I only wear a lab coat when my boss's boss is around

My friend, a grade six teacher, hates teaching Science. She is a great woman, and undoubtedly a fantastic teacher, but science is not her thing. For this reason alone, I signed up to become a volunteer with the Let’s Talk Science program. The program links up volunteers and teachers so that smarmy kids can learn about the big bad world of Science from a RealLife Scientist. I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty damn excited to be designing and implementing several hands-on activities. The beaut = the program is well-funded enough that I got to order some awesome shit from Ward’s. It was better than shoe shopping! (Brrr…is it cold in here?)

I remember being an excited fifth grader who knew all the names & positions of nine planets off by heart and having a fucking mean twit teacher whose hate for Science was exceeded only be her loathing of us, it seemed. What a let-down. And it’s a damn shame, too, because that age (11-13 yrs) is so crucial in developing an identity - it was for me anyway - and connecting to the things that I still love today. Astronomy. Science Fiction. Science. Geology, anatomy, molecular biology.

So we’ve got a few activity modules planned out. The first will be in astronomy in January. From Ward’s Science I got a few eclipse/solar motion activity sets, as well as an overhead planetarium. (Apparently, there is a ginormous blow-up/crawl-through planetarium available to the school district, but since there is only one and it’s often out for repairs, the back-log of requests is huge. Another reason why the LTS budget is much appreciated by the utterly cash-strapped teachers). In March will be the forensic section. Twelve year olds watch a lot of CSI apparently (young much?), so that module will be a particular hit. Ward’s has some luminol detection & fingerprinting kits for mock crime solving activities. I’m also planning on introducing some anthropological forensic science too, a covert anatomy lesson per se, because that’s how I got interested (Quincy M.E. huzzah). Finally, the diversity of life module will be about good bacteria/bad bacteria, which is, essentially, an excuse to bring in cheese & yogurt to bribe the kids into good behaviour. It’s going to be geek-licious.

Birdbone

So if humans make blood cells in their marrow, and the marrow is in the bone, where do birds make blood cells? Aren't their bones hollow for flight? They have such high metabolic demands, with increase energy and waste production, they must have hardy blood cells. Where is bird blood made?

Update: Kyle, a friend studying cancer (and obviously, more bird biology than me), explains why B-cells are called B-cells.

Level zero

Our lawyer is taking Christmas vacation starting Dec.14th...which forces us to hustle big time if we want to get our first draw from the construction mortgage signed off before she leaves. If that doesn't happen, the two companies we've hired to prepare the foundation of the house will have to be paid after Christmas. Ouch.

So the footings were poured on Monday, which was excellent timing because we got a shitload of snow that night, into the following day and trailing into Wednesday. But luckily, it was done before the snow fell, and Wednesday we had the municipal inspector pass the footings. Yay! I was worried because we had made a substantial change to the height of the basement walls since we first put in our building permit, and the change had to be OK'd before the inspector would pass it. Since it had been less than one week since I submitted the revised plans, it was possible the inspector would have failed it just because the old plans didn't match up with the new set-up. Phew.

Yesterday, the foundation people set up the forms for the five feet of basement wall that will be concrete. We went to check it out last night, and it looked good. It will be a tall house in the end (2.5 stories, with an 8/12 roof pitch) but hey, all better to see the lake view once it's finished. And so hopefully today or Monday the concrete will be poured, and we can get a location certificate, a municipal inspection, and a mortgage inspection (through CMHC) done before Friday, Dec.14th. The municipal inspection won't be a problem, and the location certificate could be done in two days (if the engineer dude ever returns my calls), but the we'll be damn lucky if the CMHC inspector can make it out with less than 1 week notice. Hope, hope, hope (and rely on our mortgage girl to do her thing, again. She is super friendly and so willing to throw the word "urgent" on all our documents!).

Canadiana

Yesterday I was forced to attend a useless biosafety seminar. (Unless you work in a level 4 biosafety hazard lab dealing with ebola infected rats. Oh wait. There's only one of those in Canada and it isn't at this fucking university). I swear, you would be worse off swallowing a mouthful of seawater than if you accidently ingested some of our culture organisms (algae fer chrissakes, they sell the dried up stuff in holistic medicine departments). And yet, I spent six hours learning how to double glove when I'm at the fumehood, and how to import recombinant organisms over the border. Mandatory is overdone.

Anyway, a new lab recruit was sitting near by. He is from Yugoslavia, has spent the last few years in Switzerland, and has been living in Canada for a few months now. CBC recently had on a program describing "Canadian foods". Sounds like a good program, wish I had caught it. He asked if we had ever had poutine, and where he might get some here in town. He described it as french fries, with mozza cheese and gravy. I wanted to get into the minutae of poutine, and how actually it's cheese curds and not just grated mozza as it is sometimes served around here, but held my tongue. I haven't had much luck finding a good poutine spot in town so far. Although, as a public service announcement, I should have pointed out the difference between poutine they serve at KFC & arena canteens:



(Yummy artery-clogging fatty fatty goodness)





and the poutine rapee my grandmother makes with her acadian Catholic church ladies group every Saturday as a fundraiser for the church:



(Gooey grey shredded potato surrounding a lump of salted pork)




Both of French Canadian origin, both potato based, but not at all the same.


He also mentioned pemmican as being a true canadian food. We learned about pemmican in fifth grade, as my school spent the bulk of the social science curriculum devoted to learning how Native Canadians lived. My husband has also wondered what it tastes like, but it's not exactly the thing one can purchase at the grocery store (as I explained to my coworker). So I googled it to see if I could order some over the net. Don't know exactly how that would work, but might be an interesting cyber-adventure.

At this point, the seminar restarted, but I was distracted enough to think about other distinctly Canadian foods. Donairs came to mind, as did garlic fingers. Someone just came into the lab and said he had never even heard of BBQ chicken pizza before moving here. What do these things have in common? Carbs slathered in high-fat/high-sugar sauces. Mmmm...
Have I forgotten anything important? Anybody catch the CBC program?