why, just why?

you all know the story of the summer. michael phelps dominated the olympics. 8 gold medals, that's a record. the sport of swimming was brought into the spotlight, people began to take interest. we had something to be proud of. all that has literally gone to pot. everything is now tainted and will never be looked at the same. photos of mr superstar were smoking marijuana were leaked. the whole world saw them. i just want to know why he did it in the first place.

he was on top of the world. everyone knew who he was. 8 gold medals. a hero to a many young swimmers. and what does he do, he goes and smokes some pot. real cool. reaaaaal coooool. yes he's young and yes, he's a superstar athlete, but when it comes down to it he is no more above the law than anyone. marijuana is illegal, end of story. i don't care what you have to say to try to argue why he shouldn't get punished or whatever, illegal is illegal. he deserves whatever he gets.

alex rodriguez. arguably one of baseball's best. nope, not anymore. reputation tarnished. he admitted to taking steroids from 2001-2003. why did he do this, because he felt pressured to live up to his all star reputation. once again, i don't care. illegal is still illegal. he should not get off the hook just because he's some superstar. i'm tired of seeing articles trying to spin it off as it being not such a big deal. he also deserves what he gets, he knowingly took steroids.

roger clemens, barry bonds, the list goes on and on and on. all i want to know is why? they have effectively made it impossible for me to hold any respect for them. this goes beyond the range of just sports, this applies to everyday life. why do we feel the need to cheat? i know there are kids who are just skating by, cheating off every assignment and test. they do because they are lazy. they have better things to do with their lives, duh.

these people are supposed to be role models. they're supposed to show us what we can accomplish we a lot of hard work, dedication, and a little talent. today's role models are cheaters. or in the case of michael phelps, i'm not even sure what name to give him. these people are not role models. the only thing they're telling us is that it's okay to cheat to get ahead or it's okay to smoke marijuana. why should we have to work hard? there's always going to be someone finding a way around doing the work, that's the message i'm getting.

do you know what today is?

february 12th? yes, that's the date. but what's so special about today?
two days until valentines day? nope, that's not it.
IT'S CHARLES DARWIN'S BIRTHDAY!!! he's 200 today. Happy Birthday, Charles!

blogging

we have been given an assignment as to what we're supposed to blog about. we're supposed to have one post, at least, about blogging. now i'm stuck, what is there to say about blogging? i think i'll make a list about why i like prefer i blogging to the reading notebook and why i prefer the reading notebook to blogging.

why i like blogging as opposed to the writing notebook:

1. it's something new and different. i have never blogged before. the novelty of it makes seem much more exciting than it is. i mean, c'mon, it's so much more exciting to say 'i updated my blog!' than it is to say 'i did my writing notebook entry!'
2. everyone can see it. when we had just our writing notebooks the only person that could see what we were writing was mr ayers. now my classmates, the other ap lang kids, and even the perspectives kids can read my blog. not to mention any other random readers who have somehow stumbled upon this.
3. i don't realize how much i have written. i was looking at all my blog posts earlier this month and i didn't realize just how much i have written on this. i sit down and just type and type, unless i can't think of anything of course, and before i know it i'm somewhere in the neighorhood of 400 words. in the writing notebooks it never really seemed like there was a lot of writing.
4. i can add cool things like pictures and videos, something i definitely can't do with a writing notebook. and i can link stuff. seriously, click on it.

why i kinda liked the writing notebook:

1. it was easier to catch up if i got behind, mainly because i was in charge of putting the dates on the pages i wrote. with this blog i cannot change the date. the day i start a post is the day that it posts under. so i could just start some posts earlier in the week, but then i usually get three posts all in one day. so really, the only thing i can do is just keep up with it.
2. everyone can see it. my ramblings are here on the internet for everyone to see. that's kinda weird when you stop and think about it. with the writing notebook i got to choose who could read what i wrote. now it's open for the general public to read. ahhhh.
3. one page in the writing notebook definitely was easier to write than 400 words on a blog unless i know exactly what i'm going to be blogging about.
4. reading other people's blogs makes me feel like a creeper if i'm not exactly sure who they are. to combat this is stick to my blogs of interest list and read just those.

also, blogging gives us an excuse to go to the lab for a day and just sit here on the computers free to blog. which of course means that we can go anywhere to look at things and give us ideas to blog. or go find funny pictures or videos to link or even embed in our blogs. it's a break from class that we all enjoy and we get work done without fully realizing it.

shorts?

i wore shorts over the weekend. it was a balmy somewhere around 50 degrees. granted, i was always in my car either before of after softball when i had shorts on, but still. it's february in iowa and i'm wearing shorts. and driving with my windows down. it rained today. rained! not snowed, but rained. this weather makes me love lifeee. that's how much i love it, i added some extra e's to the end of life.

small town, iowa

story time. it's kind of a tear jerker in places, so you have been warned.

over the summer my cousin joe and his wife had their second baby, a little boy named Brekin. they found out over the course of the pregnancy that little baby Brekin was going to be born with heart problems that would require surgery. they weren't sure Brekin would even survive the first three months, let alone make it to christmas or through his first surgery. the most adorable baby ever is still alive and his little heart is still beating.

he went through his first surgery in december and made a short visit at the family christmas. he's such a happy little kid and oh so cute too. the chambers of his heart aren't in the right places. his first surgery was a success, but unfortunately poor little Brekin isn't done. He will need either two or three more depending on how successful the next surgery goes.

as you all probably know, surgery isn't cheap. joe and amber are a young family, both are around 30 and both are teachers. both have taught and joe has also coached in the springville school district. over the weekend the town of springville held the Big Hearts for A Little One fundraiser for the family of four. the fundraiser included a soup supper, silent auction, live auction, and dj/dance. over $16,000 and counting was raised just from those four events alone. they're still counting the extra donations people made throughout the night.

over 700 families were fed at the soup supper. who knows if any of you know where springville is or the size of the city, but springville is a little over 1,000 people. the whole town, plus others from various other towns, are here to support them.

i have done a lot of thinking about this over the weekend and i have wondered how successful this would have been if it had been held in cedar rapids. i don't think it would have been as successful. cedar rapids may not be the largest of towns, but it certainly lacks that small town feel that towns like springville have. in a small town everyone knows each other and it's a very close knit community. the small town of springville has warmed the hearts of many with their participation in the Big Hearts for a Little One event.

10:10

i heard freshman year that clocks and watches that you see in tvs commercials and movies are usually set at 10:10 because when people see that it makes them happy. strange, huh? well this really isn't going to be about 10:10, it's more along the lines of time so i felt that the title was semi appropriate.

along with time this is going to be about distractions because they seem to take up a lot of time. i know this firsthand. every day as i'm driving home from school i'm usually thinking about the amount of homework i have and what absolutely needs to be done for the next day. i then guess an approximate amount of time that each is going to take and start with the shortest assignment that absolutely needs to get done. only, i don't start as soon as i get home. instead i sit down, read the comics, and maybe watch a little TV until either 3:30 or 4. then i start on my homework. on somedays though i have to go to work so then all my homework gets pushed off until i get home. so that's distraction number one.

distraction number two; sleep. i love naps and seem to have no problem falling asleep. reading textbooks slash just doing homework in general makes me sleepy. this is an every day occurrence no matter how much sleep i got the night before. i have given up on taking a nap that's under half an hour and whenever i try to i always fail at waking up. i just shut off the alarm, roll over, and back to sleep i go. nowadays my naps are at least an hour.

distraction number three; electronics. more specifically my laptop, cell phone, ipod, and ihome. i think that's really all i need to say here. it's pretty self explanatory.

distraction number four; the internet. and facebook. and strangely, blogging. i never thought that i would enjoy reading these things as much as i do. this one is my fave. i spend far too much time on the internet while i should be doing things like my homework or studying. i do feel very creeper-esque when i'm looking at the blogs of people other than my friends though.

and it's gone? probably not.

public speaking.





i dread public speaking.

this is pointless

so my friend ima lemon and i are in this club here at school. i'll refrain from calling it by it's full name and just shortening it to c club. i don't really like saying the acronym for it because everytime i say it people ask me to explain what it means and i really just don't know. but i was kinda roped into this my freshmen year and here i am, still a member. my section leader freshmen year really wanted me to come to a c club meeting because she was going to be graduating and wanted to make sure that the club would be able to continue after she had graduated. what about the juniors in the club? the only one that was a good member was moving to california after the year ended so i guess they were getting desperate. ima lemon and i were elected to co-presidents for our sophomore year, meaning we were going to be running the show.

we didn't really have any idea as to how to run a club and kinda did a lot of nothing while figuring it out. we got the main goals of the club accomplished but it wasn't easy and definitely didn't run very smoothly. everything got done very last minute and wasn't always all that organized. the number of members is never very high and our enthusiam isn't either. but we still come back, week after week because we feel obligated to. we don't want to be the ones that let the club die.

our teacher advisor, leader, or whatever she's called, has a heart of gold. but at the same time, she's kinda scary. ima lemon and i are often scared that she's going to be extremely mad when we tell her that we won't be able to make it to various club functions. i'll finish this later.

and it's back

i guess my bloggers was was only temporarily gone because i don't have anything to say anymore. but look at what i did, i put a picture in my last post! my friend rbetta helped me remember how to. go read her blog. it has more of a point than this one. i kinda just ramble on with some randomness.

i have developed this really bad habit of putting things off until the last minute. i always tell myself, "oh, i can just do it later." and then you know what, i just keep putting it off. i had a project to do for today and i think it was assigned at least a week ago. i kinda did some work while in the library when we had classtime to work but i didn't really get much accomplished. then over the weekend i kept saying, "i'll just work on it later." later eventually became monday night. the day before it was due. so i worked frantically for about 2 hours and completed the project. it is nowhere near as good as it could've been but it's done and that's all i really care about.

i seem to do this with all of my classes nowadays and the result is most of my homework only being half completed at best. strangely, this doesn't really bother me but i'm beginning to realize that it should. i really need to be doing my best in all my classes. i am one of three kids and my parents can't afford to put us all through college so the better i do in school the easier everything will be later. i just need to find my work ethic when it comes to doing my homework.

no more blah?

my bloggers block may be gone. but i'm not sure. hence the question mark in the title. as you all know, because if you're reading this then you have to know who i am, otherwise how the heck did you stumble upon this? but anyways, as you all know i am in band. why? you ask, i am in band because i like to play the flute and my cute little piccolo. i'll put a picture in here as soon as i remember how to. as much as i like playing, i do not enjoy band most days. one reason is the director. i like his music choice but i'm the biggest fan of him. i like the other director more. i think that my director can choose good music because he is the director of the top band, whereas the other director is the director of the middle band so her music choice is a little more limited.

enough with that rambling and i'll try to get to the point here. one of our songs for the upcoming concert is a brahms piece called how lovely is thy dwelling place. it's originally meant for a choir, we even listened to them and i have the sheet music as if i was going to be singing instead of playing but that's not going to be happening, but one of the area directors so kindly arranged it for us. it doesn't look complex, and it's not complex rhythm wise, but there is some complexity while playing it. but this is still not the point. my point is this morning when we were rehearsing, while playing the brahms i looked up at my director to make sure that i was still on the beat and not behind or ahead for some reason. i have no idea what he was doing but i couldn't find the beat for the life of me from his directing. he might have well been just standing up there waving his arms at us becuase there was no familiar 3/4 pattern going on there. because i could't find the beat i just kept with my section and it was all good. the band was then stopped and mr bird told us what to do to make the piece sound better. this was his great little tid bit of information; just pretend there are only two measures in the piece. the first measure is the pickup note at the beginning and the rest of the song, 175 measures mind you, is all one measure. hence the arm waving. okay cool. it is a very pretty piece though and its probably my favorite.

blah

i knew it would happen, it was bound to. i have writers block. cleverly renamed bloggers block because i'm a blogger not a writer. and i have run out of things to say. this could pose to be an issue for me. good thing these aren't graded on content, they're more of a completion grade. i really am stuck. i looked at the blogs of others in my class and it didn't really help. i still don't know what to blog about.

i'm really going to try to stay away from reviewing a song or book or movie. i personally don't like to read those so i'm not going to make you few readers suffer through it too.

i wish weekends were longer. or that we had less homework over the weekends. i go to school five days a week and i think i deserve these two days off that we get. too bad i have homework. and because teachers seem to think that we have ample time over the weekends they give us a larger than normal sized assignment. i really don't want to do any homework over the weekends. these two days are supposed to be my break from school.

my physics teacher told the class to never complain, not even to yourself because it gives you bad karma. i guess i'm going to have bad karma then because i'm complaining. i'm going to complain if i want to and i'll find some other way to fix my karma. sounds good to me.

i am getting a headache. but i don't have time to take a nap. i like naps. i'm not even to 300 words yet. stupid block. i wish i could think of something to write.

sometimes i get sick and tired of people. especially when i've been subject to them while at work. and because i'm at work i am not allowed to do anything but smile and answer all their stupid questions. here's an example of my favorite question; while i'm folding shirts or doing something that only workers do, and i have a visible name tag on, customers will come up to me and ask if i work here. when people ask me this i just want to say no i don't. i only wear the name tag for fun. another frequent question; how much does this cost? so i look at the price tag and tell them what it says. they ask if it's on sale. i ask if there was a sign by it saying it was on sale. they say yes. i ask what did the sign say. they give a price. i say that price back to them. last night it was day care, or at least that's what it seemed. little children were running around everywhere with no parents in sight. i'm sorry but i'm not going to watch your kid and make sure he or she doesn't run into anything and hurt him/herself. that is not my job. as the parent that is your job. but all in all, no matter how much i complain about my job, i love it.