Joe Dirt

It seems this week and last week I've had the Anti-Midas Touch.

Rather than turning to gold, everything I touch turns to dust. Do I let go or push on?

Athletics

Parts of this video were shot on our track at San Francisco State University. It shows my javelin thrower Shawna with my mentor Dr. C. Harmon Brown, as well as my thrower Marisa doing chest flys in the weight room, and some other athletes training at San Francisco State University.

Growing Up

I'm proposing a new yardstick for maturity: Maturity can be measured by the amount of fear felt by a person in any situation.

The amount of fear felt doesn't always match the amount displayed. If a person displays a fearful reaction (which can be observed as sadness (I am not loved-If I am not loved I might die), anger (If I do not get justice, I might die), withdrawl (I will retreat in fear before I get killed), etc., even extreme joy is a reaction to a withdrawn sense of fear - professional comedians are in business because they are sensitive/fearful people who can access and communicate subtley the spectrum of people's fears). Fear is a non-useful stress reaction that will cause undue stress and aging in the body. Very rarely does it ACTUALLY protect us from death. The trick is learning which battles to fight...learning to discern better and truly let slide the things that will not kill us in the end.

Wisdom is generally recognized as making decisions devoid of fear; understanding the "big picture."

Inner Worlds

"Every man is a chasm; it is dizzying to look down."

Campfire Chemistry

So I learned a new campfire trick this weekend that has awakened the dormant chemical engineer in me. I am determined to get to the bottom of this one so my research is below. The trick is that if you buy a tube of copper and insert it into a garden hose (or any other kind of rubber hose, so I was told), and toss it into the campfire, it will create a dazzling light show of greens and blues in the campfire. I believe my guests inserted a black rubber hose into a copper tube sealed on one side...same effect.

Below is an example of some of the colors.


I was immediately curious about which specific chemicals were involved, and naturally, what heath concerns there were to be had.

All I was able to observe was that there was gas produced by a reaction (the colors did not stem right from the copper tube, they were spread over the whole fire), and you don't get the normal "burning rubber" smell when it burns in this way. Some people will also bore holes into the copper pipe which supposedly helps the process along.

Here's my research so far:
Colors: Green & Blue Flames
Campfire Temperature: Up to 3140 degrees Farenheit, hot enough to melt copper and cause many gaseous reactions
Main chemicals involved in producing color: Copper with Chlorine produces blue flames, Copper itself will give off green light when very hot
Health Concerns: Burning anything that contains chlorine/chlorinated plastic will create poisonous gases that will lay the foundation for cancer in your body. Burning rubber/plastic = BAD. Don't do it every weekend.

Rubber Hose Compostion:
"The garden hose material that you seek is to make this colored flame work well is poly vinyl chloride (PVC). When combined with the copper it will produce very lovely flames. When you burn this material it releases several gases. One of those gases being phosgene gas. Perhaps you have heard of this gas. It was quite popular during World War I where it was used as a chemical weapon. I will take my campfires without any nerve gas please."
http://campingearth.com/blog/2007/03/17/turn-a-boring-campfire-into-a-colorful-light-show/

"The majority of garden hoses are made of one of four types of materials: rubber, polyurethane, vinyl, or recycled rubber. Vinyl hoses are probably the least expensive hoses but they have the shortest life span. Rubber and reinforced rubber hoses are slightly more expensive and also more flexible, hence they will most likely outlast a cheap vinyl hose. A hose with an added layer of outer cord reinforcement (made with nylon or rubber) will best resist abrasion and wear. Hardier, reinforced hoses can withstand weather changes and punctures."

Rubber Research:
"Indeed, burning tires spew deadly chemicals into the air, including hydrocarbons, dioxins, hydrogen chloride, arsenic, nickel, zinc and chromium."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20000812/ai_n9973511

"It may come as a surprise to some to learn that most garden hoses leach lead and are unsafe for drinking. Warning labels accompany these hoses in many cases, but not all. A lead-free garden hose will clearly be marked as safe for drinking. These hoses are often sold as marine or recreational vehicle (RV) hoses. While there can be minute amounts of lead found even in tap water, hoses made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or brass fittings can leach unsafe levels of lead into the water. Lead is used in the manufacturing process of brass fittings to make the brass malleable in order to shape it, and is also used as a stabilizer in PVC. According to a May 2003 article from Consumer Reports, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deemed safe levels of lead to be less than 15 parts per billion. Consumer Reports tested 16 of the most popular hoses sold nationwide, finding that many leached up to 100 times that amount at the initial flush of standing water. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-lead-free-garden-hose.htm

Campfire Temperature: "A camp fire is ~ 2,000K" (That's about 3140 degrees Farenheit) http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen06/gen06272.htm

Plastics Research:
Burning plastics is also very very bad for you. Backyard trash burning is thought to be one of the biggest sources of dioxin poisoning.
"Some types of plastic contain elements besides the standard carbon,hydrogen, and oxygen. Nylons contain nitrogen, and polyvinyl chloridecontains, of course, chlorine."
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00031.htm

Copper Research:
From the Cupric Chloride MSDS:
"copper fume...can cause symptoms similar to the common cold, including chills and stuffiness of the head."
http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/C5863.htm

"Copper (I) chloride salts imparts a blue colour to flames. The picture above shows the colour arising from adding cuprous chloride (CuCl) to a burning mixture of potassium chlorate and sucrose. This flame is relatively cool. Hotter flames burn green bacause of emission from copper atoms (only to be demonstrated by a professionally qualified chemist following a legally satisfactory hazard asessment)."
http://www.webelements.com/copper/

"When you heat copper ions, the energy "excites" electrons and pushes them into higher energy levels. Being in this excited state is not particularly stable, so the electron rapidly returns to the ground state and emits a photon (a particle of light) to release the energy it gained by being excited. These photons are the green light you see from excited copper atoms returning to the ground state."
http://van.physics.uiuc.edu/qa/listing.php?id=2496

Crazy Times

My schedule is as hectic this week as it has ever been. Here are some of the things I am getting completely overwhelmed with in a typical day this week (including some of the things I think about but don't have time to do). Thank God I don't have any REAL problems!:

• Clean and Sell my car within a month
• Find 3 roommates to share a new apartment in 3 weeks
• Work my morning day job
• Massage clients in the afternoon
• Answer the phone for my massage office
• Train my new employees
• Manage the conversion of my massage office contractors, meet with payroll, accounting, and lawyers, & work with the city to permit my new office
• Figure out how to keep from going bankrupt next month
• Figure out what my boyfriend is doing 6 months from now
• Get ready for my 2nd 10-year reunion in 2 weeks on Friday...in North Dakota!
• Followup on my 1st 10-year reunion; pictures, summary, website updates, etc.
• Plan a hammer throwing training camp and start advertising it
• Write a month-long training plan for one of my athletes
• Blog about my life, ideas
• Feed and water my cat
• Water my plants
• Sort my mail
• Sort my emails
• Feed myself
• Watch the new season of Project Runway
• Start posting to my new hammer blog
• Figure out how to actually make money in my massage business
• Try not to pull all of my hair out
• Exercise/yoga (notice how far up the list this one made it)
• Read (yeah, right)
• Study a foreign language, go to the beach, clean my room (forget about it)

Haha, I'm listening to a Staind song: "Can't see through this, too much pressure. Can't see through this, too much pressure."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

But still have a smile tonight. I may actually be psychotic.

Entitlement, Living Beyond Your Means, and Moving On

I knew this would be an interesting summer. I just didn't know the extent!

I've finally hit rock bottom financially living in San Francisco. It took me 1 year and 9 months to max out all my available credit, and now I must begin the slow, painful process of shedding luxuries and living within my means.

I've always been a bit confused about what my "means" actually were. When I was a child, I always felt I deserved the nice things everyone else seemed to have. As a college student, my 'means' became how much I would make after college. When I had a high-paying job, it was how much I was earning plus what my home value was speculated to be.

Now, I think I still have the degree and the means to earn money, but have chosen to blaze my own trail and follow my passions, my way, and they just so happen not to be passions that involve piles and piles of steaming cash.

I'm selling my pride and joy Prius, and I'm moving out of my 775/month room in hopes for something half that price, if it exists in this town.

I went to the Toyota dealership to get a quote on my car and fate had it that another woman was there reluctantly trading in her Prius as well. She asked me what I was doing and why, and when I told her I couldn't afford the payments, her companion gave her a hug and said, 'see, you're not the only one.'

Yes, poor, poor Americans, I know. I will be forming the San Francisco PPP support group, People Parting with Priuses.

It actually feels very good going back to my impoverished roots. I believe that when I am ready to handle money responsibly, it will come my way. I managed to make and blow over a quarter million dollars in 3 years. George Bush would be so proud!

Easy come, easy go. Time for the next chapter. I'll go grab my shovel.

Wanted

Between the Body Worlds exhibit and the movie Wanted, I've seen enough human carnage in the past 2 days to last a lifetime. Bite of thigh, anyone?

Eating Vegan

Okay, first off, I am not trying to tell you I am vegan now. I love me some dairy, and a life without milk chocolate sounds sad.

One thing that keeps me from doing it is knowing that I will become a sensitive sissy if I do. Here's the analogy: If you take someone that smokes a pack a day and you have them smoke one more cigarette, they will hardly notice any effect. But if you have a young child (or me) with nice pink lungs smoke one, they will feel like they are choking themselves.

There's something about switching your diet to eliminate the middle man (the animals that come between the seeds, plants and your stomach) that re-trains your stomach to operate on a new level of efficiency, or so I've been told.

People always ask me how I get enough protein on my diet sans meat, as if I'm wasting away. People in this country are so used to planning their meals around the meat that they can't imagine a meal without it. There is so much prejudice in the athletic world that I want to get back into full time training just to show people you don't NEED meat. Look at the elephant...no meat, no problem. I wouldn't mess with an elephant OR call one a sissy.

Burning Trash

I remember an assignment in an honors college critical thinking class to bring in a song with meaningful lyrics. We had to read the lyrics aloud then play the song for everyone. Everyone laughed or snickered when it was my turn and told them I had brought a song by Alanis Morisette (it was 'Would Not Come').

But by the time I had finished reading the lyrics, they understood why I had chosen that song. While they were expecting a scorned lover's song, what they got was something much broader and more relevant.

Today's lyric is another gem I found in a Switchfoot song (Golden (Album Version), off their Nothing is Sound album), a band I never would have volunteered to see in concert were it not for a friend who had tickets.

'There's a fear that burns like trash inside.'

What a beautiful line. All of our fears, our insecurities ARE just that--trash we burn inside ourselves. Sometimes we stoke the fire ourselves even. And the product of cultivating fear in ourselves is a poisonous smoke we blow everywhere, causing others to turn their backs and walk away. Remember that fear is trash, and our job is to take out the trash, not burn it!

Trust the Universe

Traveling alone for this past week has reminded me of something: How being alone tests your faith in the universe (literally "one song", or the fact that we are all part of one big song). Being among crowds of "strangers" can make you question your every move, and make you wonder if you are really OK. I suppose that is why people always tell me that I'm brave to pack up my things and go driving off on my own, just hunting for adventures.

In new situations, your brain is constantly re-assessing your interactions with the people and environment around you and forcing you to re-evaluate your responses. I noticed my natural reaction to this stimulus was first to become needy...to force long eye contact with people, or to hold onto conversations a bit longer than normal, just to have a false assurance that I was OK. Then my yoga training kicked in, and Swami Satchidananda's words began to guide me: If you want nothing, then everything will want you.

I found that as soon as I gave up my insecurities about having my needs met, and just focused on being interested in others, I was finally greeted with the bountiful, meaningful connections I had been craving, and even offered a place to stay for tomorrow night. Another way of saying it is "Let Go and Let God."

It reminds me of a particularly frustrating week for me in San Francisco some months back. I was feeling sorry for myself one morning and thinking that I was so poor I didn't even have bread in the refrigerator with which to make a cheese sandwich for lunch. I was reluctant to go ahead and pay for groceries once again with my credit card at the grocery store because it wasn't payday yet and I still hadn't developed a good plan for making ends meet. It was that exact afternoon; I dropped my business laundry off at the dry cleaners, and my dry cleaning lady came from the back of the store carrying a bag with 3 loaves of bread, and offered for me to take them home. She explained that they (Chinese) prefer to eat rice, and her mother brings home food like this from the senior center that they just can't eat. That was an emotional moment for me, being handed bread from a stranger in a clear time of need (very New Testament!).

I took it as God's way of saying, "Look how I will provide for you. Keep your peace, continue to do the job I have set before you, and you will make it through." I guess looking back on it, that was my own personal miracle. As far as I know, I am the only customer of that dry cleaners that takes home loaves of bread with the laundry--sometimes so much bread that myself and my roommates can't use it all.

My lesson from this trip was to trust the universe. It has shown me, once again, that I will be taken care of.

The World Wide Web of Information

So I was looking up Bell's Palsy to make sure I spelled it right, and lo-and-behold found out there is a strong connection between it and cold sores. Wow! Each little mystery, indeed.

http://www.bellspalsy.ws/cause.htm

Out of the Slump?

FHS Reunion 00015, originally uploaded by Chrissy Mc.

I realize my last couple posts have been a bit depressing. In spite of the beautiful scenery around me, I am reminded every day about how little energy I have. For the past year or two, I have lived in a constant state of low-energy, like I'm on a mild depressant or something.

I've decided to return to taking multivitamins. I've been monitoring my health fairly closely over the past year since foregoing eating meat, though I haven't been to a doctor or gotten stats. I remember getting tested for anemia when I worked at Chevron, and was disappointed when the tests came back negative. I've always FELT a little anemic, but have never been able to prove it.

Some other strange symptoms have returned this year...in February, I began pulling at my split ends again. I believe I have at least a mild form of trichotillomania, which started around age 12/13. Pulling your hair out is a funny disorder. Basically, it does what other addictions do, which is to focus the mind when it becomes overwhelmed by either boredom/ennui or overstimulation. It's like your brain is a CD or record (for those of you that kick it old-school) that skips for a while, and while it is skipping you kind of transcend time and circumstances. My hairstylist told me it is always the girls with the beautiful, thick, healthy heads of hair that end up with this habit. For the past couple of weeks, it has been under control.

Boredom seems to be the biggest trigger for me, and boredom actually can become more of an issue the busier you try to be! When you are completing task after task during the day, the pauses between the business feels like boredom, or a kind of uneasy indecisiveness.

I have a theory that there are many things that ly dormant in our bodies and just wait for stress to bring them out. For example, my father has had all his toes amputated in the past couple of years. As far as he can recall, he thinks it may have stemmed from an injury he had as a boy scout when he was 8 years old. He had a shoe problem on a long hike and ended up with an infection. It was supressed for about 50 years, then came back when his foot was re-injured during a construction accident.

Similarly, since I was a child, I would get cold sores on my lower lip when stressed mentally or when I would be in the sun for too long. The last one I had was probably 3-5 years ago. I've learned to pay better attention to my stress levels, and had avoided them pretty well until this past week, when my excitement and mental planning for my class reunion and vacation got the best of me.

Another disturbing thing I've noticed this year is that the left side of my face will start to go numb if I hold onto any negative stress at my day job. Luckily I caught this one early enough and recognize the triggers. I know people who have had one side of their face paralyzed (Bell's Palsy?) and it's not pretty!

So I know I sound like a mess right now, but that's what I get for volunteering for a crazy, chaotic lifestyle this summer! Routines are probably good for people to have, and I should probably get back into one when I return from my 1.5-week vacation.

On the Verge of Collapse

As I drive over some impressive bridges en route to Eugene, Oregon, I am reminded of how interesting the next 100 years will be! Eighty percent of the nation's bridges are deteriorating. Oil pipeline infrastructure designed for a 50-year life expectancy in steel and concrete life is reaching the point of structural collapse. The Nation's landfills, though some have been retrofitted, will continue to collect poison and toxins that no one has decided what to do with should climate change disrupt these weak, poisonous burial grounds. Road construction/maintenance on America's highways is predicted to fall behind population demands.

You get the feeling we are living in the last of the 'good ole days,' before energy, food, and resources (air, water, etc) become scarce, and the infrastucture begins to collapse. The engineers that run our oil companies, levee systems, and transportaion systems did not design for a civilization that would last thousands of years, but DOZENS of years.

This will put us in a vulnerable position in the eyes of our enemies. The population will demand more resources be spent to upkeep infrastructure, yet we will have to keep the military strong to protect our interests. This can go very badly or very well, depending on who our leader is.
The leader will need to be someone with a thousand-year vision for our civilization. I believe this is why we currently see the shift in politics away from special-interest money. Special interests generally support initiatives that create short term benefits for 'special' individuals at the expense of the greater, common good.

We've recognized early on as a Nation that un-governed capitalism fosters a primitive human tendency toward selfish greed. That is why there are laws against Monopoly and Trusts which drive money (and power) to single entities at the expense of less powerful entities.
If Obama really is the candidate of change that we all hope for, his will be the responsibility of defining the next 300 years and beyond:

How can we be LESS greedy as a nation? How will we take better care of our citizens and neighbors? How will we clean up the messes we've created? How will we come together with the intelligent nations of the world to allocate resources and what goals will the world set for itself? Will each person vow to let their neighbor find and serve God in their own way?

Like the Phoenix, our citizens must rise to the occasion. Serious discussions must take place in every city legislature, every house, every church. Who do we WANT to be? This is our chance to right the course.

Home Sweet Home

A few days before my big trip back to Montana, a man and his two grown sons were shot to death in their cars on my street corner in San Francisco. The motive was determined to be road rage. That 4-way stop is a particularly frustrating one located on the way up an unkempt hilly street lined with cars.

This episode so close to my house made my obervations while driving back to Montana particularly poignant. It was amazing how, when I reached about Pocatello going north, how remote a possibility road rage seemed. Life and traffic just seemed to slow down, and I observed people actually looking me in the eye from their cars. If anything, these perfect strangers began to go out of their way to yield to me in traffic, smiling and waving me forward, even out-of-turn. Driving became a pleasant experience, almost a way of interacting socially, like making small talk in a grocery store.

Having spent over 1.5 years in a city has certainly given me another perspective, and I have to say that there is nothing like the small-town friendliness that I grew up with. Those that say life in Northern California will make you soft have probably never spent time in the true "North".

Ahhh, Home Sweet Home.