Day Twenty-eight: Water Quality Testing

Discovering Dissolved Oxygen

In the last week I have conducted 4 water quality tests. One was a mock test to learn how to do it even though I have done it for several years. It was for a class and it was easy attendance so I went to class and re-learned.

The second time was to complete my homework for the class.  After completing the full analysis onsite, plus macro-biological survey, we loaded up the truck to leave…Only to realize we were on the right river, but at the wrong site.

The third time was to actually complete my homework for my class. *sigh* Our first site was much more diverse and interesting.

The fourth time was today (pictured) at my old workplace where I tested two branches of the underground river inside a cave. Rad, right?
In this picture I was figuring out the dissolved oxygen for the smaller of the two tributaries. The clean samples I took were sent to a lab for further testing.

From everything I found the water was of good quality or at least good enough to support life. The pH test was lower than I expected, but still not bad. The oxygen was pretty high even thought the river levels were low, which I expected because of the cool temperature of the water.

Day Twenty-seven: Explosion of Fun!

Bomb exploded

Although there are many awesome cooks in my family only one is a trained pastry chef. I wanted to get a picture earlier, but this was all I got once I found my camera. My sister in law made a red velvet bomb cake for my brother’s birthday. It had a raspberry and white chocolate mousse filling.

It was amazing!! I gorged and I think everyone else did too.  My bro’s birthday was actually on the 16th, but we had to celebrate over the weekend because that’s when everyone could get time off work.

It was a glorious party. We had grilled nomms, cake, ice cream. Mountains of food. Besides the food the company was great and we played a whole bunch of Rock Band. We were up until 3:30….so tired. I will have to go to bed early tonight before school early tomorrow.