halloween memories.

Halloween has always been a bittersweet time for me. As every child does, I love to go out and get candy without having to pay for it, but the fact that you have to dress as scary people is what has always got me. I still have a picture of one of my first halloweens I can remember. It's a picture of me with my cute rosy cheeks, curls of hair, adorable polka dot costume, and...a clown nose. Little did my mother know that I had already developed a fear for clowns. I always have. To this day, if I see a clown, I almost cry. Something about them gets me. I didn't like them even before I saw the movie It. That only deepened my fear so it would last throughout the rest of my life and probably haunt me enough I'll pass the fear onto my children. I remember my mommy dressing me and puttin on my make-up. Then she turned me around in the mirror to take a gander at myself and I started to cry. Today, for almost 18 year old girls halloween is just a big excuse to go out, dress slutty, and get some candy, but you gotta love it.

who do i write for

Who do I write for? Or maybe is it, what do I write for? Actually it's both. Who I write for depends on WHAT I am writing for. If I am writing for one of my classes, it's usually not for me. It's usually for a teacher or for their curriculum(sp). In the end though, I am writing for a grade. A grade in which I will recieive, and will go towards my education. So really when I'm writing for a class I am writing for myself whether the topic interests me or not. When I'm not writing for my classes, I am probably writing in my journal which is strictly for me. I love to write for myself. I love the release I get when I put all my thoughts together and throw them up on a little piece of paper. Then at the end of the day you can put all of your problems on that paper and most of the things you stress about so much seem so small. All writers shouldn't be writing for other people. A writer should love to write, and in return should love to write for themself.

a good recipe

Well as a matter of fact this blog is quite ironic. I came down stairs to get a recipe for blueberry muffins, and decided that while I am here I will blog for the day. I am about to embark on a journey of blueberry muffins. I will make about 3 or 4 dozen of them, as the boys in my grade could eat quite a lot. I hope they turn out well. Blueberry muffins are about the best thing you could think of. They serve many purposes. They are breakfast foods. For some odd reason they turned out to be the breakfast muffin over all the other muffins, probably because they have fruit in them. They calm a sweet tooth...well they are muffins. Blueberry muffins are easily transported. They are not full of all the frosting that goes along with cupcakes. Overall blueberry muffins rock, and I am very excited to be baking them on this Monday eve.

farthest ive been

When I was about ten I took a cruise with my family. We flew down to Miami, Florida and started our voyage. We traveled down into the Cayman Islands. There we swam with stingrays. It wasn't quite as fun as I thought it would be. Once I was in the water with all these strange creatures surrounding me in the water I became uneasy. I finally loosened up a little bit and was even able to feed one. From there we went to Cozumel. I got to get my hair braided...wouldn't reccommend it. It was one of the most painful things I've ever done, but I haven't given birth yet. I also got to snorkle. Next time I'd like to try scuba diving. You can only go about an extra foot under the water. Once you go past that foot, you get a mouthful of the worst water that you will ever come in contact with. This summer I will hopefully be taking a trip to Italy so I can finally not say "the farthest Ive been is Mexico"

a place i like

I like to hike. My favorite place to hike is Harney Peak in the Black Hills, South Dakota. It is such a wonderful place. First you start the hike in a winding valley filled with butterflies and a different array of colorful flowers. Then it stretches into a stiff hill. It is quite short, but it gets your heart pumping. The trees extend way over your head. The tall rocks that belong to Needles Highway lay above your head for part of the trip, and the next thing you know they are down by your feet. I love the experience of going all the way from the bottom and looking at the top likes its an unreachable source, and then finally being on the top looking down and out at the horizon line. It's an unbelievable experience that I enjoy so much I've done it every summer for the past eight years.

a word i like

I like many words, but I don't like a word for the way it sounds. I like the word love. I'm a seventeen (almost eighteen) and I am in love. I love a boy of course. Well not of course, since there is homosexual people, but anyways I do love a man. He is amazing...sometimes. I love the concept of love, although sometimes it can be quite difficult and painful at times. It's not always easy to put yourself our there, when somebody could shove it all back in your face. Love is a much needed thing. I love many things. I love my mother, and I love my best friend Courtney. I love my work, and my future line of work. I love to love.

buffets

Buffets are gross. Think about it. It's just another way for our poor society to support our sick way of eating and it totally explains our fatness. People in our country do everything they possibly could just to not be fat. Basically that means they pop thier diet pills as they are sitting down to dinner at golden coral. So overall you pay twice as much since you get all this variety of food and all of it you could possibly want. That creates a chain reaction of "I need to get my money's worth". I think everybody has either said or heard that phrase at some point in their life. It's a common spoken thing. So "to get their money's worth" people eat like it's frickin Thanksgiving morning! Then they go home watch some T.V. and order a new bottle of their extra strength diet pills.

a great movie

I have just seen a great movie. It was in my top five, which is a hard barrier to break. I don't really rate movies in my top list. It is call "The Brave One". It's currently in theatres. It's about a woman who is with her boyfriend in New York and they are beat up. I honestly didn't know people beat women seriously, especially like that. Probably a stem out of my sheltered South Dakota childhood. Anyways, her boyfriend dies. Her life is altered forever. She isn't the same person, and it affects her day to day life. First she is scared to even leave her appartment, and when she finally does leave she encounters many things that a person doesn't encounter once in their life. You should go see the movie to see how she handles these scary encounters and how it turns out in the end. It's a little bloody at parts, so if you're like my mom, you might not like it though.

My favorite verbs

I am a very big fan of verbs. Verb, it's what you do. Yeah those cheesy little commercials, that are trying to get people to be more active, but really verbs are everything we do. It's hard to pick my favorite verb for that very reason. I tell you right now I dont have a favorite verb to write with. My writing is crazy and never the same, but most people use the same sort of verbs in writing. In daily life, I tell you, I have many things I love. I love to dance. I love to swim. I love to run. I love to love. I love to argue. There are so many things that I love to do. I hate school. So school or schooling or whatever as my verb doesn't fit my life. I love life. I love living life. A part of my life, however is school. I try to love school, since I will be in it for another decade of my life. Right now, I'm going to do one of my favorite things, since I am at home on my lunch break...Eat!

misheard words

Who hasn't heard somebody say something and misunderstood them? It's a very common occurrence, especially in teenagers. Honestly it's happened to me so many times that I can't even think of one that sticks out so much. The only time I can think of is when it was super hot outside. The sun was so strong that you didn't want to do anything at all. It was a Monday morning (Monday's are when the garbage gets taken out). My mom came into my room on at a very early time and asked me to check if the garbage was gone when I got up. When I woke up I couldn't quite remember what she told me but I remembered the word gone, except I interpreted it lawn. So I mowed the lawn. It was brown for awhile. I realized my mistake when my mom called and asked if the garbage was GONE or if the holiday had screwed up the schedule.

writing is not a contest

I'm down tonight, basically because of the fact that I do disagree with this statement. I didnt do so well on a paper that I had spend a lot of time on. The fact that I know others that might not be as good of writers as I scored better because, for some reason, I can't manage to get my sourcing down really bugs me. I'm a very competitive person, so I do take writing as a contest. It's a competition to see who can earn the best grade or at least tie for it. I settle for ties. To be at the low end for me is hard. Writing may not be a contest to all. It all depends on the person's attitude and the way they look at their writing. Chances are, if a person isn't very passionate about something, they aren't going to fight for it.

stop when youre done

This is such a true statement, however, it is not always realistic. It is always best to stop a paper when you are done. WHen you have nothing left to write about, stop. The problem when you dont stop is how much filler ends up being incooporated into your work. Filler is every readers nightmare. It can take a fabulous idea and turn it into a piece of work that isn't worth the time it took to create it. For instance, no grief here, Huckleberry Finn. I thought the central idea of that book was good, but it seemed like it had about an extra 100 pages of "what is he talking about?" in it. Stopping when you are ready to stop is not always an easy thing to do, especially in an english class. Even with a topic you love it's sometimes hard to get the full amount of words/pages that you are suppose to take up. That's when filler starts being added. So really here, teachers should start taking examples. There should not be required lengths for papers...after all Zinsser did tell me to stop when I'm ready. :)

writing regularly

Zinsser says this because it is true. That's why we do these blogs. Writing more often helps writers to become more comfortable with their writing. It helps them to get to know their own style, and associated with the different tricks. It takes a while to break habits. I have a problem myself with commas. I add them where they are not needed becuase I used to leave them out when they were needed. I tried to break that habit with putting a comma in where ever I thought one might be needed. I am currently trying to break my habit of comma overusage, and I think I have become better about it. Writing more often makes your writing better. It's like the phrase practice makes perfect!

done with a paper

So many feelings can come over me when I am finished writing a paper. Most of the time I am completely relieved. Papers are always stressful, to complete, make sure you have the correct information, and enough of it to fulfill your length demand. I can't help but feel anxious or sad when I'm done writing a paper too. It's hard to let somebody judge you on such a personal level. I put my heart, my soul, my experiences, my life, and my opinions into my papers. Sometimes people don't like your papers because of those things that you add into it. It's hard to put yourself out there so detailed and have somebody say that those deep parts of you are only mediocre. Sometimes I love the topic for a paper, and the paper itself so much it's hard to be done with it.

critics

A good critic doesn't only criticize. They inform people. There are critics for just about everything; every profession, every activity. They tell us, as consumers, what we need to know, so we can make an educated decision, whether that is choosing the right movie, the right cereal, the right microwave so we can cook our salmonella pot pies, and even up to the right doctor to see for our surgeries. A critic can be used for many things, especially a skillful one. Somebody has to be the one to decide who or what is the best or who/what doesn't quite fulfill their responsibilities. As citizens, we can be thankful for the skilled critics, because without them we wouldn't get a fair judgment on our products. We can especially be thankful for them if we are the ones being judged.

hard to praise things well

In this day it's difficult to praise something the way it truely deserves. You can never tell when somebody is actually prasing your work, or just being nice. In turn, that makes it hard to take a compliment truely to heart. Even if somebody is honestly praising work, it's not always accurate. It takes an educated person to be able to praise something, becuase you have to be able to compare it to something. If an uneducated person tries to desribe why a piece of pie is good, without having tried other pieces of pie of the same kind, but from a different pie, they wouldn't truely be able to praise the pie. Most of the time work that is praised is poorly praised, and doesn't get the attention it deserved in the first place.

best breakfast cereal

I am a HUGE fan of cereal. It's one of my top 5 comfort foods. It's generally a food everybody has in their house, and if worse comes to worse I will eat cereal for dinner 7 days a week. I am always in a different mood for a different cereal with my indescisive self, but their is one cereal I will always come running to in the end; captain crunch. I'm not talking about that peanut butter crunch or crunchberry stuff. I'm talking about the real thing-the original. It has a hint of peanut butter, but not so much that you have to use peanut butter in the name. It's sweeter than cherrios but not too sweet like waffle crisp. Captain crunch has to be the best cereal ever, and I'm not just saying that. However, it's most likely not the best for you, so I usually stick to my wheaties!

colombus or native american day

I have heard some controversy over this issue. People say that they shouldn't be together since Colombus took Native Americans with him to be slaves. I understand that issue. At the same time I see it differently. It's not a day to celebrate enslaving Native Americans. It's more of a way to honor them. They were here first. To me it's a day of celebration for all of us as a whole. It's the day that this very place we are, was discovered. We should all be thankful for that. As far as I'm concerned, if people have a big to do about it, we should just change the name. I have no idea what it should be, but somebody could think of something that compromises. If I had to pick though, I would think Colombus Day makes more sense. After all, he was the one who got lost in the first place.

anything for halloween

This year I have no idea what I'm going to be for halloween. Yes, I do still actually dress up. Hypothetically I would like to be somebody who has all my stuff together. It's my senior year and I feel like I'm stretched so thin I have nothing left to give. Heck, this blog is late! Maybe by halloween I will have it all together. In the sense of actually dressing up, I will probably dress similar to my seven year old sister. It's a running tradition we have. The girls in my grade like to buy "skimpy" outfits to dress up in, on the occasion and go trick-o-treating in but, we end up putting on double layers since it's always cold. I'll wear something simliar to them when we go out. I am excited for Halloween this year. It means the semester is that much closer to being done!

Zinsser says, speaking of writing, "Be grateful for everything you can throw away" (16). Why?

In writing you want your paper to be the most informative and interesting as it can be. Sometimes we add too much information, to try to add to it, but in general we don't need the extra filler. Writing is a mixture of adding just enough information and leaving just enough out. Filler is a big no-no. I have read books that have great content, and a good theme to it, but is impossible to read because of all the extra words they add. We have to be grateful for the things we can leave out, since having too much is usually better than not having enough. Taking something out of your piece just means that it's strong enough to stand by itself without the help of the filler.

favorite sport

I love sports. As a child I played basketball, I swam, I played softball, and I started to run track when I was in 7th grade. Two out of the four sports I developed skill in, softball and swimming. Then one fateful day I was going out to catch a pop fly and the ball slipped in between my glove and my face. I had a fat lip for days. I haven't played softball in competition since that day. I stopped swimming when I got older, because it didn't fit into my schedule. I was never BAD at basketball, I just didn't have a wide range of skills. I was good at defense, really good, but that my offense was lacking in skills. I am still in track although it's not the most fun. I am in it, more for the social aspect of it. I have to say my favorite sport to watch is none of these. It's hockey. It's amazing to be right up in there. You can see all of the players get angry, until finally explodes into a fight. With hockey you dont score a million points a game, so every point counts. That makes the game more exciting and every goal makes the crowd sit a little bit closer to the edge of their seat.

favorite food

I have to say I don't have a favorite food. I am not a very picky eater. I never have been. One of my comfort foods is popcorn; kettle corn especially. I am a very big fan of anything Italian. To be more exact, anything pasta. I will try just about anything that has an association with pasta. I have yet to find a pasta dish I didn't enjoy, but my favorite is alfredo. I guess if I had to chose a favorite food though, it would be tomatoes. I am not a fan of ketchup, or tomato juice, but I am a huge fan of tomatoes. I put them on just about anything a tomato could possibly goes with. I have a tomato garden, and every summer I freeze tomotoes, since it's nice to have fresh tomatoes with chilli and goulash, especially in the winter. One of the strangest things that show my love of tomatoes, is that I actually eat them like an apple. I will take the tomato and bite into it without putting anyting with it or on it. Most people cringe when they see or hear this, but I bet if you tried it, you would like it.

my thoughts on writing

I agree with Zinsser. Writing can be very difficult. Writing can be very boring and monotonous. As a student, it is my job to write about the topic given to me, whether it is something I feel very passionate about or something I could care less about. Even with a lot of research and knowledge on a topic, I sometimes still have difficulty filling up the amount of required space. I do enjoy writing though; otherwise I might not very well be in the class I'm currently enrolled in. Writing has always come easier to me than others. I enjoy learning about different topics, and when I have an on day with writing, I still can awe myself with what I can create from one thought. Overall I would have to say that I enjoy writing...most of the time.

plagiarism is like blank because blank

Plagiarism is like stealing because you are taking somebody's ideas without asking, and without giving them the credit for the information. Plagiarism can occur in many different ways, even without you knowing it, but that doesn't make it any less serious. That's why it's very important for you to educate yourself on the correct ways to give credit to your sources and in the process using their ideas but putting them into your own words, as not to copy them word for word. There's a fine line, and the only way to not cross it, is to always source the website, book, magazine, or file that gives you the information you requested. Never copy and paste, because even if you source, that can get you into trouble, and the consequences of plagiarism do not weigh lightly on students.