the one that's black and blue

hoooooooooooooly cow, have i got a story for you. and even better, i have a picture to supplement my brain ramblings.

so as some of you might know, i'm training for a marathon (see here). it should be epic. as such, i was running the other night. it's about 10 pm and i'm almost done with my little five mile run. i'm running on canyon road in provo, heading home. at night, canyon road is pretty quiet. there's no cars or other people, except for this one rogue car that comes speeeeeeding down the road.

i'm assuming the people in the car thought it would be funny to throw something at the two runners just trying to get their run in. so they (those punks, whoever they were) roll down their window and throw a paper mcdonald's cup at us (i'm running with a friend, if that wasn't clear). they threw a CUP FULL OF WATER AT US!!!

i, being the one closer to the street, took the bullet and got hit by the cup on the back of my leg. okay, so you're probably thinking to yourself, wow... you got hit by a paper cup. how tragic. (that's dripping in sarcasm, btw)

but hey, don't forget that the car was going way fast and a cup full of water thrown out of a car at high speeds hits you LIKE A FREAKING BRICK.

all i remember thinking right after it hit me was:

1. wow, that hurt.
2. wow, that's going to bruise.
3. who in the world does that?
4. HOW OLD ARE THESE PEOPLE???!
5. seriously?

anyway, before i go to bed that night, it's definitely got a good lump the shape of the bottom of a cup and a tiny hint of a blue bruise showing up. the next morning... we'll just say it got exponentially worse overnight. one day later, it's still getting worse. 

so i bet you're dying now to see what happens to your leg when it gets hit by a flying fast-food paper object at high speeds. 

it might be the worst bruise i've ever had. and the picture doesn't quite do it justice. it's bad.

this is the medial side of my left leg. if you couldn't tell.

so once again i ask, who in the world does that? seriously??!!

the one where i'm astounded

so today i was studying outside of the wilk before i had to go to my open anatomy lab. i had my study book open to something that looked like this:

a girl passes by and stops to rearrange her backpack, looks down at my page, and asks me,

 "oh, are you studying art history?"

..........i think i might have stared at her for a second before i consciously took control of my brain and said,

"no. this is human anatomy. this is a body." 

oooooh, the things that you hear on-campus at byu. astounding.

the one about sperm

first of all, let me start out with a *big huge disclaimer*: sometimes when i completely immersed in a class, i morph into the world's biggest nerd. i think the things i'm learning are so cool. like so cool that i just have to tell everyone about them and blog about them. and then i tuck away my little factoids for later nerd opportunities.

okay, now that my disclaimer is out there, i learned the coolest thing in anatomy today! 

it's about how RARE and UNIQUE each of us really are!

it all starts when mommy and daddy are trying to have a little baby.

daddy lets loose 100,000,000 - 200,000,000 little spermies at a time. now, in order for you to get made, said spermie has to find mommy's big old egg (literally, the eggs are as old as the female is. we are born with them!). let's outline all of the ways this miraculous fertilization process gets difficult.

• upon contact, half of the little swimmers DIE. just because it's so dang acidic and they can't handle it. talk about sperm genocide - about 100,000,000 deaths in the first few moments of their little adventure.
• next obstacle: getting past the vagina. unfortunately, the vagina has these microscopic ridge-y things called rugae that make it so that the little sperms get LOST. seriously though, to a tiny little sperm, those rugae are probably like mount everest. i'd get lost, too.
• sperm's other problem: they try to fertilize whatever the heck they come in contact with. yeah. so, it turns out that a lot of sperm will be misguided and run into mommy's white blood cells (you know, the ones trying to kill "foreign cells"). they try to fertilize the WBCs, only to fail miserably. poor little guys.
• yet another physical obstacle! the end of uterine tube (where actual fertilization takes place) has all these finger-like extensions called fimbriae. think like the fringe end of a rug, except tiny. a large amount of our sperm friends get STUCK in the fimbriae. whoops.
• okay, so now we're left with the chosen ones. they braved the elements, proving themselves worthy to approach the egg. only problem - there's only ONE egg. and only ONE sperm can get there first. so even if one sperm gets there .000001 seconds earlier, all subsequent sperms WILL DIE. it's like magic.

so just think about it: if another sperm beat the lucky sperm that made you who you are by even .00001 seconds, you would be a completely different person!!

isn't that sooooo cool?!!? 

oh man, this class might bring out the nerd in me.

also, please enjoy this overly cheesy cartoon i found. :)

the one where i didn't get an A

well folks, spring term is officially over. i have now officially experienced BYU's attempts at squishing a 14-week class into 8-weeks. it was hard and it was a lot of work. i may or may not have studied for 15 hours straight in attempt to cram all of that information into my little tiny brain nugget of mine.

was that effective? no, not especially.

i knew that i needed at least an 88.5% on the final to get an a- in the class. there's nothing worse than a b+ as a final grade. it's like the b+ just sits there and taunts you and tells you just how close you were to a status, but no, you failed. 

anyway, point of the story is that i did NOT get an 88.5. in fact, i got a little bit lower than that. it was not my finest hour in the testing center. i mean, not terrible, but definitely not wonderful. will i be getting an a or a- in the class? nope. but you know what, for once in my life, i am okay with that. because what i got out of this class was so much more than a stupid grade on a stupid college transcript that i won't even remember in 5 years. heck, i won't care about them in 2 years.

nutrient metabolism. 

this is what byu's academic catalog says the class is:

     
        chemical structures of nutrients, their food sources, requirements, digestion, absorption, transport, metabolism, functions, storage and excretion; metabolic consequences of nutrient deficiencies, interactions, imbalances, and toxicities.

this is one of the most amazing classes i've ever taken at byu. (#1 being, hands down, human physiology from dr. rhees.) i know this might sound silly, but this class kind of changed my life a little. 

not only did i learn every single detail about vitamins, digestion, metabolism and the likes, but my perspective on nutrition has completely changed. the foods that you eat, the foods that you don't eat, really do matter. 

some really cool random things that i learned this semester:

• salad dressing and salad - what is the healthier choice: regular dressing or low-fat/non-fat dressing? people eat salads to be "healthy". salads are generally a great source of the fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K. BUT because they are fat-soluble vitamins, it means that unless you eat fat with the meal, you don't absorb any of the nutrients. so does that mean that a salad without any fat is pointless? YES. it does. eat good fats with your salads, otherwise you're just munching on calorie-less greens.
• increasing your calcium can decrease fat stores. yeah, buddy! it's kind of counter-intuitive, because increased intracellular calcium actually promotes storage of adipocytes. vitamin d is needed to sort of shuttle the calcium into the cell so it can start fatty synthesis. but it turns out that increased dietary calcium decreases blood vitamin d. so more calcium = less vitamin d = less calcium uptake by cells = less adipose synthesis = less body fat = increased weight loss! (*note... this is not a scientifically proven way to lose weight, just a few fat cells*)

i was just going to also describe joseph goldberger's "filth" parties in detail, but then decided that describing how a man willingly injected himself with blood from pellagrous patients and swallowed nose droppings from the sickies who had pellagra was a little gross. yeah... but kudos to the man who was willing to die for science, though. (he did not get pellagra though, thus proving, to himself at least, that pellagra was not infectious) (**also kudos to you if you know what i'm talking about!)

anyway, all nastiness aside, nutrient metabolism has been one of my favorite classes ever. the fact that i didn't get an a+ in the class will not matter in 5 years. it probably won't even matter in 2 years. all i will remember is how amazing the class was and how it completely changed how i eat. and that my friends, is worth more than an a any day.

the one where you get musically culture-ified

eric whitacre.

if you already know who i'm talking about, then you basically know what i'm going to talk about.

sheer genius.

he's a choral composer and his pieces are incredible! talk about dissonance. talk about craziness! you can't even hear everything that's going on with all of the 50 kajillion parts singing at the same time.

now, i don't pretend to know anything about choral music, but thankfully i was exposed to several of his pieces in my cute little high school choir.

i randomly heard one of his songs at work today, so it reminded me of this whole genre of music that, let's be honest, i don't listen to very often (but should, because it's great).

so i decided you all should be exposed to some of eric whitacre's pieces.

the first one - sleep - my high school choir did this. there are parts in this song where literally 14 different notes are being sung. is it even possible for our brains to process all 14 of those notes at the same time? i don't know - listen for yourself. eric whitacre did this giant, global-wide, virtual choir. so you'll see people singing from all over the world and he matched them all up and made it into one choir. if you don't get chills at 3:40ish - 4:06, then you need to take a step back and listen more carefully.

another eric whitacre song we did is water night. the lyrics are infinitely weirder, but the dissonances might be even cooler. now think about it - try singing a note when someone next to you is singing a note like a half step down from you! also, not to mention that i sang first soprano, and to this day i still don't know how i ever sang that high.

on another nostalgic, choral sidenote, my choir also sang this song. by the amazing spiritual arranger moses hogan. here it's sung by the motab! (gotta love 'em) remember how i said i was first soprano?? check out 1:44. the really high part. yeah, that was the part that i sang. (it was the C above the C above middle C. eeeeek.) i don't know how i ever did that. haaaa! the quality's not that great, but it's short!

now, one last culture-ification. this was another high school classic. if you have never A) heard this song or B) watched the video, you are seriously missing out. it's hilarious. also, kind of creepy. i assumed everyone knew this song, until recently when i met people that had no idea what it was. enjoy! oh, and don't get too creeped out by the weird purple shag thing. you gotta make it to the end when they end up victorious and defeat the giant space-squid. yeah, it's epic.

well, there you have it for today. it's been real, it's been fun. who knows what i'll blog about next!

the one where i talk about pots

this is not a dating blog.

and yet somehow, i am writing another post about dating. i suppose it is an occupational hazard of being a student in provo, utah, that a mini-portion of our lives revolve around dating. it is the vision and priority of a large majority of byu students to find someone they can call an eternal companion. deny it all you want, but that's what we're most of us are looking for.

in the meantime while the 'game' proceeds, there are massive amounts of casualties - broken hearts, unfulfilled expectations, reorganization of one's priorities. even common sense and rationality are completely thrown out the window.

so as a group of friends and i were talking about some of the battle wounds and strategic tactics of dating, naturally we started discussing dating analogies. these bad boys are so perfect in their explanations, it's hard not to share with everyone.

now, have you ever asked yourself one of these questions?

how do all the weirdies get married off so quickly?!?
what do i have to do to get a boy's attention?
why don't boys get the hint?


well my friends, i might just have an analogy for you.

THE POT AND LID ANALOGY


so just imagine that you and i are pots. nice round, cooking pots. and it is our lifelong goal to find our corresponding, matching, perfect lid. the hard thing about being a round pot is that there are like five kajillion circle lids floating around the kitchen. so you have to search through them all, try it out, see how it fits, one at a time, until finally the perfect circle lid is found.

the weirdies on the other hand, let's say that they're not the typical round pot. they're all star-shaped and crazy-like. and it turns out there's only one other star-shaped lid in the kitchen. so hello, how hard is it to find? it's not.

now, am i trying to insinuate that because i haven't quickly found my lid, that i'm as normal as a round pot? no. who knows what shape we really are. but also, i'm not saying that the weirdie that's still single doesn't exist. but for the most part, the analogy sticks. go with it.




THE FISH AND FISHERMAN ANALOGY


fish and fisherman. fisherman tries his hardest to get the fish to take a bite. he'll bait his hook with the perfect little doo-dads and what-nots. now, you're probably thinking that the fish is the girl and the fisherman is the guy trying to lure in said girl.

FALSE.

the fisherman = the girl. fish = the boy.

why? because the girl has to conveniently place the hook right in front of the boy's (aka fish's) face otherwise he'll never take the jump and bite. guys must be just as self-conscious about asking girls out because they just don't do it like they used to. unless we drop the hint so blatantly, it's like they just don't get it.

so like i said, girls gotta bait their hook and get it all ready otherwise boys won't even know that there's a hook for biting a mile around.




alright, alright. that's enough analogy-goodness for one day. come back later for more!

the one where we hiked

so you know that awkward moment when you realize your mom (who you love dearly) has just told one of your friends (who happens to be a new guy friend) a really embarrassing story about you??

i'm sure i'm not the first one it's happened to, but it was pretty awesome either way.

so this last saturday, my dear mother was in town and she had never climbed the Y. we decided it was time to change that, so early on saturday my mother and i and two other friends drive up to the Y parking lot, ready to hike the 12 or so steep switchbacks.

we get up to the top. it's awesome, mainly due to the fact that you know you did it, more than the fact that the view is awesome, because honestly, it's the exact same view from the parking lot. nothing too exciting.

anyway, we're on the way down and from previous experience i know that walking down is especially painful on my knees, just because of the steepness and what not. controlled-running down is my preferred method of de-scaling the mountain. and because i know my mom, i knew she'd be 100% totally okay with my running down with one of my friends that came with me. i'll call this friend friend a. but friend b (a fairly new guy friend), being the incredibly nice guy he is (more of my thoughts on that will come -- turns out, there's such a thing as being too nice), decides to stay with my mom and walk down the mountain with her.

so we parted; friend a with me and friend b with mi madre. which i should have known wasn't the best idea.

later that day when i was with my mom going grocery shopping, i remembered that she had a good 20 minutes with this boy. i was curious as to what she talked about with him. she told me that they talked about his schooling. how he's planning on going medical school and so my mom naturally talked about how it was when my dad went through medical school. she even mentioned the fact that my dad got to deliver lots of babies during his residency rotations, which led to how he got to deliver me. and how i was the last baby he delivered.

cute, right?!?

yeah.

and then she mentioned about how when i was born, my dad thought i had some sort of congenital malformation, like a brain abnormality or cleft palate or something along those special lines.


eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew;ejkf;jkw;lejak;lwwfejkw;aj!!!!!!


haahaa, i laughed out loud, whether out of embarrassment or shock or just because the situation is so darn comedic, i'm not sure, but i definitely laughed.

just one of those funny things that happens. and it's totally fine, totally funny, but hopefully it totally never happens again.


oh and by the way, it turns out that i'm completely fine - no brain abnormality, no cleft palate, nothing. maybe i'm a little bit special, but that makes me awesome, right?!