This is going to be my last blog. Wow, what a long time ago it was that I started this. When I first got it, I thought this was going to be a really boring and pointless assignment. But by the end of it, I really like this. It was annoying when my computer wouldn't let me publish stuff because my parents have some exteme security level on it so I would have to save them all and post like three a day. But this really did help me to vent. Not always in a bad way, just to let out what people didn't really want to listen to. Now that this is over though, I realized that I'm never going to have this same class again. I mean, I could go without John and Matt talking every three seconds and Eddie never paying attention and constantly asking me what was going on but it'll be sad to end the fun times. There were so many people that made this class what it was and I met so many people I never knew existed in this class. I'm so glad I dropped AP Language now. This class was way worth it.

This is an email my dad just got and I think that it its hilarious -
Why, Why, Why?

Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
Why do banks charge a fee on “insufficient funds” when they know there is not enough?
Why does someone believe you when you say there four billion stars but check when they say the paint is wet?
Why doesn’t the glue stick to the bottle?
Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?
Why does superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
Why do kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
Whose idea was it to but an “s” in the word “lisp”?
If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use, the bubbles are always white?
Is there ever a day when mattresses aren’t on sale?
Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, the put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?
How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
When we are in the supermarket and someone rams out ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say “it’s alright?” well, its not all right, so why don’t we say, “that hurt you stupid idiot!”
Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something falling off the table you always manages to knock something else over?
In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer when we complained about the heat?
How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.

I love emails like this. They are totally random but for the most part just make my days hilarous. Seriously though, that one abou the shopping cart, that's happened to me dozens of time and I always tell the person that I'm okay even though for the next week I've got a brusied ankle and a nice bloody sock to go along with it. These things are so true though. I mean, have you ever seen a day when the materess weren't on sale? When I took driver's Ed two summers ago, there was a materess standing outside on the corner everyday announcing a sale. Oh, and I think I know why there are no father in-law jokes - because the father in-laws might pummel the people that say them.

Today finally came. The day that I was supposed to find out if I got into University of Illinois. Well, 5 0'clock came and I nervously looked at my computer only to find out that I had been "deferred". What the heck is with that? Now I won't know until March 1 if I get in. This is ridiculous. They should just tell me whether I got accepted or not already. This is really frustrating. Apparently, over 3,000 got deferred and only about 50% will eventually get accepted. What makes me mad is that I had planned on choosing my college by mid-Feburary and now I have to wait for a while. Oh well. I got accepted to other good schools and I really like ISU. I'm not upset just frustrated. I think that we should make a club, "U of I deferred me. Now what do I do?" I'm sure half the school would be eligable.

Here's another story for you guys. I was reliving a horrible experince I had two summers ago - The teenage years. Some of your best memories happen while you’re in high school. But high school also brings new responsibilities to the table. The one that comes to mind by almost all teenagers would have to be getting your license. The freedom to drive where you want, go where you without having to rely on your parents. It was a great feeling of maturity that I couldn’t wait for.
About five months after I got my license, I was at work when we ran out of milk. They asked if someone who had a car could go and grab couple of gallons from the store. Given the fact that I actually had my dad’s car for the day, I happily volunteered.
I got to White Hen and purchased seven gallons of milk. It took my three trips to bring it all to my car and by the time I had finally gotten in my car, I could tell what a bad idea this was. It was almost 100 degrees outside and I was twenty minutes away from work. The milk was going to go bad and I was going to have to pay for about $30 of milk.
I decided that I could just go as fast as I could back to work. This was big decision for me because I never speed. Ever. But I was worried I would get in trouble at work so I hurried back. I had never even seen a police car in the vicinity of my work so I wasn’t worried.
In ten minutes I was almost back. I breathed a sigh a relief as I made the final turn. Just then I saw it. The black and white car following me down the road. I couldn’t believe it. I was good driver. This was the one time I had sped. He followed me back to my work and pulled in behind my car in the lot.
“Excuse me; do you know how fast you were going?”
To be honest, I had no idea. I was shaking so bad that I couldn’t even talk. I just shook my head and tried to calm myself down.
“You were doing 67 in a 45.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said not realizing I had been going that fast or that it was a 45 (I thought it was 55 but that still is really fast).
“Please hand me your license and registration and stay seated in your car.” I managed to find my stuff and hand it over. I sat in my car in shock not realizing what had just happened.
As he was filling out my ticket in his squad car I kept thinking, “I want my dad. He’ll get me out of this. It’s not a big deal. He’ll take care of it.” But when he walked back to my car and handed me my ticket and explained what I needed to do, I realized that daddy wasn’t going to be here to save me this time. I was going to have deal with this on my own. It was my time to take responsibility for what I had done, and deal with the consequences.
I would pay the $95 ticket and learn from my mistakes. While getting a ticket is not something you want to happen, it really showed me that I was going to go through some tough times in life but could always manage to get through it. I learned that I was now an adult and going to have to learn to deal with my decisions. It was a major reality check for me because I now know that there will be consequences for my actions after I move away from home. Plus I learned never, ever, under any circumstances speed. Especially for a couple gallons of milk.

I am going to kick some third grade butt this week. No doubt about it. If this sounds mean, just wait because I will justify it. My youngest brother Daniel, was diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia last year. He has a lot of trouble reading and has to leave class to go to a reading specialist. He is very good at math and reasoning but has a lot of trouble reading things. He is a smart kid and just from looking at him you wouldn't know anything is wrong. Well, some of the kids in his class have started to notice that he always leaves class and they've figured out why. Thursday in class, my brother had to give a speech. When he walked up to the front of class, they started yelling, "Daniel's stupid. Daniel can't read," and laughed at him which rightfully made him very upset. Now when Daniel gets upset, he gets really upset. He started crying and yelling in front of everyone. The teacher yelled at the boys, but the damage was already done. My brother is crushed. How mean can these kids be? Seriously, Daniel is really upset about this because now his class thinks he's stupid. It must be so frustrating to be in that situation and I feel really bad for him. He's not stupid, he's just a little slower. These kids have no right to say these things. Someone needs to explain to them what they are doing is wrong. So does anyone else care to join me?

I'm going to write a story instead of just writing about what I did today -

When you’re a little girl, you dream of growing up and being a mom. You play house with your friends, pretending that your dolls are babies. You think you can take care of them, I mean, all they need is a clean diaper and bottle and you’re ready to go. Yeah, whatever. When I was ten years old, my youngest brother was born. I learned then the meaning of responsibility and how hard it was to take care of a newborn. I remember quite clearly the day Daniel came home from the hospital. We were so excited to have a new baby in the house. Right away I wanted to hold him. My mom hesitantly looked at my dad before shaking their heads yes. I had never held a baby by myself before. As they put him in my arms, I could feel how delicate he was. I had to hold his head up for him because he wasn’t strong enough yet. I was so careful with him. Right then it hit me. I was this kid’s big sister. He was going to look up to me, I had to make sure that I was going to do everything right. I tried so hard to help my mom. If Daniel needed a diaper change, I would offer to do it for her. Eventually she let me help out with him. I learned how to change a diaper, feed him, burp him, put him to sleep and everything else you needed to know how to do. I became so much more responsible because I knew that if I didn’t hold him right, he could get hurt. But it seemed no matter how hard I tried, I always managed to mess it up. When I burped him, I would forget to use a burp cloth. Or forget to strap him into the changing table and he would almost fall off. I would get so frustrated with myself because I wondered why I couldn’t do it all. Wasn’t this supposed to be easy? When I played with my dolls, they didn’t roll around or spit up all over the floor. Then I realized that I this wasn’t my imagination, but real life and I was going to have to take whatever was served to me. One day, my mom had an emergency with my other brother Joe. She needed to take him to the doctor’s office but didn’t want to take the newborn with her. My dad wasn’t going to be done with work for another three hours and my grandma was out of town. She made the decision to let me baby-sit him. I would be alone by myself with him for at least two hours. It was a huge test of my responsibility. But I thought that I could handle it and agreed to watch him. I didn’t take my eyes off Daniel the whole time my mom was gone. I made sure I made his bottle right (not to hot), burped him (so he wouldn’t throw up on me), and laid him carefully on his stomach for a nap. Even when he was sleeping I kept my eyes on him the whole time, just to make sure he was okay. I realized then that I was becoming a young adult. I had a huge responsibility on my hands but could handle it at the same time. I was so proud of myself for what I had done. I stayed calm and tried to relax when I was watching him. After my mom came home, I was so confident with my abilities to watch my brother that I thought I could be a mom at that point. My parents were so impressed with me that they started letting my stay home by myself with my siblings because they knew that I could handle it. My brother really helped bring me out of my childhood and helped me prepare for my adult life. I learned then that life wasn’t always going to be easy, but a lot of hard tasks along the way. I still dream of being a mom, but I know that I’ll just have to take it a day at a time and figure out as I go.

171 day until I graduate. I'm seriously ready to jump out a window. I feel like all I talk about is college but it's overwhelming me right now. I got a letter today from Loyola congratulating me on my acceptance to the nursing school. It makes me really upset because there is no way I'm going to be able to go there. It's definitely my top choice and I simply cannot afford to go there. I wish that everything in this world was not based on money. Seriously, if I didn't have to worry about how much college cost I could really go anywhere that I wanted to. Even Michigan State, which is my second choice, is way too much money for me to go there. Even though I really like Illinois State, I just feel that I might be happier at one of the other two. It's frustrating because there's nothing I can do about it. If I really want to go to either of those two schools, I'm going to have to take a ton of students loans which is not something I want to have to worry about in right away. Once again, life sucks sometimes.

We went to the Varsity Boys Basketball game last night against North. We crushed them. It was amazing. The one kid whos a sophmore had over 25 points. The gym was so hot though. It was weird being at school knowing that all day I hadn't done anything and that I really should have been in school. Now don't get me wrong, I love snow days and by no means did I want to go to school but we definitly could have gone yesterday. It would have been tough driving to school but it really wasn't that bad after about 10 o'clock. Oh well, there's nothing we can do about it. And we still graduate on the same day so it's not like we're punished or anything. The only thing that stinks was that we are missing a day this close to finals. There was a lot of stuff that I needed to get done at school yesterday but it didn't happen. Oh well.

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited. We haven't had a snow day since I was in 7th grade. I woke up at 5 this morning and looked outside to see a white blanket covering the lawn. I figured that it wasn't enough for the plows to be able to get and that we would still have school. When my mom came in mom room fourty five minutes later to tell me that we didn't have school I couldn't believe it. This is absoluetly amazing. I don't know what to do first. If I don't go sledding, I think i might hurt someone. This is the last day that will ever really be a snow day. I mean, in college you can ditch class if you really want too, so having a snow day won't affect anything plus you walk to class so they don't really care if the roads are icy. Once we start working, there are no such things as snow days. Unless your a teacher....that is starting to sound like a really good job right about now.

Okay Mrs. Green, I'm really sorry to do this to you, but you said this was a place where we could vent. Well, I'm about ready to scream because of all this work we have to do for the book. I have been working so long on all of this stuff and I'm still not done. It's currently 9:03 and I am first eating dinner - while I'm doing my essay writing homework though. I still have to write more dialogue journals and skim the book again to make sure I didn't miss any major annotating sections. This is so frustrating because I have so much homework in every class. Yesterday, I did homework for 6 hours! That's ridiculous. I'm sorry, it is partially my fault - actually, mostly my fault, but at the same time, I didn't realize the one part of the packet was due Thursday so I haven't even started that. Plus, I want the extra credit, and most of the study questions couldn't be answered until the end of the book. The rough driaft is going to kill me. I have no time to sit and right a paper. To make things even worse, the books that I put on hold at the library were no help to me. I'm basically skrewed for this class.

I did the walk of shame toady…in a Patriots jersey. I lost the bet to Mike. I avoided him as long as I could but he eventually tracked me down during essay writing. I couldn’t believe that they lost! It was awful walking in the hallways. People are so cruel in our school. I mean honestly, did someone have to yell “F--- you. F--- The Patriots”. Was that really necessary? It’s just a jersey and people were really upset about it though. I mean, it was a tough loss though. I had everyone over to watch the game and it was really intense at my house. I was just frustrated because I honestly thought the bears would pull away with a victory on this one. It stinks because now we’ve seen what they can do against a good team. The future isn’t looking so good right now for them. However, we shouldn’t be complaining to much, they are only nine and two. It’s sad how much pressure we are putting on them and how much we are analyzing one lose. We are way to tough on our sports teams.

I’m going to set the record straight – I am a RED SOX fan. Not a NEW ENGLAND fan. I hate it when people say that I’m a fair weather fan. They have no idea how long or how much I have loved the Red Sox for. Some people assume that I’m obsessed with Boston, but I’ve actually never even been there before. All this weekend, people have been assuming that I’m rooting for the Patriots against the bears. That’s totally not true. I’ll fill you in on the scoop for why I like the Red Sox. See, when I was a kid, my dad was a die hard white sox fan. My mom was a die hard cub fan. I cannot even begin to describe how frustrating that is. You don’t know who to side with because either way you’re going to make one of your parents mad. So eventually, I’d say about the start of middle school, I decided to pick a new team to root for. It works out well because now we all root for different teams and get along just fine.

For the first time in my whole high school career, I went to a basketball game at Central. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately though, the girls lost. Actually, I don’t even think that’s the right word. They were crushed. I felt so bad for them. It wasn’t like they were bad; the other team was just amazing. And the fact that the other team couldn’t miss a shot wasn’t helping. At halftime they were already down by fifteen points. It seemed at first like they might come back and at least make it close. They ended up losing by more than twenty. The girls went out there and showed honest effort, but it just didn’t play out well. One girl almost go a technical foul too, because she shoved someone. It wasn't the greatest moment of the game. I think Nuesbaum yelled at them in the locker room for a good fifteen minutes after the game. Boy am I glad I wasn’t in there.

Matt and I have this bet going on with our friend Mike. He’s a really big Patriots fan and we’re betting the bears will beat them on Sunday. The loser has to wear the opposite teams jersey Monday at school. I am fully expecting Mike to be geared up in orange and blue in two days. I’m going to have everyone over to watch the game (minus Mike coincidently – his family from New England is in so they are going to watch the game together), and it is going to be one heck of a game. I’m super excited because this is actually a team the bears could lose to. I don’t think that they will, but it definitely will be a challenge and a really interesting game for us to watch. GO BEARS!

Babysitting last night was so much fun! Seriously, I haven’t had that much fun in a really long time with little kids. When I got there, they were so excited to see me I swear they almost peed in their pants. After eating dinner, which consisted of the previous days thanksgiving dinner (which was amazing), we sang karaoke. Not little kid karaoke like old McDonald or anything but really stuff by ac/dc and aerosmith and Kelly Clarkson. It was so much fun. We just goofed around dancing and singing for more than three hours before it was time for them to go to bed. I really wish I could do stuff like this more often.

My dad bought us Dance Dance Revolution a while ago. It’s basically one of the few games I can actually play on playstation. I love playing it because your not sitting on your but playing video games, your up dancing (actually its more of a stomping game, but you get the idea) and you get exercise doing it. Well, I played this game that is similar to it recently. It’s called Guitar Hero. This game is amazing. You have a guitar that you hold and you have to strum along with it and try and keep up with the game. This game is to addicting. How did someone ever come up with that idea? It’s simply amazing. I played it for almost an hour straight before I had to stop because my fingers were tired. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I love video games.

Ahh…the day after thanksgiving. It’s so nice to wake up after stuffing yourself full of food. We had a really good time last night. We just went to my cousin’s house. Actually, second cousin, but does it really matter? Anyways, so it was just my family and a few others. It was very quiet but we had a lot of fun just catching up with each other. Usually there are ten kids under the age of 8 running around which makes it really annoying. I ate so much food, I almost threw up. Luckily that didn’t happen. Today we are getting ready to put up Christmas lights, which I don’t really like doing. It’s so boring. Plus, we had to cut down most of our trees, so we don’t have that many lights. Our house tends to look pretty goofy but trust me I’ve seen worse.

This is the last time I'm going to have to study for finals. After this semester, we don't really have finals as seniors. I remember when I was a freshman, I was so nervous the first time around. I studied religously for three weeks before hand and still didn't do that fantastic on my finals. I got all B's but I was like, if I studied for that long, how come I don't have better grades? It went downhill from there. I've been studing less and less each semester (with the except of biology last year) ever since. But I work hard enough during the school year that I don't really have to worry too much about my grades. I'm so ready for this semester to be over. I don't want to sit through another day of marketing, its really starting to make me mad. I almost hit a sophomore in class today because he was too busy talking to bother paying attention to what my teacher said. I'm so ready to get out of here.

Happy Feet = the movie of my life. This movie is seriously one of the best movies I have ever seen. I went with my entire family to go see it, which is rare because we never are home at the same time. Everyone in my family is obsessed with it. I was so happy to see this movie come out because its actually a movie that the whole family can go see. I feel that lately all the movies that come out have to deal with sex, drugs and violence and that they are really only targeted towards on audience. I hope that I start to see more of these movies coming out because I loved spending time with my family. After the movie, we went to Chili’s for dinner, which was kind of awkward because they had to spilt my family into two groups of two and four but it all worked out in the end. It was such a nice end to my weekend and I hope that this good spirit continues over to thanksgiving.

I got tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers this morning. I am so excited. I woke up at 8 oclock so I was sure I would get them when they went on sale at 10 and I still didn't even get that good of seats. We are in the second level of the allstate arena. I'm not complaining though, because I love the chili peppers. What I'm upset at though is how my friends and I aren't all going to get to sit next to each other. When I got on the computer this morning, I found out that we could only buy four tickets and we needed six. It was really annoying because I had to call my friends mom to buy the other three tickets. It stinks because if we would have known about this, we could have planned better and not had to deal with this early in the morning. I'm afraid my friends are going to get mad at me though because we aren't sitting next to each other. Oh well, hopefully we'll still have fun at the concert.