A Couple More Paintings

Here a couple more paintings I did.

A Happy Crow (I still have to sign this one and do the edges)

A Fall Night

Another Painting Date With Mom And Dad

My Latest Painting

I had another lovely painting date with Mom and Dad on Saturday. Here's what I made. 

Acrylic And Canvas

My First Painting Done In Acrylic

In August, at cannon beach, Andrew, Mom, Ruth and I spent part of an afternoon painting in water colors. It was really fun. I wish that I had taken pictures. Along the way, I discovered that I can paint pretty decently. So, I decided to do a few things on canvas. Mom and Dad and I have spent several lovely afternoons and evening painting companionably. The painting of the trees isn't quite finished in this photo. I've added a few touches since, nothing terribly drastic. The painting is based off of a photograph that Dad took when he was pretty near the age I am now. The photo is hanging in the guest bedroom at Mom and Dad's. 

This little bird came from a Nature Conservancy calendar. I think he's a Piping Plover in New Jersey. If I remember the caption right.

A Wonderful  Crow By Mom

Adorable Mushrooms by Dad

A Poem of Sorts

I wish I could find myself in the coolness of liquid freedom
Decisions made easy
A life devoid of doubt where regretted decisions are only dragons

Fiction That Makes You Hungry

You know how when you read a book that has descriptions of food in it, you get hungry? Well, it turn out that the same thing happens when you write descriptions of food. I am trying to write a conversation in my Snow White story that takes place over tea an biscuits but it keeps making me hungry. I don't want to write about tea and biscuits with butter. I want to eat them.

Wisdom

"If you want to win anything-a race, your self, your life-you have to go a little berserk."
-A Fortune Cookie

More Metal Complexation Poetry

Do you remember the poem that I wrote about ligands and brigands. Well here's some more about ligands.
Ligands are like people they like to be complex. 
They are like goth kids. They like metal. They have negative or neutral attitudes.

Coordination Numbers
When a person coordinates they bond around a central goal or if you are ligand, you bond to a central molecule because your attitudes are negative or neutral and you're too cool for goals. Your coordination number is the number of bonds you've formed to your metal.

Free metal ions
It's a ruse. Nothing is really free. Cations in water naturally exist as complexes with water molecules. They're just called free metal ions as a sales pitch.

Inner-Sphere Complexes: (coordinate complexes)
The bonding is covalent. (I can't really think of any puns or analogies for covalent bonding.) Nothing is free. the ligand must replace water. Poor water.
Stability of a complex increases with charge and or radius. That makes sense. Just think about religion. Neutral religions don't last very long. The bigger they are the harder it is to change anything-stable.

Outer-Sphere Complexes
No water is replaced. You, the ligand, are just hanging out like a groupy hoping for an autograph. The forces that hold you to the metal are electrostactic. You know like crazy fans with their hair standing on end. No wait that's static electricity. That's totally different, but they sound the same so I'm going to use the idea anyway. So not surprisingly. These bonds are weaker. "Man you are totally not covalent. That metal is totally hydrated. " Poor ligand.

Formation Constants
10^4  increase with increaseing change.

Chelation
a ligand that coordinates at several positions with the "donor" atom, the metal. Sounds kinky. That's all I have to say.

Polydentate
That's right ligand. You a tooth. Polydentate means a complex with multiple teeth.

Polynuclear
A complex with more than one central metal ion. Now that is complex.

Why do we care?
We probably don't. We're to cool for that. We're complex. Complexation only effect solubility, chemical behavior, bioavailability and toxicity.

Oh look we can do some math. Complexation solubility constants work like any other solubility constant. The solid goes on the bottom. the activity of the disolved components go on top

Metal + Ligand = Metal_Ligand complex  K1 (that's your stability or formation constant that how you find out where you reach equilibrium and become a stoner)

Metal_Ligand complex + Ligand = Metal _Ligand_Ligand complex K2 (that's right you not the only ligand. Deal with it)

If you want to write thing thing all in one step:
Metal +Ligand+ Ligand = Metal _Ligand_Ligand complex     B2 (it's actually beta in my book but I don't want to try to find the symbol for that.)
B2=K1*K2

If you want to use math language to generalize it you say:
M+iL=MLi
Bi = (funny symbol)Ki means multiply all the k's together. It's like the summation symbol very intimidating thing that looks like greek cuz it is. The i is math language for put what ever number you want here. Well any positive whole number. Fractions of ligands are like fractions of people. It doesn't work out well.

Alright listen up you ligands! Which one of you is a hydroxide. Ah yes there you are. Yes I see you are negative because you are a ligand.
OH-
Well you're special.
Side story: Even though he is negative, the hydroxide always knew that he was special. Nobody understood his pain. He was an unappreciated poet and infinitly complex.
end side story

Well sometimes we don't want to deal with the hydroxide because he will start reading his poetry.
instead of writing
M+OH =MOH  K1
we combine this reaction with the reation for water and use a *K1 to keep from getting confused, but we really want you to be confused because it makes us feel smart so we don't explicitly tell you why we are using K*. It's cuz we don't like poetry ok. Well also it's useful to write things in terms of released H's instead of added OH's.
H2O = OH-  +  H +   Kw (formation constant for water)
If you are reading this, Dad, you may be interested to recall that you can add chemical equations together just like algebraic ones. The OH's cancel and you get.

M + H2O = MOH + H+   You've added equations so you multiply the formation constants and call them something new for the sake of lazy writing.


What you need to solve a problem involving a metal and some ligands.
1. you need equilibrium constants. Think of these as an (I don't care attitude. You can't touch me. I got equilibrium constants. You know where everything lines up.)
2. Mass balance on your metal. Everybody is obsessed with mass. Just look at the weight loss commercials. The nice the about mass is the whole really is the sum of it's parts (unless you're doing nuclear chemistry.)

Now it's just algebra. Alphabet soup. Put the equilibrium constants into the mass balance.

Fear

Fear.
It's the worst. It's like nothing else I know... the cold sweet... that chocking sensation that you can't pry away because it comes from within... makes you want to tear off your skin. It motivates insanity; makes a trapped animal gnaw of his own foot.I'm ready to gnaw my own foot off. I am not a logical beast.
Chewing my foot will not set me free. Succeeding will set me free or accepting failure or some perfect recipe where one leads to the other or dynamic waltz where the success and failure spin round the floor like lovers.
Conclusion: do not gnaw off foot. Do something else.

If I Could - A Poem of Sorts

If I could tonight, I would become water
I would pound on the roof and beet my fists on the window
I would make puddles in the street that stop traffic
I would apologize for nothing 
I would flow down, down, into the ground with the splashing rain
I would caress rotting leaves and kiss the memory of summer goodbye
I would laugh at all of you and your dreams and your tears
Everything dies in the end

Metal Complex Poetry

Words to The Wise
When it comes to metals ligand are like brigands.
They reduce the activity of the metal is solution (which makes it more soluble.)

Chemicals are lazy. They like to have lower activity.
If their activity is high. Their reactivity is high and they tend to precipitate out of solution...
like students failing out of college.

Ligands also (in general) make metals less toxic.
So ligands are like robin hood. They are good brigands.

Ninja

Ninja that I drew out of my "Manga for the Beginner book"

The boy that I babysat this summer wanted me to draw something. I told him he could pick something out of my book and I would try to draw it if he did his homework. Not, surprisingly, he chose a ninja. Here is the result.

Origin Stories

My friend Abi likes to use Andrew, myself, and her younger brother as guinea-pigs for writing exercises that she designs for some local kids. In this particular exercise we made a lists as a group to get ideas flowing. The first was a list of ordinary events. The second  was a list up super powers. We chose one from each list and then we all spent 15 minutes writing an "origin story". I have Andrew's and mine written down here below. I would like to give you the one that Abi did but I don't have it. Perhaps she can give it to me?

Bathroom and Teleportation
Spiderman gained his power in a somewhat private way... though he ended up wearing skin-tight spandex and swinging around on silk ropes. Like Spiderman, I too have a super power. Bu, that is where the similarities end. My superpower is teleportation, which I think has more sex appeal than spewing silk from wrist-holes... Also, I don't wear skin-tight spandex, or any spandex for that matter. My "origin story" however is far worse than Spiderman or any other superhero. It all began in a Tacobell bathroom...

I don't know how I came poses my powers, perhaps it was a genetic mutation (x-men style) or maybe I was bit by a radioactive spider in my sleep (I doubt this however due to my cleaning and sleeping habbits). For all I know, my my powers could have com from the taco I just ate. Anyway as you can probably guess, learning you can teleport while going to the bathroom is not something glamorous.. or clean. Knowing that I will not tell you the whole story but onlythat it involved teleporting to the bedroom of the gril I had a crush on (and in her bed to be specific). I tried to clean "it" up, but I could hear her comeing and began to wish that I could be anywhere else, even if it was a dark hole somewhere. I never did find out where that hole was, but I did figuure out that I had a "super power" and how to use it. Simple think of where I want to go and want I bad enough.
The End
~Andrew~

Making Coffee...
The morning was a gray and gloomy one. I wanted to stay in bed, but going to class was what I was doing. I was stressing about how coffee would take too long and I would be late for class when Andrew handed me a Red Bull. Andrew is my boyfriend. I guess we'll get married one of these days but for the moment we are just trying to get through college. The Red bull was cold. Red Bull is supposed to be served cold it's gross any other way. I wanted somthing hat but caffeine is caffeine. Andrew handed me the drink.
He grinned, "red bull gives you wings!"
I think the stuff gives you weird burps, but what ever. I made a face at Andrew. Sort of cross eyed with my tongue out to one side.and flapped my arms. That's my way of saying, "thanks, I love you, sweety." 
I snatched the drink and raced out the door chugging it. I was half way to class my brain still foggy with the dream I'd bad thath morning (something about chemistry and vacuums), when I realized that my fast paced walk had slowed to a crawl. The next thing that I noticed was a super short man walking past me. He must have been a midget because I am no giant and his head only came up to my waist. He was staring at me. Our eyes met. Embarassed, I looked down at my feet. then I screamed becaused they were three feet off the ground and walking on nothing. The man stared as I drifted upward. I was flying.
~Jenny (Me) ~

Success Highway

The signs are pretty clearly pointing in opposite directions.
Don't forget to drive too fast.
The speed limit's a minimum here.
If you go too slow you'll miss your exit.

If we pretend that the ache is not there, does that mean we feel no pain?
Nobody cares, just keep driving.
Do your aching on the inside where it hurts the most.
That's the way the strong do it.
That's the way the men do it. The women are men too.
Sure, why not?

You fail. You fail.
You are not wanted here.
But thanks for asking and don't give up you sorry sod.
Go be extraordinary.... and then maybe we'll see.
Keep trying. Keep trying. Nothing's free.
Keep failing. Keep failing, just don't let us see.

Don't laugh. Don't laugh. Everyone's crying.
Everyone's aching, drowning, trying.
Can it really surprise you that some of us bleed?

We are the elite.
We are all the extra special outcasts, trudging through our lonely, expensive lives.
We have everything. We have nothing. Worse still we are nothing.
It so easy to get lost on Success Highway.

Quote of the Day

"This food tastes better sitting next to you."
-Dad speaking to Mom

Quote of the day

When asked if he would wear Kate's red high heals.

"I don't know. What size feet do you wear?"

-Chris