Some "Camping" Trip

Author’s note: Cassie and I decided to write about a hilarious memory that we shared together while at a campsite with her family. We were originally going to make a combined piece, but decided to write separate point of views on the same time. Our main focus in this piece was to see just how much two people’s perspectives may vary from each other and it was overall just a fun piece to write. Please comment on both pieces.

Cassie


No one can truly express, with any amount of words, just how it feels to have a best friend.  When a person comes into your life, that is truly special, that’s not something you are going to get everyday, that is something worth fighting for and holding onto.  That’s how it is with my best friend Callie, we click, it’s as simple as that.  We agree and disagree, but we accept each other and hear each other out.  Finding a person who knows every secret about you and still loves you is truly something that not a lot of people will experience in their lifetime.  “Best friends are the sisters God forgot to give us.” ~Anonymous. Enough said.  

The simple memories are ones that in the end, matter most, for every single one is special in its own way.  Pulling up to the campsite, Callie and I bounded out of the car and walked down to the fire like the cool cats that we were, still humming the song that had been playing on the radio.  A night full of burgers, smores, and sunshine all to share with my best friend equals an obviously great time.  With the country music blaring from the radio, I rolled my eyes and set out to change that, turning on my favorite station, a Katy Perry song played through the speakers, only to have it changed right back by my brother who never fails to get on my nerves. Being the classic brother and sister that we are, I changed it back continuing in what seems a non-ending cycle, until finally he gave up and I grinned in satisfaction.  The next song came through and let me tell you first off my dad can absolutely not dance for the life of him.  Of course, that doesn’t stop as he breaks into the whole routine, unfortunately for all the people around which included my mom, brothers, my dad’s friend Ralph and his son Alex, along with Callie and I.  

The boys having caught fish earlier, I spent the majority of the night getting a piece of fish dangled in front of my face courtesy of Alex, much to my dissatisfaction.  We are now sitting at a picnic table, waiting for our cheeseburgers, as Callie is showing off her latest phone background which consisted of us posing while wearing the dorkiest sunglasses we found in Kohls the plastic hanger sticking straight out. Soon, my uncle and cousins along with my dad’s work friend and his wife are all here.  

Sitting around the fire, I look around at the sea of happy faces stuffing burgers, hot dogs, hashbrowns, and beans in their faces as if they had never seen food in their life.  In the moment, although I thought nothing of it at the time, I was truly happy being with my family, some delicious food, and a best friend.  

As night settled in, the boys trudged down to the pier to fish, armed with only flashlights and fishing poles, and the most ridiculous headlights strapped across their foreheads.  Callie and I remained, content with the fact that we now had several smores in our stomachs, our music playing, and a marshmallow between our fingers that we were in the process of turning a regular marshmallow into marshmallow taffy, a bonfire tradition.  When we got bored we wandered around on the paths, just talking about whatever we came to mind, or in silence because for us silence didn’t have to be awkward, it felt perfectly okay to just know that we had someone with us who understood who we were.  

After sneaking around in the woods, in a failed attempt to scare to guys who had now returned empty-handed to the fire we resorted to one of the tents.  I put on my i-Pod setting it to shuffle on one of my Avril Lavigne albums and we plopped on the air mattress joking around and telling each other stuff that wouldn’t make sense to any other person who could’ve been listening.  We understood each other and that was all that mattered.  When the boys snuck up to the side of the tent in a fail attempt to scare us, we fake screamed and pounded our fists against the side seeing if we’d able to catch them off guard.  We crawled out the tent, when we were sure they had left and heard voices coming from the next tent over, could payback be any more obvious?  With myself following Callie’s lead we sprinted the distance between the two tents, wincing at any twig that snapped beneath our feet not wanting the parents to catch us in the act.  When we got closer we slowed and the next thing I knew Callie was on the ground.  “Wait. Cassie don’t-” she started, but before I had time to process anything I was on top of her, a stick painfully cutting into my calf.  

Only then did we realize that the tent was staked into the ground and that was the string holding it down.  I rolled off of her, but made no attempt to stand because we laid there speechless, dying of laughter.  When we finally did pull ourselves from the ground, we avoided eye contact knowing we would just have another laughing fit, and brushed ourselves off only then realizing we both had some nasty cuts on our calves where the stick had got a piece of both of us, along with scrapes on our hands and forearms.  Callie, having volleyball the next day, was frantic to cover up her “battle scars,” so we rushed to the car to get sweatshirts.  Returning to the fire, we shared knowing looks, but casually joined in the conversation anyway.  

Being our usual weird selves we took to only speaking spanish and if any one spoke English in response we acted as if we had no idea what they were saying.  When Ralph told us to make him another hamburger I responded with, “Yo no cocino hamburgesas muy bien,” or in other words, “I don’t cook hamburgers very good.” When confusion was evident on their faces, we both took the opportunity to bolt from our lawn chairs and act it out, which proved to be a lost cause even with my cousin, who had a few years of practice up his sleeve, helping with a few words.  You eventually sat back down, drowning our failure in more marshmallow taffy and singing songs we learned in spanish with Alex occasionally joining in.  As we pitched in the conversation, we laughed openly and rubbed our sore legs every so often as night set above us, the stars twinkling over our heads.  It was truly the end of a perfect night and some memories I would hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life, though simple as they may be, this is what built up the friendship between Callie and I, into where we both stand today, together.  

Callie

I can’t imagine anything better. The weather is nice, I’m outdoors, the music makes me laugh and what makes it perfect is that I’m sitting on a beat up picnic table with my best friend, Cassie, laughing right  there with me. Her dad puts on absolutely horrible music and starts dancing in a god awful embarrassing way that makes me die with laughter.  Nothing could make this more perfect. Her brother’s perfectly annoying, as usual, and her brother’s friend is walking around with a hatchet acting like he’s so cool and tough, which he’s not. Even that keeps Cassie and I laughing because the mood is absolutely, you guessed it, perfect.

Her dad grabs some burgers off the fire that he made and offers one to Cassie and I. Ladies first I guess. We pig out until it gets dark and the boys go out fishing for tomorrow's lunch. We decide that this is the perfect time to go explore the campgrounds. We walk around imitating people we know and being perfectly obnoxious as we go. Luckily not too many other campers are around to be annoyed. As a joke we come up to our campsite but cut through the woods instead. Right at the edge of the campsite we duck behind a tree plotting out our attack to scare her brother. But of course, since it’s Cassie and I, we each manage to step on a stick and get everyone’s attention. So much for the element of surprise.

Once we’ve each had plenty of s’mores, we head back to one of the tents and play music on Cassie’s iPod telling each other random stuff that only best friends would tell each other. Cassie’s brothers and cousins try to scare us by slamming into the tent or putting their hand on it as if they were a ghost. We counterattack by pushing them over every time. We’re too smart for their tricks. Then, as a trick for us, we stealthily run  to the other tent where there’s a lantern glowing from the center.

I duck behind a tree and motion for Cassie to follow. We run behind another before our final sprint to behind the tent. Once we’re clear, I bolt with Cassie close behind. As I’m running I don’t see the tent line jetting out of the corner of the tent because of the darkness and trip. I fall hard on the ground. Just as I turn and start my warning to Cassie, she trips as well and falls hard in almost the same exact spot as me and manages to bring a big stick with her to cut up our legs.

Our initial reaction was, “Are you okay!?!” but that quickly passed. We lay there for nearly three minutes laughing too hard to stand. Once we finally do get off the cold, hard dirt ground we go into another laughing fit as we realize no one was even in the tent, and the lantern was just left on by her cousin. I nearly wet my pants, or shorts to be more exact, when I fully process just how stupid we were. After we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves down we head to the car to grab our sweatshirts to attempt to cover up the scrapes and bruises we so gracefully received from the fall.

Still trying to hide everything, we sit down by the fire with some of the adults and start talking to them. Cassie and I decide it would be funny to try to talk completely in Spanish from then on and the grownups scramble to try to understand. They pick up a word here and a word there but it’s only funny to us. Every time they attempt to say something back in Spanish Cassie and I decide on the response of, “¿Que?”. Their look of confusion makes everything about this night that much better. And the look seems to be plastered to their face as we make marshmallow taffy and lick the sticky goodness off of our fingers.

What’s their problem? What’s wrong with them? Those are probably their exact thoughts. The answer to that questions is  very simple minded. We’re best friends. Isn’t that what they do? Act young and foolish because they bring that out in each other? Embrace each others quirks? Laugh at dumb jokes? Sing so obnoxiously loud that other people complain? These are the perfect qualities of my friendship that I can’t imagine being taken away. The ones that matter.

Connections

Author's Note: Lately I've just been trying to keep my writing frequency up, so I wrote about something that happened somewhat recently. I've found I write better when I write about something I've experienced or some memory, so I wrote about... well you'll just have to see. 

I spot a gentle bird off in the distance and it looks dead at me, then flies away. That's the bird. The one I've been hearing all of these days. That pure two note tune that brings a smile to my face no matter what my mood. Beautifully carried through the air, the sweat sound triggers a nonexistent memory, causing me to react in a way that can't be described.  Passed through my genes my reaction is to whistle back. The same exact two note tune.

It's truly remarkable how you can be connected to your relatives without even knowing it. Without knowing them that well or without even knowing the connection. Finding out unique aspects of how anything from really blue eyes, to a reaction to a specific noise is related to someone you barely know. 

I've recently discovered that I have this connection with my great-grandma.

Sitting outside eating dinner on mother's day a bird off in a nearby tree sang the two notes.  My grandma makes a comment about how that was the bird that her mom used to whistle back and forth with. I was positive that it was the exact bird I hear in the morning sometimes. The conversation continues with remarks on how we are alike in that way, and how my great-grandma is still here. In the form of that bird.

The hunt began as my dad tried to find a bird book and CD he had for his classroom a couple of years ago. In the meantime my grandma and I talked about the sound. By then, the bird had left and we were trying to recreate the tune it so beautifully makes. My mom tried to whistle it, and to her I bet it sounded right on, but there's a distinct difference between that bird and anything else. My grandma remembers from her childhood and knows that's not quite right. The first time I tried I could tell it sparked her memory because the smile on her face said it all. My grandma couldn't exactly get the tune right either, so it must be a special bond only I share with my great-grandma.

It's amazing the little details in life that you give no second thought until something comes out if it. That bird, the Black-Capped Chickadee we now think it is, is probably the strongest connection I have with Lumpy -- That was my great grandmas nickname. She and I never actually spent that much time together, but somehow I got this reaction to this one and only bird. It could've been any other bird that I whistled back to. But it was the Black-Capped Chickadee. The one that stood out. To me, to her but to nobody else.

Newton's Laws of Motion in Volleyball

Author's note: During my one on one meeting with Mr. Roehl, I was scheduled to have a writing evaluation the next week. I decided I wanted to write something that could be put on my home page, considering I haven't posted recently. I didn't know what to write about though, so Mr. Roehl suggested that I did a piece on how Newton's Laws of Motions affected setting in volleyball. After doing some research, (and receiving help from my dad) I definitely understood the concept much better. In this piece, I will try to use better transitions, and focus more on my conclusion.

Newton's Laws of Motion affect anything and everything that has mass. Whether the object you are dealing with is 100 pounds, or two ounces, all three of Newton's Laws will apply. The first law states that an object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest until an unbalanced force acts upon it. This one is fairly self-explanatory. The second law shows the relationship between forces, mass and acceleration. In that law, part of the statement shows that force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration. Finishing off the group of Newton's Laws is the third law which implies that for every action there is an equal reaction.

I tried to apply all three of these laws to setting a volleyball. With the first law, setting involves a volleyball in motion. The ball gets to it's highest peak in it's movement, then gravity overpowers the upward momentum of the ball and causes the ball to come back down. The next force acting on the volleyball would be me. I am stopping the ball from moving one way, then sending it across the court in another direction.

When I am pushing the volleyball across the court, I am applying a force to the ball. Force is the mass of the volleyball, multiplied by the acceleration I have placed on it. Since the mass of the volleyball isn't that much, the strength and speed of which I set it will be a large part of how much force is on the ball.

When the force of the volleyball is being applied by gravity, the interaction between the ball and my hands can be very immense or miniscule. The first thing I do when I set is I prevent the ball from going downward, and forcing it to go up instead. That is the action that I take against the ball. Because every action has an equal reaction, my pushing upward on the ball is actually causing me to be shoved downward. Therefore, my action against the volleyball has a reaction to my body. If I am pushing out, my body, as a reaction, will be pushed in. This causes my entire body, as well as the floor, to absorb the force the ball is placing on me.

Now imagine how many tasks everyday involve the three laws that Newton put together. Most likely every single second of your day is proving that every time you move, there's a reaction to that movement. Your television remote is going to have much more force flying across the room than a piece of paper if the same amount of acceleration is placed on both objects. The pencil sitting on your desk won't move if an unbalanced force doesn't apply to it, because it won't just get up and walk away.

Grand Canyon Project

Author's note: After my vacation to the Grand Canyon, I decided that a simple writing response would not be enough to reflect on what I experienced. Instead, I chose to do a project on the Grand Canyon, and created a website of my information learned. Below is the link to my weebly. If you have any comments or suggestions for my website, please comment on this post.

This is the link to my website: http://grandcanyon2.weebly.com/

The Wonderful World of Cartoons

Author's note: After watching a cartoon with my friends little brother I decided to further investigate why they find such simple, unrealistic ideas as intriguing as much as they do. Every time someone would fall, Nick, Cassie's little brother, would burst out laughing and I didn't really understand what was so funny. In my piece I worked on using techniques such as metaphors.

Inside a kids cartoon you can do anything. Most likely nothing can truly harm you. Falling off a cliff will only give you some cuts and bruises, and when you are covered in filth, you can be sparkling clean by the shake of a head. You are indestructible.

Why do kids enjoy cartoons? It's simple. They love how the characters have fun and adventure, and they enjoy pretending cartoons are their world. Wishing that one day they could be like SpongeBob. Children enjoy going on silly and unrealistic adventures too. Or, they could be like Dora and be able to fend off evil by the key words, "No swiping!" Who wouldn't want to be able to discover treasures in less than thirty minutes?

How can a little kid watch the same exact episode repeatedly over and over and still have interest? The theme song of Wow Wow Wubzy gets nailed into my head after two times. The lines of the characters start coming to me at three and four times. Yet the kids seem surprised at every turn in the plot and are still intrigued when Wubzy played basketball for the seventh time that day.

Some of the younger audience actually looks up to these characters. However many of them adore the cartoon characters just because of their pink hair or funny tail. Would they still like Mickey Mouse if he were just a regular human being with mouse ears? Think it through. Would you still enjoy the shows if only the lessons and adventures were the same? I doubt it.

Stage one of their T.V. favorites. Adventure and silly characters, what will be next? Will they still love their old favorites? Or will they move on, and discover that the shows they used to love, are not as entertaining as they used to be?

McDonald's Persuasive Essay

Author's note: I'm doing a project on McDonald's and had to do a persuasive writing piece for the week so I decided to write about the different types of McDonald's consumers. My main purpose was to follow the 5 paragraph essay format.

We all know that McDonald’s isn’t good for you. That’s a well known fact. However, could McDonald’s be healthy if you eat it in moderation? Some people believe that dieting and exercising are key if they want to eat at McDonald’s about once a week. Others, mostly kids, assume that they won’t get overweight from eating there 2-3 times a week. Nothing bad can happen to them, right? Then there’s the third type of McDonald’s consumer. The one who knows that having McDonald’s maybe once or twice a month isn’t so bad if they consider it as a treat. Which one are you?

The first type of person is the dieting and exercising person. It’s true that staying in physical shape by working out allows for minor faults like having a weakness for McDonald’s salty fries. They are so addicting, to some more than others. A diet plan also helps if you crave the greasy but delicious burgers for a treat after a long week. All these types of people just have to remember is that even though diets and exercise are great ways to stay healthy, McDonald’s once a week is still a little much. Maybe try swapping every other trip going to a sub place instead.

The second type of person is completely different. They don’t try to make a healthy life style; they just assume that nothing bad will ever happen to them. For most kids, and a lot of adults, this describes them perfectly. Kids are the ones who use the “I play a sport and I have a high metabolism anyway” excuse. Adults are more likely to use the “I don’t have time for anything else” excuse. There’s plenty of time to eat healthy if you find other fast service places.

Lastly, there’s the type of person who knows how much is too much. They realize that once a week is just not a smart choice. Maybe one to three times a month, counting it as a treat, instead of just a substitute for a home-made meal. These people tend to be healthier, cooking more at home or eating sandwiches instead of burgers, fries, and shakes. They have control over their food intake. These are the people that other people envy.

There are three types of people, those who think they have control, those who don’t care, and those who do have control. Which one do you want to be? Or more importantly, which one are you?

The Pier People, the Youth, and the Frogs.

Authors note: I wrote this piece because it came up in one of my brainstorming lists. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, you may want to try it. What you do is have someone give you a word and tell you when to stop. You write/ type a word that links to the first word in a way others may not be able to understand- but that's okay- and just keep branching off from there. You could end up with 30 words, or just 7. It's pretty funny to read some other peoples lists. Give it a try sometime. Anyway, this was a memory from when I was about seven and spring weather was starting to set in.


I think back to the time when I was about seven. The joy of the lake unfreezing and the pier building people coming back to reassemble our pier. This meant warmth. This meant adventures lying ahead. This meant memories will be made.

My friends Ally and Sammy had come over that day. When we saw the builders doing their job outside our window, we thought they could use some entertainment. So, being the six, seven and eight year olds we were, we decided they could use some music.

We grabbed some white lawn chairs and set them up near the sea wall so we were within hearing range of the workers. Next, we grabbed the musical wooden frogs you stroke with a stick and climbed on top of the chairs. Beginning with just the beat of the wooden frogs croaking, we built up our show from there.

My parents reminded me of this day when I looked at the picture -- Only the picture helps me bring back a slight recollection of doing this-- of us singing to them. Only, I wouldn't call it singing. More like chanting. "Go pier people! Go pier people" Croak. Croak. Croak. "Go pier people! Go pier people!" Croak. Croak. Croak.

The only barrier that kept us in the adorable category and away from crazy was our youth. Youth is a great thing that keeps your imagination wide open. The youth doesn't have to be lost on everybody once they become "old". They shouldn't be considered crazy if they can have a fun perspective on the world. Try to keep your mind open. You'll never know what you'll find.