mitochondria mass

lactic acid (updated link, 5/18) is not the evil culprit of muscular sluggishness as we have been led to believe. it is actually just the opposite, fuel for the muscles.

mom and dad's new blog

the land. illustrates progress on the building of their new home, which has recently commenced.

note: this blog will be listed in blogroll in sidebar for future reference.

get it done

went on a long bike ride the other day, and my destination led me through the confusing township of dundalk, md. dundalk boarders the southeast corner of baltimore and is home of several industrial ports. it has a 50s pizzazz to it. stemming partially from the sub-urban, yet townie feel, and the pervading working class edge. the oddity of that which is dundalk is enjoyable.

and this gas station, situated in the heart of dundalk, has decided to stop playing the gas game and price their gallons at the inevitable (i actually believe that they ran out of 3s, but am unsure how 7s resemble 3s...)

jason

amy and i had a great visit with my cousin jason. we met up after work the past two nights and went out for dinner and real conversation. it is wonderful to catch up on things, and to share memories and perspectives of times past. we talked about a lot of events and people that i hadn't thought of in awhile. it was particularly interesting to hear his memories of grandpa v., and how remarkably similar his remeberances were to my own.

i feel that our brains are similar in many ways, jason and mine. and it is difficult to say whether that be a biological issue, or just that we think on a similar wavelength and would be friends regardless of biological connection. probably a bit of both, i would venture to guess. nevertheless, jason is a beautiful human being and a great friend. i hope amy and i can make it to chicago to see him in his homestead soon.

incidentally, that is the fiberoptic peace bird of happiness that grandma v gave out for xmas two years ago. it's illumination and happy peacefulness still glow, as can be seen from our amusement.

last spring semester class

in a half-hour i have to present a paper and oral review of the findings of my semester project on the healthy air act. the bill passed the state legislature this session, and the gov has signed off on it. it is one of the most stringent air pollution bills in the country. it makes me proud to be a marylander. i feel calm and composed about the presentation, so i hope that i'm not deluding myself with false confidence.

tomorrow, we are going to dinner with my favorite cousin, jason, who is in town from milwaukee. really looking forward to seeing him and catching up.

vanity update

yesterday, i took a look in the mirror, as i do on a modestly infrequent basis, and found a new white hair. now, the white hairs which freckle the sides of my head have reached the point where they are virtually incalculable, so what makes this one different, you ask. i guess because it was jetting out of my nostril. yes, a white nose hair. the body certainly does have a sense of humor.

cotton monsters

when i was a kid, i didn't really believe that there were monsters under my bed. but what did concern me was that television shows and movies always talked about kids who feared such creepy things under their beds, and this made me wonder if i was incorrect in my monster disbelief. there is really only two occurrences that stick out in my mind as feeling grave fear from seeming anomalies in my youth.

one was turned out to be the shadow of a tree limb that shown through my bedroom window and danced about on a windy night. the second turned out to be the gurgling of my childhood dog's stomach that i had unknowingly fallen asleep atop. in both instances, i awoke from sleep and remained petrified and scared for what seemed an eternity, and slowly gained up enough chutzpah to pop up out of bed and face my fear. the realities of both situations were met with sudden deflated emotion. this beastly image of what was going on was so completely built up in my mind, in the case of my dog's stomach gurgles, i visualized robbers in the house stealing all our stuff (interestingly enough, the tree limb outside my window i also thought to be a robber, hmmm...), and when i confronted them both it was a lackluster reality. almost a bit of disappointment, in a way.

anyway, these fantastic cotton monsters are made by a baltimore fiber artist. you honestly need to hold one to appreciate it, but i think that it may have been this is the type of creature that all the kids in movies and tv were faffing about.

cars are a luxury

from mid-1998 until october of 2003, i did not own an automobile. there was a brief period of anxiety about what living without a car would be like. what i came to discover was a vast amount of disposable income that began to flood my bank account (o.k., not flood, but more than a gentle trickle).

all of a sudden i had another few hundred dollars each month. there was no gas, no maintenance, no insurance, and no loan payments (although at the time of my de-car-ification, the 1993 geo tracker was paid in full--yes that's right, a geo tracker).

the loss of my car became a great liberating factor. a bit of a luxury, it may seem, as at the time i owned second generation curbside recycling in ames, iowa-- a bicycle-powered curbside service utilizing bicycle, custom bicycle trailers by jim and joan at bikesatwork.com. the town i was living in was 5mile x 5mile square of uber-flatlands amidst cornfields.

this did not limit my mobility, as one might argue it would. to the contrary, by bicycle i moved my home from ames, iowa to portland, oregon. partially fueled by curiosity, partially drive for adventure, and partially by the extra funding that i was able to save up after liquidating my automobile.

looking at jim and joan's site this evening, i found an interesting sublink that totals your costs of car ownership, and calculates how much money you could save accumulated over years in a low-percentage account.

in 2003, my lovey and i moved back to oregon from japan and decided to purchase a car together and travel across the states together, motoring our way to our new home of baltimore, md. we bought a $2,400 subaru legacy wagon from the portland rescue mission that a teacher had donated. to date, we've been fortunate in only putting minor maintenance costs into our chariot, and managed to rack up the miles to just shy of 175K. our subaru has proven to have been a wise purchase as far as automobiles go. we've been able to conserve resources by using only one car, save moolah by sharing costs, and be able to make trips to places that we otherwise might not have gone. a compromise, perhaps.