3.29.2009

I woke up this morning and as I lay in my bed slowly registering the day, I heard a sound I almost couldnt recognize, this melodic yet strangely obnoxious sound. As I came to I realized it was birds chirping -the sign of a beautiful spring day! Then coming home from church there was a nice white surprise flying through the air. of course we got a crazy blizzard of snow. I cant believe it snowed today, it started off so nice. well at least its still march so that counts as wintertime.

Lets see...not too much is going on, im just super busy with school work. We went up to my fhe brothers cabin a couple weekends ago so that was pretty. I love being in the middle of nowhere seeing the stars so distinctly. I swear there were even more than they have in the planitarium!

My roommates made a little under one thousand cup cakes today and beautifuly frosted each one individually like MK always does. oh, my nail just broke -thats pretty lame. I've been practicing my harmonica a lot so when I get home you'll be blown away by my newly acquired musical abilities.

oh and I appreciate everyone for letting me interview them, it was great to catch up and I can't wait to see you all at eastertime!

3.07.2009

I've been working on setting up my schedule for this next semester and have it figured out so hopefully I will only have 2 semesters left once I get home from my mission, as long as class times dont overlap.

I'll be taking D+C, Anatomy PhysiologyII, Recreational Leadership, Program MGMT, Therapeutic Recreation, and Mountain Biking. I'm pretty excited, i'll be busy but thats a good thing. My classes start at 745 and 8 again everyday but at least next semester will be warm and light out.

My favorite place to go out to eat, Backyard BBQ has started having free bottomless french fries on mondays with any purchase so I have a new monday activity to add to watching 24.

I miss my boy...

i thought this was cute and funny, its dereks dad Bruce, and his youngest brother Caleb.












its play gun obviously but i just thought it was funny cause they're all hunter boys.

The whole family. i took these when i was at their house a couple weeks ago...

ahh im so bored, its saturday and I spent the day in the library and now am doing more hw... well i guess im taking a break.

I love easter season because they have Cadbury mini eggs and they are hands down the best holiday candy.

Last weekend I went down to my favorite spot in rexburg: the train tracks. It was so cold so I didnt stay as long as usual but it was very pretty out...








3.04.2009

physiology stuff

you dont have to continue reading, its nothing really of interest about my life...

I just got out of an anat/phys study thing and its boggling my mind, so I figured I would stop by the library and jot what I remember down so I can think about it again sometime once I more fully own the concepts. WARNING: this might not make sense the way I am writing it because I am not using proper terms and just getting thoughts out. and i am strange sometimes. I mean come on, i am a wise :)

We have action potentials occuring constantly through our body. [depolarization from gradients changing and reaching threshold to release different elements] These trigger voltage gated channels oppening and continuing down reaction style through muscles and nerves [mostly] These lead down cell membranes and continue with lots of different channels and nerotransmitters going through and they eventually go out of the nerve and with new parts added go down into t-tuberals and hit sarcolemas which release calcium to move our sacromeres closer together and our muscle contracts because of other details like a meyosin head being attracted to the active sites and then ATP cocking the head back down to be released again. And to the interesting part...haha ok well
our brain controls how many muscle fibers our motor units [a motor neruron and all the muscle cells it connects to] need to connect to which says how much strenght is used for an event. [example picking up a bowling ball] now our muscles exert to their full potential each time they are used but there are just different amounts and sizes of the fibers connected that are told to perform each task. Now applying this: we see a bowling ball and go to pick it up. our mind sends action potentials down our motor units telling certain fibers to fire in order to contract our muscles and pick up the ball. Knowing bowling balls to be on the heavy side we will be using more fibers connected to our motor neruons than if we pick up a sheet of paper. Now as we pick up this bowling ball, it is a trick one [extremely light] and because we already exherted so much strenght to the event our arm shoots up and the ball gets thrown up in the air. So I started thinking, can we trick our brains by telling them to use certain size or amounts of muscle fibers or are they learned already from experience, since we are little. Try to apply too much force to picking up the mouse, you catch yourself and stop it. so that wont work unless you fully devote yourself to it somehow without hesitation, but it would be cool to try and be able to control them. You kind of do that with like hitting a baseball you use as many as you can, but you already know to because of hitting one before.
Now even our thoughts are moved by action potentials, they are shooting through our brains to create the possibility of the thought we hadnt even thought yet. Then I realize that by exersizing we are expanding our motor neurons and fibers right? and keeping small ones too. BUT that means when we are working out to build our muscles we are actually also building our brains by controling the muscle possibilities. Do we use all possible fibers when we try our harderst? do we have to consiously think about it to do so?

OK now that most things are out of my head and I have not come full circle I'm going home....haha maybe one day ill look at this again and try to make sense of it all. Until then, I'll stick to what will be on the exam.