Snow Forts!

Who doesn't want to be in complete galactic control of the universe? Why would you not want to be the terror of the the town? How could you not want to be the big dog of your neighborhood? Could I possibly somehow own these titles? Actually yes I can. You see, I have, in my front yard...a snow fort. Now here's a lesson that I think everone can learn. The person with the best snow fort, gets to be in control. And I've been working pretty hard on mine, even through the nasty weather we've been having. I was out there working at it through the snow, ice, wind, slush, mush, cold, hail, sleet, snowplows, blizzards, hurricanes, tornados, and even through the birth of some little Canadian boy somewhere. It takes commitment, building a snow fort. I guess mine may not be the greatest in the world, but in my own little world, it's something. I'm proud of it because I put work into it. It can shield me from any of the forces I've already listed plus snowballs. It's solid, not to be broken. So if anyone wants to have a snowball fight you can come on over, I'm ready.

My world upside-down.

When I was younger, one of my favorite things to do was to be upside-down. I would sit in my room or in the living room hanging backwards off the couch. The ceiling (the floor in upside-down land) seemed so neat and tidy. Space and openness just seemed to flow like eggnog from and eggnog carton. Lights hanging from the ceiling would become lamps sitting in the middle of the room. Doorways had to be stepped over, because most doors (as we all know) don't go all the way to the ceiling. They stop about a foot-and-a-half short of it, resulting in a lip that must be stepped over in upside-down land. It was an exhilarating feeling, being upside-down. I felt like an astronaut, defying gravity. Or like some sort of explorer, discovering a new dimension of the world.
I still sit upside-down occasionally in my room, but now I recognize the force of the blood rushing to my head a lot faster, so It's not quite as frequent of an activity. I don't know if anyone else ever did this, or still does, but I thought I'd just share and fun pastime of mine.

Heads Up!

Everyone knows what a quarter is. It is one of the simplest forms of currency in the U.S. Most people simply use them to pay for things or they collect them. But all those people that are so narrow minded don't see the endless possibilities of uses for quarters.

A good friend of mine and I were feeling in a sort of "think-outside-the-box" mood, the other day. So we dug in our pockets to see what we could do. My friend found a quarter. All I had was some pocket lint and a pencil, so we chose to use the quarter instead. We started spinning it on top of some lockers and trying to find a pattern of which side it landed on most after spinning. We spun it multiple times, both clockwise and counter-clockwise, but it usually ended up being Tails. Next we added another variable. Starting the rotations of the spin on the locker-tops, we would then let it drop to the floor and continue revolving.

Fascinated by such a simple object, doing a very basic movement, we came up with many more cool ideas of what to do with the quarter. Eventually we got so far as to bowling. I put my pencil on the floor and we would try and hit it from some distance away. You may think that this is an easy task, just like we did at first, but it proves to be very difficult. Getting the quarter to stay in a straight line is the trick. It always seems to curve on direction. The last activity that we were able to complete was a "rolling distance contest." I'm sure that most of you at one point have done this. You take the quarter and roll it as far as you can. What I thought was interesting about that, is that you loose sight of the quarter very easily. Once you loose track of it, you occasionally catch a shimmer of light reflecting off that quarter down at the other end of the hallway. (At least that's where we were situated)

Don't screw it up, please.

I've been thinking quite a bit lately. Actually I usually do quite a bit of thinking, but lately the topic of my thoughts has had a sort of different angle. I was wondering about what our lives are going to be like in five or ten years. The people that we see everyday, we know, we've befriended and we hang around with...where are they gonna be? That thought really scares me. I'm not afraid of change, I've had plenty in my life, I'm used to it, but I'm afraid of what the changes will do to the people. The decisions we made now and in the near future may dictate our whole lives. I don't want to see people just throw their lives away. Really, if it came down to it, I would give up my life just so someone could have a successful one themselves. This is something I'm really passionate about.

As one of everyone's "favorite" teachers in the school says, "Life has no retests." There is a lot of truth and validity behind that.

I guess, ultimately what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to see our friends waste their lives. During high school I want to be able to make as much of an impact on everyone, so that there might possibly be a smaller chance of them screwing up. (Not that I'm all that great at not screwing up either...)

Success

You know the tough thing about success? It doesn't come easy. Well at least not for most. Isn't that kind of a bummer? The thing that so many people desperately want, is so hard to get. Success requires focus, determination, perserverance, patience, and a passion. On top of having all those you have to combine them all and put them into action as you work toward your goal. For example, if you want to be a star runner, you've gotta work to be the best. You can't just say, I wanna be the fastest guy (or girl) out there, work out a few times, and hope that that's enough. No, you've gotta spend months, maybe years working out pretty much everyday. You have to push yourself, it you don't push yourself, how do you expect to get better? Probably not gonna happen.

I guess that's one of the problems we see in schools these days. Kids don't have any insentive to push themselves to learn, so they don't and the consequence is that kids not getting the knowledge or grades they want. Here in America most kids just care about good grades, not the actual knowledge, they take that for granted. In other parts of the world however, if you want to live a successful life, you need to spend extra time studying, learing and truly understading the stuff. I guess that fact that success is kind of hard to achieve is a good thing...I mean what would the world be like if everyone were successful. Where would they go from there?