Random Last Blog

Finally, I have been waiting for this blog since the third blog. I am not the best at coming up with stuff to write about. The LAST blog for the Honors English class, YES! Well I don’t really have a topic that I am going to write about today, see I still can’t come up with something to write about. I will just warn you that this is going to be really random, I mean, REALLY random. I am watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Yes, it is Sunday night and I have procrastinated till seven o’clock to write this blog. If Thompson is reading this, I am planning on turning my fourth term paper tomorrow. I can’t wait till school is out, but I am going to miss everyone that isn’t going to Davis High. This summer I am going to be packed with stuff like EFY, marching band, scout camp, and online classes. This is going to be the best summer ever. Our family just got lagoon season passes and I am going this week for 9th grade lagoon day. I just saw a commercial for Imagine That. Eddie Murphy is in it and it is where his daughter tells him how to be a great businessman and is getting the advice from her imaginary friend. I am excited for Davis High. It is going to be a party. OH YEA!!! Marching Band is going to be a BLAST!! I am hoping to play in the pit. Yesterday I went to a Marching Day at American Fork High School. All day we learned techniques and routines that we preformed for each other. We left at 6:30 in the morning at took a bus down to the high school. When we got there we had an intro for the day and went out and stretched. I got misplaced and ended up in the drum line section. I went to the band room and joined the pit. We practiced different warm-ups for a couple hours. We went to lunch and had sack lunches with a ham and turkey sandwich with chips and a cookie. They had pieces of watermelon and bananas lying on table that you could go and grab. Following lunch, we went back into the band room and got different parts for a song that we were going to perform for the other groups. I played two toms. The song was a jazzy rock song with a really cool beat. After our group got the piece down we went outside and rehearsed the piece with the drum line. The song sounded TOTALLY AWSOME. We went out to the field and watched the brass, woodwinds, color guard, and the other drum lines do their “show and tell” that they had rehearsed in a single day. After that we went home TA-DA!!!

Book Review

Walk two Moons by Sharon Creech is an interesting story about choices and perception told through an engaging tale about a girl named Salamanca (Sal) Tree Hiddle, who takes a journey from Ohio to Idaho to reconnect with her mother whom she views as having abandoned her. Sal is accompanied by her very antsy and excited grandparents who become the audience for Sal’s account of her experience with Phoebe, a friend in Ohio. Through this story many instances of symbolism portray many aspects of life as they relate to relationships. I liked as it showed how not to be judgmental and not blame others for your problems. It made me think how in our society people often put down others to build themselves up.

The story begins with Sal’s mother suddenly leaves without notice; this has a devastating effect on Sal causing her to view herself as the reason for leaving. Sal’s mother sends a trail of postcards that show her journey to Idaho.
Depression sets in as it eventually discovered that her mother is not going to be coming back any time soon Desperation prompts Sal to take a trip with her grandparents to Idaho in hope to reuniting her with her mother. It is on this trip that Sal tells a story about her experience with a very interesting and critical girl: Phoebe. As with Sal, Phoebe is also devastated, when to her surprise, her mother leaves. Phoebe’s survival instinct kicks in and is determined to find a cause of her mother disappearance. Her main suspect is this unusual kid that she nicknames the “Potential Lunatic”. Believing that the “Potential Lunatic”, who she thinks leaves strange messages like “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins,” is the cause of this dilemma, she sets out to find and serve him justice.

Sharon Creech does an admirable job of writing this book by reflecting on some key points of life. She twists the plots together and creates a two-in-one book. The only thing that I thought could of improved the book was to right it at a higher grade level. It is a great book for anybody in elementary to middle school. She keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole entire book. It was an outstanding book. Through all the hardship and trials in this book she still surprises you. Great job, Sharon.

National Competion

This is for last week.
Fairfield Jr. High represented the Utah Science Olympiad team at nationals last week. This blog is going to describe and tell of my experience in Augusta, Georgia. Our team left around 5 o’clock and drove to the airport. It was a sunny Thursday morning. The weather was excellent for flying. We had to pay extra for the oversized trajectory device. We flew Delta and I switched around seats to sit with my friend. On the way there we watched Smallville on my friend’s laptop. It was a 3 hour flight to Atlanta. On our arrival, immediately you could feel the humidity overwhelm you. The air wet and heavy hooked our clothes to ourselves. We took a shuttle to the car rental place and rented a sweet mini SUV. It was white with a decked out interior. My grandma let us use her GPS to find our way around Georgia. It was good weather there, maybe a little too hot. It was another three hour drive to Augusta. It took awhile for us to find our hotel. Our hotel had three flours and 15 rooms on each floor. It was playhouse compared to the one last year. The hotel had complimentary breakfast with muffins and cereal each morning. The hotel last year had sausage, scrambled eggs, omelets, and a variety of other stuff each morning. About half of the group went out to Wal-Mart to get groceries for food the following day. All the kids stayed and played around. We caught frogs, played games on the computer, and went crazy. We were very tired by the end of the day though we still went to bed very late. The next day we went out to a discovery place and first watched a demonstration on liquid nitrogen. Here are some of the experiments that we watched: a racket ball turn hard and didn’t bounce; balloons deflate it a couple seconds without touching them; boiling of liquid nitrogen and many more. We went and experimented with all the various hands on things in this amazing building. There was a gyro, sound wave experiments, beach volleyball with nothing but a camera and a screen, centrifugal force, robots, bikes, swinging another person, magnets, mars rover, and hundred more. We spent hours there. At first I thought it was going to be dumb but it turned out to be kind of cool. After we went outside and had a picnic. The parents made subway sandwiches; they were really good; stacked high with onions, pepper, turkey, ham, cheese, olive, mayo, and mustard, all squished into a bun. That night was the night before the competition. We had to plan and prepare for all of our events the following day. We typed up study sheets and prepared binder for the completion. We tried to get a good night sleep but we still went to bed around midnight.
TO BE CONTINUED

Mothers

Since it is Mother's Day on Sunday I felt it appropriate to write a little lesson type thing about mothers.

Everything Mom

How did you find the energy, Mom
To do all the things you did,
To be teacher, nurse and counselor
To me, when I was a kid.

How did you do it all, Mom,
Be a chauffeur, cook and friend,
Yet find time to be a playmate,
I just can’t comprehend.

I see now it was love, Mom
That made you come whenever I'd call,
Your inexhaustible love, Mom
And I thank you for it all.

My Miracle Mother
Mom, I look at you
and see a walking miracle.
Your unfailing love without limit,
your ability to soothe my every hurt,
the way you are on duty, unselfishly,
every hour, every day,
makes me so grateful
that I am yours, and you are mine.
With open arms and open heart,
with enduring patience and inner strength,
you gave so much for me,
sometimes at your expense.
You are my teacher,
my comforter, my encourager,
appreciating all, forgiving all.
Sometimes I took you for granted, Mom,
but I don’t now, and I never will again.
I know that everything I am today
relates to you and your loving care.
I gaze in wonder
as I watch you being you—
my miracle, my mother.

Sometimes we take our mothers for granted. They are always there and we never can fully thank them for that their unconditional love to comfort us when we are hurt, their unselfishness clean up after our mess from breakfast or take us to school when it is raining, their eagerness to see us excel in everything is always there and to teach us what we need to. Mothers are always there to get us through another day.
On Tuesday I had to stay after school, I had a meeting about my eagle, I had to write up my eagle, I had to write a story in Spanish, and hike up half the mountain and when I finally had time late into the night my dad asked my mom if she was going to go to bed. And she kindly replied and said that she is going to stay up and help me with my homework. I just thought that she would sacrifice her sleep to help me. Our mothers do all these things and sometimes we forget to just say thank you and show appreciation for what they do day in and day out. I know when I do something for somebody it makes it all worthwhile if they say thank you for the act of service I just gave them. Our mothers are no different they deserve a thank you for all the kindness and service they give us constantly. In the dictionary the definition of respect is giving a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability. We need to show our respect to our mothers all the time whether it is a simple act of kindness like taking us to school. They are always there when we need the most. I found this story by Rebecca Burgoyne that illustrates how much love our mothers give us constantly.

As I stare into the bathroom mirror each morning at the beginning of a new day, I resolve to follow an example that was set for me long ago. In fact, glancing into any mirror takes me back years to one childish incident that has helped shape my entire life.
It was a Monday morning—but one that was a little more hectic than usual. I had slept in half an hour late. I couldn’t find the clothes I wanted to wear, and the hairdo I had tried to copy from Seventeen magazine for the month of November was (to say the least) not too attractive on me. My mother informed me in the midst of my frustrations that if I missed the bus I would be walking to school. But the real clincher was the announcement that I would not be allowed to leave until I made my bed and vacuumed my room.
As a 13-year-old, I had a difficult time coping with all of this responsibility. I flatly told my mother I was sorry, but I had more important things to do. Unfortunately, my mother does not accept refusals, and so I began a tirade of excuses, listing every unappreciated task I had ever carried out since age five. As the tears of anger and frustration slid down my cheeks, my temper mounted. Knowing I couldn’t win this argument, I ran to the bathroom, locked the door, and pouted.
Sitting on the edge of the counter, knowing I had missed the bus, and knowing I would be walking to school, my anger boiled over. I grabbed a bright red tube of lipstick that was lying in the open drawer and viciously scrawled the words “I hate you” across the mirror. Feeling I had avenged my hurt, I snuck out of the bathroom, grabbed my books, and trudged on to school through the autumn leaves.
All day long, the guilt and shame I felt at writing those words ate at me like acid. How could I have possibly told my mother that I hated her? I knew I loved her and hadn’t meant those words written in such haste. But what about my mother? Did she know that? Could she love me at all after what I had done?
Dragging my feet on the way home from the bus stop at the end of the street, I dreaded facing my mother. Quietly creeping through the back door, I snuck into the bathroom so I could wipe the lipstick off the glass. There I saw a neatly printed sentence right below mine. It too was done in bright red. As I stared at it, the words flooded my mind with new insight and understanding. “I love you” stared at me from the mirror, and in that one reflective moment I realized that no matter what I did my mother would always love me.

The HEART

The heart is one of the most complicated systems in the human body. For beginners, there are four chambers of the heart: right ventricle (bottom), left ventricle (bottom), right atrium (top), left atrium (top). It seems easy enough. Just wait and see, soon enough I will get trapped and tangled in my own words. There are different ways on transporting blood.
The blood that comes back to the heart, the deoxygenated blood, comes through veins and venules. It is a complicated network of twisting and thinning tubes. These tubes have valves. They have these valves because since gravity is pulling down at 9.8 meters per seconds squared they need some where to stop every once in a while. It is like throwing a ball 100 feet, or you have a ladder with 50 people on the ladder, and slowly hand the ball up.
The blood that is leaving the heart travels though another complex system of arteries and arterioles, oxygenated blood. These unlike the veins and venules do not have valves. The blood gets pushed around by the pressure of the pumping heart. In-between the venules and arterioles are the capillaries that connect these two tubes.
In the heart, there are valves to control the blood flow through the different chambers in the heart. I am going to trace a drop of blood through your body from the femur (your thigh bone) and back. It stats be going thought the femoral vein and then travels though other veins and connects to the inferior vena cava. The vena cava leads and empties into the right atrium. It passes through the tricuspid valve and into the right ventricle. It gets squeezed though the pulmonary semi-lunar valve and into the pulmonary artery. (If you noticed before I stated that arteries carries oxygenated blood, this is the only exception). The pulmonary arteries and empties the blood into the lungs and then out through the pulmonary vein. (This is another exception; it now has oxygenated blood not deoxygenated). Through the pulmonary vein it empties into the left atrium. The blood goes through the mitral valve and into the left ventricle with all the heart might pushes it out and though the aortic semi-lunar valve and into the aorta. After the aorta it travels through various arteries and back down to the femur.
As you can see, the heart is a very complex and confusing. There are many more things that go along with the heart such as disease, EKG's, cardiac output, and stroke volume. I could go on and on and on but probably by now you aren’t even reading this so I am going to stop.

Different and Similar

I was talking with a friend of mine and I couldn’t come up with any ideas for my blog. He said to read his blog and write on some topics that he has. Well, I did.
Everybody has similarities and everybody their differences. Some people have a unique sense of humor or a sophisticated brain. In this world everybody is the same but different; let me explain. Everybody’s features come from genes which our passed down from generation to generation. They get swapped and different ones are dominant and others are recessive, or the ones that are “hiding.” Everybody has the same composition of their genes, certain chemicals, certain bonds to bind things together. Everything composed of DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid, but people seem so different. People different language, different hair color, different height, taste, skin color, on and on and on. Even though everybody has the same gene makeup and yet they are so different, it weird to think about.
People have different IQ scores. How do they get the smart genes? It isn’t fair. How did Einstein get to be the genius of all geniuses? In biology class we learned about the DNA and genes, we learned that some of the genes people have can be either inherited or learned. For example they did a study on identical twins, ones that were separated before they even born and had them grow up in two completely different cities. After they had grown up they would put them together and see what they had in common. Since identical twins have identical genes that you would expect for them to be the same. Some of the genes that they had classified as inherited were almost the same, but as they grew up they obtained some learned genes, since they had been raised on two different cities, in two completely different environments. I was talking with someone last week and we had both taken the ACT the previous Saturday. We were comparing our scores and he did like 7 points better than me. How come he got the smart genes on the ACT and I got the average score genes. I guess it was the luck of the draw.

Science Olympiad

On March 28 I had the privilege and honor of representing Fairfield Jr. High at the State Science Olympiad Competition. Science Olympiad is a national program that promotes kids to participate in math and science competitively. It is a blast, so much fun. You start around the end of the previous year, November and December area. You are on a team of about 15 people and there are about 25 events. You pick the events you want and hope that the coaches will pick you for that event. Well, since there are many events you usually get at least 1 of the events that you chose. For prep of the competition you study with your event partner. Some of the events are: anatomy, ecology, tower building, robots, amphibians and reptiles, bio-process lab, disease detectives, fossils, meteorology, road scholar, waves, environmental chemistry, physical science lab, trajectory, airplanes, experimental design.
On the day of the state competition you arrive at the school around 7 o’clock and get on a bus to Weber State University to compete. The events start around 8 o’clock and go to 3 o’clock. You usually don’t have every hour occupied by one of your events. The competition is so fun. In-between events you can explore the campus, or go and watch other events. Most of the events have a test, and the winner is the one that gets the highest score. The other events are building events that you build, some sort of scientifically thing, and test whatever it is and on the day of the competition, you show what you are made of. My events that I competed in were anatomy, crave the wave, and ecology. Anatomy: each year they pick two systems of the body and you have to learn everything that there is to know about those two systems. This year the systems were the cardiovascular and skeletal. This was the first time I was on this event and I got on the team late. I only had about a month to learn everything about them. I studied for about 3 or 4 hours each night for about a week me and my partner agreed for each of us to do half of the anatomy. I took cardiovascular and he took skeletal. We did well on anatomy and took bronze. Crave the Wave: in this we learn the properties and math about waves. We study earthquakes and how to locate the epicenter. We learn how to calculate the speed and wavelength of various types of waves. We took bronze. And in Ecology: this one we study different ecosystems and environment and how they react and work together. They made the test wrong and tested us on the wrong things. It was supposed to be grasslands and deserts but the test was on rivers. We still took bronze in that event. After the competition ends we had a pizza party and go crazy. We had a couple of hours to waste time before the award ceremony. We went to the D-event center and ran around the halls throwing a Frisbee. We sat down for the awards ceremony. It was tense. The pressure of our school taking state: for the could-be-fourteenth year. The air was cold, the coaches were tense, and the announcers were antsy. Our whole team was holding their breath every time they went through the 8 possible places. Our team did exceptionally well. We were in the top tree for every event except 1. I got three medals, I participated in three events: anatomy, ecology, and waves. Our team took gold and because we took first we get to go to Georgia and compete in the National Science Olympiad Competitions. I went last year to the one in D.C. and that was AWESOME. I can’t wait to go to Georgia.

Spanish Plays

Taking a foreign language was so much fun. I have been taking Spanish for 3 years. Each year you do a project sort of thing, for Spanish language week. First years make a poster, second years sell bomb-bombs, and third years perform the Spanish plays. Since I am third year I preformed the Spanish plays. They were a blast. We got the whole day off; out of school and everything. We could sit in Lillywhites and do absolutely nothing all day, except perform our Spanish plays. We could sit in his room and listen to our iPod’s or sleep. I was in Rumplestilskin, the king, which I didn’t even know existed till we read the plays. I wanted a different part but I got stuck with the king that says 4 lines. I talked to the person that got the part that I wanted; he said that he didn’t even want this part. I had so much fun we got to leave early for lunch, we got to go to no classes, and it was awesome. My play was about this crazy, insane, and weird freak: Rumplestilskin. He has a special talent he can spin straw to gold. That would be cool to be able to do. Well, anyways, he has a high price. He wants the Miller’s Daughter’s bracelet and necklace, he wants a third thing but she doesn’t have anything to give her. She later has a daughter and he wants the baby. She doesn’t want him to take it so she makes him a deal, saying that if she can guess his name in three days then he will leave her alone. She can’t come up with his name, she later asks the messenger to spy on him and find out his name. He does and tells her it is Rumplestilskin. And they live happily ever after, except Rumple boy. If you haven’t taken a foreign language yet, then you need to. It isn’t as fun as going to the country and experiencing it for yourself but it is a blast.

Alphabet Story

This is a story, or at least a want to be one, that uses every letter in the alphabet.

A fat, ugly, girl walked down the cracked sidewalk, she looked like she was in pain.
Betsy asked “What’s wrong.”
“Certainly nothing,” replied the huge girl, “I am just trying to be alone,” she said with so much anger.
Dancing down the cracked sidewalk, Betsy’s brother came, minding his own business.
Edwin was this dancing kid’s name. He passed both of them by without taking any notice to their existence.
Fortunately, Betsy didn’t even notice her brother as he danced pass on the cracked sidewalk.
Gracefully and peacefully Betsy and the ugly girl walked down the cracked sidewalk as they talked about why the ugly girl was sad.
“Ha-ha, look at that fat ugly girly,” chanted Isaac.
Isaac, a total jerk, has been teasing the fat girl since second grade.
“Jerk,” the fat girl yelled out after him. “See that is the reason I am so sad.”
“Kind, honest, and loving people are hard to find these days,” said betsy.
“Laugh all you want,” said the girl
“McKenzie, stop it, I wasn’t laughing I was supporting you.”
“Now you tell me,” said McKenzie.
“Oh, my, gosh, you are so hard to talk with, you take the simplest thing as criticism.”
“Please, you’re the one that is hard to talk to.”
“Quit it fly.” McKenzie screamed.
“Rat spitting mongoose, I am out of here, you’re on your own to deal with Isaac he can kill you for all I care.”
See you later, NOT!
Toward her house Betsy traveled. “That girl is so sensible,” she said to herself.
“Very selfish she is; I am never going to talk to her again, lunatic.” McKenzie said to herself;
“Weird how quickly people can hate someone.”
X-rays show that everybody body is the same.
Yet, people make fun of others just because they don’t like them.
Zip-a-dee –doo-da

100 years

This is for a week I missed. Have you ever thought on how hard it must have been to live 100 years ago? It would be so hard. If you had to cook a snack or something just for dinner you would have to get a fire going in the stove and then you would be able to cook something. My families microwave broke a couple of weeks ago and it was so weird and time consuming to just warm up a piece of chicken or if you wanted to warm up some spaghetti you would have to put the spaghetti in a pan then carefully heat it up and while you are doing that you have to heat up the sauce again on the stove and wait for it to be done. Now days we get the noodles then put the sauce on it and stick it in the microwave for a minute and vwala, it is ready. Back then you didn’t have a dryer or washer so you had to wash each thing by hand and now we wine if we have to put some soap in the washer and turn the knob, it is so hard. Writing this reminded me of a journal we had to write for English class. We watch this video were this guy talks about if anybody has to wait because there cell phone isn’t working, and instead of just waiting till we have reception people now day just freak out because there cell phone isn’t working. Watch this video if you already haven’t. http://copywriterunderground.com/2009/02/11/we-live-in-an-amazing-amazing-world-and-its-wasted-on-the-crappiest-generation-of-spoiled-idiots/
Well back to the topic, I can’t even imagine living 100 years ago where, yes; you did have to go all the way outside to a wooden building to go to the bathroom. Can you imagine, those of you that have gone on scout camp, to go your life going to the bathroom in a smelly, stinky, poop filled outhouse. YUCK!!!!! Can you imagine not have a shower just down the hall from your bedroom. Instead you have to go to the river and bathe. There was no running water and no hot water unless you wanted to go chop some fire wood and put it in the stove, get a fire burning and boil the water. That would take, from people now days point of view, a lifetime. I was watching Smallville, you might have seen it, well anyways Clark Kent loses his powers and he is amazed on how hard it is to just get through the day. We are kind of like Clark because we take everything for granted and don’t realize how hard it was to live a long time ago.