Michaela

On Saturdays Ive been helping my friend Tia keep the munchkins in order as she coaches the sparks-a-rama team at our church the past couple of weeks. Tia's sister and mom help too. Tia's sister Michaela is your typical middle schooler, that doesnt really listen to anyone. She's been through a lot, her parents divorced and then her older sister was killed in a car accident a few years ago.

One day after Awana it was really cold outside and Michaela was standing in the parking lot alone, waiting for her family to come out. I walked past her and we horsed around a little. Then I said, "Michaela, its cold out here, you need to go inside," in a nice freind like concerned voice. I started walking to the car, and Michaela turned around and went inside. "She listens to you" mom said while the car was warming up.

I met Tia at a youth group at a different church when we were in middle school. (MnM the one talked about in the previous post.) A few months later her family showed up at the church I go to and they have been there ever since. Tia's been a friend to me, through a lot of crappy drama. I have this theory, that going to church ultimately means subjecting yourself to a lifetime of drama, and commiting yourself to make something of it. It has little to do with being Christian.

Anyways, the point of this whole thing was a chance to post Bon Jovi lyrics. Michaela sang this to me today, it was hilarious. We laughed really hard, got it stuck in our heads and kept singing it periodically for the rest of the morning, resulting in the above photograph.

I'll be there for you, these five words I swear to you
When you breathe, I wanna be the air for you
I'll be there for you
I'd live and I'd die for you
I'd steal the sun from the sky for you
Words can't say what love can do
I'll be there for you

-"I'll Be There For You, Bon Jovi

music

I recently heard a shocking little piece of information. In the next year, AudioA is breaking up. This was saddening but also deeply intriguing.

AudioA has a special place in my life. This was the band of middle school. The band we listened to during the "MnM" (a youth group i went to in middle school/early high school) days. That youth group was a place in my life when I was looking for more than my pretty conservative church could give me. At MnM I found friends, good music and honestly...fun. In this place, God was great, graceful, and fun. and there werent any rules for worshiping Him. clapping, screaming, and jumping up and down were the norm. I fell in love with my guitar there. I fell in love with dancing with God.

Everyone's pretty much moved on from that place now, but we still get glimpses of each other, and remember that place. Spirituality is a much calmer place now, and ive come to understand the magic and mystery of music that is much more traditional. But youll still see AudioA ocassionally scroll across my ipod. The music we listen to marks our lives, and becomes a part of who we are, I think.

"Man Of God"
by Audio Adrenaline

Sometimes I'm a liar sometimes I'm a fake
sometimes I'm a hypocrite that everybody hates
sometimes I'm a poet sometimes I'm a preacher
sometimes I watch life go by sitting on the bleacher

But I've never been left alone
in any problem that I've known
even though I'm to blame
there were times when things were dark
and I've been known to miss the mark
but someone fixed my aim

Sometimes I'm a man of God
sometimes I'm alright
sometimes I lay down close my eyes
and pray to God
Im ready for the night.

Sometimes I don't feel good
it's hard to start the day
it's hard to climb the obstacles
that sometimes come my way
if I make it, I'm a good man
am I a bad man if I fail?
I know I'm never good enough
so I let grace prevail

AudioA definitly has something figured out. its called life.
Sometimes I lay down close my eyes and pray to God. Im ready for the night.

Breaking Bread

Monday night I worked the late shift in the bakery, the time when the product for the remainder of the week is getting baked.

While I was removing fruit breads from their pans (one pan makes 3 loaves), one of the breads stuck to the pan, and crumbled out into a million tiny pieces. The supervisor was out at the time, but I left it there so that she would see it and know that the bread was lost.

I went to the back to retrieve a cart to put the surviving breads on, and the super returns. She asks my friend Janet what happened to the bread. "Oh Christina got hungry," she replied with a little giggle. To my surprise she didnt yell at me. Instead when I got back, we, along with the donut guy, gathered around the mountain of bluberry crumbs and munched them and laughed all the while. The donut guy said "Im glad you did this, we should have you dump more often!" The bread was lovely, even though it was quite fragmented.

The super and I are learning to love each other, in some odd way. In the begining I was the shy little freshman that couldnt do anything right, and she was the powertripping super that just wanted to make me cry. That night while everyone was out to dinner we mopped the floor together. and I thought.

This seems so much more like the kind of breaking bread Jesus did. Not some monthly routine in my church. Sue is Christian too, I saw the tattered Bible in her locker, along with the cigarettes at sweatshirts, and she talks of Jesus like she knows what He is about.

sometimes learning to change is our best confession.

Professing my love to chemistry.

While sitting in the "Intro to organic" unit in chemistry for about the third year in a row, I picked up an interesting little piece of information.

So apparently, apples dont really start fermenting in deficient oxygen. FOR glucose catabolism you need oxygen and when you dont have it in biology theyll teach you it always converts to alcohol instead of co2. Thats not always the case.

In the case of apples and a lot of other fruits, when they get large and the oxygen supply in the center of the apple gets depleted it starts converting to carboxyllic acid, which convieniently enough tastes bitter and animals wont eat it. Some would call this a mechanism of evolution because during this period the seeds arent ready to be spread.

When the center of the apple gets even more deficient in O2, it starts to make the alcohols. This is really neat. When an alcohol reacts with a carboxyllic acid they make an ester. Esters compose many of the worlds sweet smelling compounds. The carboxyllic acids are consumed in the reaction and the apple is no longer bitter but its now sweet or "ripe." The seeds are now ready.

This is the reason that small apples are usually very bitter and sour, because they havent been left on the tree long enough for the esterification reaction to take place.

oh chemistry. how do I love thee? let me count the ways.....

Jesuit Education

The product of Jesuit education:

"You can study anatomy but it wont give you an understanding of the human person. If you have an understanding of anything it ought to be the human person because you are one and interact with other human persons everyday."

-Doctoral stundent of philosophy
Marquette University