due to massive amounts of snow...

the weather forecast always makes it seem like we're going to be getting so much more snow than we actually do. i suppose it's better to prep us for the worst so that it's never as bad as we think it's going to be. and then we can always make that awkward conversation starting with, "at least it didn't snow as much as they said it would."

currently my hometown area is expecting some serious winter weather starting on thursday and going into friday. i have heard everything from some freezing rain to a half inch of ice and snow flurries to oh 10-12 inches of snow. no big deal. what these forecasts do is create panic in the minds of many and hope in the minds of all the little school children. as they sit and listen to the forecasts, or hear exaggerated versions of the forecast from all their little friends, the notion of snowday pops into their heads. snowday! snowday! snowday! and then the weather actually comes through with minimal damage and no snowday. too bad all the kids didn't do any homework expecting a snowday.

take yesterday for example. the forecast told us it's supposed to start snowing around noon and last until around midnight with a total accumulation of around 4 inches. well all the high schoolers were thrown into a tizzy expecting an early dismissal. guess what, we didn't get one. we stayed in school the whole day. everyone was complaining that we should've gotten an early out, but it really wasn't that bad outside. sure you had to drive slow but that won't kill you. driving fast will though.

we're all so tired of school already that a snowday is a welcome break. we get a day to to just do nothing, or catch up on schoolwork if we needed to, but most people don't get too much done on snowdays. i know that i don't really get much done on snowdays. the real kicker is that we either tack them on to the end of the year, or take away the random days off that we have for possible days off. even thought i hate winter and winter driving i would much rather go to school in the winter and stay inside all day, rather than spend those nice summer days outside rather than stuck in school.

are you serious right now?

one of the things that annoys me most is when people don't differentiate between your and you're. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. please use them correctly. you are insulting not only your intelligence but the intelligence of everyone around you making our whole population look stupid because you don't know the difference between your and you're.

i don't know if it's because you're lazy and don't feel like typing the extra -'re- or you just don't know the difference. i don't think most of you care. if you cared you wouldn't make this mistake. but whatever, you don't care so continue on making yourself sound stupid because you cannot make a simple contraction of you and are. ps i hate you all. well, maybe not hate but i'm extremely dissatisfied with all of you who make this mistake.

so, because we seem to need to go back to elementary school and learn how to use contractions i will teach you now in hopes that at least one of you decides that you're going to finally use your head and not look so stupid.

okay, your is in the possessive pronoun [i doubt that if you can't tell a difference between your and you're that you're going to know what a pronoun is]form. This form is used to express that something belongs to "you." you use 'your' in sentences like "can i borrow your book?" simple huh? yes. very.

you're is a contraction between you and are. you use 'you're' in a sentence like "and you're sure that this door will be unlocked?" it's really that simple. if you're ever not sure which form to use just take the contraction apart and see if inserting you are makes sense in your sentence. example: you're not sure about which form to use in this sentence: is this you're truck? so you take the contraction apart and read it like -is this you are truck?- and obviously that doesn't make sense.

sadly, the mistake is usually using your for you're because we're such a mass of laziness or stupidity that we just find it impossible to use you're. i do not have a fun little way to remember how to use you're instead of your except for use your head people. it's not that hard. or don't and just let all the little fourth graders sound smarter than you. it's your choice.

respect

where did it go? and why is it gone? not going to lie, i miss it. and it need to come back, seriously. why did it go away? really, why?


today's generation seems to be very disrespectful, and it's only been getting worse and worse. words that our parents would not have been caught dead saying back when they were the age we are now are common in our everyday conversations. we are becoming desensitized to these "naughty" words.

the mr. and mrs. or ms. have been dropped off of our teacher's names, i'm not saying that i don't do this because i know that i do and so do the rest of you, and we now just call them by their last name. that's it, just their last name much like what you hear when, mostly guys, are talking to thier close buddies. teachers are our close buddies? when did that happen? last time i checked they weren't and they still demanded our respect.

the joys of snow

so, unless you live under a rock, or not in the certain town where i live, you should have realized that there is in fact, snow on the ground. and if you didn't, it's the white stuff that's covering the grass. and making the trees all pretty. see it now? okay good. btw that's a picture of a lake in idaho which may or may not be the state i live. i guess i just gave away that i live in the united states. oh well. back to snow.

the snow used to provided me with hours of entertainment. now it's just an annoyance. there is snow on my car, usuall with some frosty stuff under it imparing my vision through the windshield. yay for ice scrapers! i recommend one with a brush on one of the ends, makes for very easy snow removal. this one appears to be of real high quality. not only is there snow and icy stuff on my car, but it's on the roads as well. yay... my wheels just start spinning then finally find purchase and cause my car to jerk in the general direction in which i want to go. and due to the fact that my driveway is basically a hill i tend to just slip right on out with these snowy mornings.

here are some hopefully helpful winter driving tips because i don't want you to get into an accident. that would suck.

1. give yourself plenty of time. you, well maybe not you but the cars around you, will be driving slow due to hazardous conditions. don't be the loser who insists on driving the speed limit, or over, when the roads are covered with snow. all you're going to do is kill us all.
2. have an ice scraper, or be super prepared and have two. i have two. three if you count the broken one that is still sitting in my car. one is a nice one with the brush on the end to easily sweep off the snow and the other is a little mini one that works really well at scraping the ice and frosty stuff. there is almost nothing worse than being without an ice scraper. then you have to resort to either just waiting for your car to warm up and the defroster to kick in or use something like a cd case.
3. find a shovel that can fit in your trunk. plastic please, you don't want to be the crazy person carrying a metal shovel around in their car. might look bad if you ever get pulled over. this will come in handy if you ever get snowed in, or if you're parked along the road and then the snowplow comes and blocks your exit. unless it's just a tiny amount your car probably won't be able to get over it.
4. finally, keep an emergency box in your trunk. fill it with warm clothing and blankets and gloves and hats and scarves and boots and stuff like that. nobody wants to get into an accident, but this way you're prepared if you do. or if your car dies, which is always a possibility with mine.

p.s. it takes longer to stop. your car will slide if you try to slam on the brakes. and no one wants to slide through an intersection. especially if cars are coming.

Christmas

christmas time is a great time of year. there's all this happiness, joy, and great spirits. families are gathered together, shoving unusually large amounts of people into one house and basking in all that joyfullness. it's one of my favorite times of the year. all that happy music and the fresh blanket of light fluffy snow just put a smile on my face.


christmas holds a special place in my heart, and my calendar. that special place is december. not november which seems to be the current trend. i heard christmas music november 1st. that is over kill. i'm tired of those peppy little christmas tunes after two weeks because there's a very limited number of them. christmas music is now interspersed in with the cd that plays in old navy. i personally laugh as we go from songs like 'hot n cold' by katy perry to some rendition of so this is christmas. i swear we have three different renditions of that song. we also have the christmas trees up at old navy.


what happened to thanksgiving? oh, i know it was over shadowed by christmas. we skip from halloween to christmas with a day of stuffing ourselves, thanksgiving, thrown in. november is the month of thanksgiving, not the month of christmas and we do not need two months of preperation for christmas. two months of it kills it for me. i'm sick and tired of christmas and all the decorations before it's even christmas. all the happiness and joy of this wonderful time of year is sucked out because over the overdrawn preperation. by christmas time i want to shoot someone if i have to hear grandma got run over by a reindeer one more time.



yep, i'll probably shoot someone if i have to hear that multiple times from now until christmas. i can only take so much of grandma getting run over by a reindeer.

election 2008

so, as you all know and would have to live under a rock to not know by now, barack obama was elected to be president of the united states last night. that's right, we have elected an african american to be our president so we made history last night.


fun fact, obama's first stop on his campaign trail was my high school. that was two years ago. can you believe that this election process started two years ago? i cannot. i am not sad to see it over with though. by september i was sick of hearing about it. we received countless 'vote for mccain/pailin' and 'vote for obama/biden' phone calls in the past few weeks. for the past months i have not been able to turn on the tv and not see a political ad. you know what? i'm done with it.

why do our politicians feel the need to tear down the others? weren't we all taught to treat each other with respect? what happened to that. now it is just all negative campaigning, with some sprinkles of here's what i'm going to do. and most of those 'promises' are said just for the campaign months and never talked about again once in office. i'm sick of it.

this was my last election of not participating and you can expect me to be casting my ballot in 2012. which means that i have some learning to do. first off i will have to register to vote and decide which party ideals i like. do i stick to with what my parents are registered as? no, not unless after gathering information and deciding that the party they're registered with is one that i agree with. one of the thing that bugs me the most is when the political views of kids my age are those exactly of their parents. actually, i take that back. that's not the thing that bugs me the most. i find it particularly irksome when people are uninformed voters and they're just voting for that candidate because their parents are, or because their friends are. seriously, take some time, research the candidates and formulate your own opinions. it's okay to have a different opinion than the person next to you. really, it is.

another thing that irks me is those who don't vote and then complain about who got elected. shut up and vote. i know plenty of minors who would have jumped at the chance to vote and there you are just sitting there not voting.

the art of dance

i myself am not much of a dancer. by the time i decided that dancing may have been something i was interested in, kids my age were already miles ahead. i would have been the giant in beginners class and that didn't sound all that appealing to me.

dance is a great form of self expression. it also have the ability to help you grow in group situations and helps give you the confidence to go at it solo. it takes some serious self confidence to be able to stand up and start the dance party. for example, this clip here. i don't know too many people that are completely okay with dancing to Thriller infront of others.






to me, dance is one of those things that you're either good at or not. and i fall closer to not. perhaps this is due to high school dances. what goes on for the most part of these should not be considered dancing. we're not even going to talk about what's going on there. it's just not dancing. when i think of dancing i tend to think more along the lines of either studio dance, the dancing you see in the movie Pride and Prejudice, and then the dancing from the movie Step Up and Step Up 2. that is dancing.



i do not dance that often, but when i do it doesn't usually last too long. nor is it something that i do in front of many people. but when my friends and i do decide that we want to dance around like crazy fools we crank up footloose and go to town. but what we do isn't what i call dancing, it's more of just letting your limbs go and doing whatever you want.

it's a very good stress reliever though. just go crazy. let your hair down and bust a move. i'll try to avoid the over used cliches from now on. but no promises.