right between Sprite and Tomatoes fish start to die. That AMAZES me. Not for why you might think--it amazes me because they last so long. :(

The greenhouse effect--the term really gives off the wrong idea. I've actually always been a little confused by what they were getting at, I mean, don't we NEED to trap heat to live? We don't live in an exothermic world. And yep, we do need to trap it. It's about the excess heat, which makes sense (though using that term makes about as much sense to me as north carolina's system of naming roads, but anyway). And? If we didn't have any of the actual "greenhouse effect" and didn't trap any heat? The earth would be cooler by 33C/60F--which means that right now, in my neck of the woods, it would be roughly 18F. Clearly, we would not be living here.

right, so moving on from the nerdiness...

Matt took some SUPER cute pictures of Gobi and Hazel on Saturday afternoon. He's quite the photographer, yes? I like 'em, so I'm sharing. :)

tonight I will be rock climbing and then coming home to read and do homework. and if I'm lucky, watch exactly one episode of heroes!