Happier now than yesterday. Happier now than this morning. Part of it is from teaching - in my nonmajors class I really tend to 'grab them by the throat' because it's easy for people in that class to "slip away" and surreptitiously plug in the iPod earbuds, or start reading a book, or something.

Today was cellular-respiration day. I bring in a simple model of glucose (styrofoam balls) and break it down through the process of respiration. And I throw "electrons" (film canister caps) at people to recruit them to be electron carriers, and then at the end there's the electron transport chain, and the electrons go to make water, and lots of ATP is manufactured. (And I blew up sugar. No one is ever as impressed as I think they should be by the blowing up sugar.It makes a nice little blue flame and everything.)

And we finished up with a discussion of fermentation, including a story I know of a hapless fellow who tried to make hard cider in his dorm room. (And another thing that frustrates me: no one ever seems to get the joke I make about how when mammal muscles do "fermentation," they make lactic acid - and if they made ethanol, like yeast does, it would bring new meaning to the term "runner's high." Maybe it's just not a very funny joke, or it's a bio-geek joke that doesn't translate well into other disciplines).

(K., if you're reading this: do you remember in swimming, how we used to pass each other in the lanes during the "10 minute swim" and mutter "lactic acid" at each other?)

I'm TIRED after I walk out of that class - but I think that's how it should be. What I really need to work on is translating some of that manic energy into the majors classes that I teach; I tend to be more restrained with the majors, both because I believe I don't have to 'sell' the topic to them as much as I do to the non-majors, and also because, well, I know some of these people well and that makes me kind of self-conscious in front of the class.