Training for Team Universe 2009!

Today is the tenth anniversary of the horrific shooting spree and subsequent deaths of those children and teacher, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.  This is 20 minutes from my home, and I know and knew students (now adults) that attended at that time.  I did not know any of the victims.  I will say if you lived in Denver, Colorado or the Denver Metropolitan Area that there was not one face, not one storefront, not one business, school, or vehicle that did not aptly express the treachery and sadness that ensued that day.

I was four months pregnant, on bed rest on that day.  I watched it unfold on the television like most others did as well.  I believe since I was pregnant and I had a 6 year old son at the time as well, that I deeply empathized and ached over what occurred.  However, I am humbled and unbelievably thankful that no one I knew was involved, but I felt then, and I feel now like I did know someone, one of them, all of them.  The faces on the parents out in the parking lots waiting to hear if their child was one of the dead or one of the missing was torture.  It was not moments, it was hours and hours and hours.

Today for those that lost someone, for those that waited out in the parking lot, for those that crouched behind library bookshelves and watched a teenage girl get shot in the head for refusing to denounce her God, for the boy who, already shot and bloody, threw himself out of a window on an upper floor, and for those that thankfully got their children back… today is a opened wound.  The entire city reflects it, there are reminders everywhere.

I wanted to extend my continuing, heartfelt condolences and my gratefulness for my own and to send peace and well wishes to those aforementioned and those that are remembering.

-Jaime Girard (BiologyBabe)

Below are photos and also the victims that dies, not including the two murderers; and not including the more than 20 that were severely injured and survived. Some of the photos are not showing, I apologize.

http://www.acolumbinesite.com

Photos of Columbine High School, aerial views.

Cassie Bernall	Steve Curnow	Corey DePooter	Kelly Fleming	Matt Kechter
Daniel Mauser	Daniel Rohrbough	Rachel Scott	Isaiah Shoels	John Tomlin
	Lauren Townsend	Kyle Velasquez	Coach Dave Sanders

I am such a dork, I am truly excited about my upcoming DEXA Body Composition Analysis ~ its scheduled for 4 weeks from now and it is 99.993% accurate, its separated by each body part even, and you get a full visual display of where the body fat tissue is located.  For example it will tell you your total body fat mass, lean mass, organ wieght, skin/water weight, and then things like (head = 12% fat, torso = 6%) so I am beyond curious and will post all my results! A friend had it done recently here in Denver and her head came out to be 16% fat! That is alone, but as a whole her total body fat was 18.1% when calipers had her at 22%, handheld had her at 24%, and hydro (dunking) had her at 20.2%!

She also said her right leg was 2% higher in fat than her left, and that all her abdominal fat could be seen more at the sides and back (love handles); just useful for the obsessed, like me

Here is a more apt explanantion
DEXA          (Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry) - A relatively new technology that                is very accurate and precise, DEXA is based on a three-compartment model                that divides the body into total body mineral, fat-free soft (lean) mass,                and fat tissue mass. This technique is based on the assumption that bone                mineral content is directly proportional to the amount of photon energy                absorbed by the bone being studied.

DEXA uses a whole body scanner that has two low dose x-rays at different          sources that read bone and soft tissue mass simultaneously. The sources          are mounted beneath a table with a detector overhead. The scanner passes          across a person’s reclining body with data collected at 0.5 cm intervals.          A scan takes between 10-20 minutes. It is safe and noninvasive with little          burden to the individual, although a person must lie still throughout          the procedure.

DEXA is fast becoming the new "gold standard" because it provides                a higher degree of precision in only one measurement and has the ability                to show exactly where fat is distributed throughout the body. It is very                reliable and its results extremely repeatable; in addition, the method                is safe and presents little burden to the subject. Although this method                is not as accurate in measuring the extremely obese and the cost of equipment                is high, DEXA is quickly moving from the laboratory setting into clinical                studies.