Christmas Time

I think that that out of all the holidays, Christmas is the best and most recognized.
I would say that Christmas is probably the biggest, most important holiday of the year. Think about it, the most money is spent during the Christmas season mostly because of all the gifts, the stores make the biggest profit of the year, and it' s the time of year that stores have their biggest sales ever, (black Friday). It's the most popular holiday to travel. And most of all it is the only holiday at the end of the year. And worst of all it is the most popular time of year for people to go into debt and pay for it later.
So why do we as consumers buy so much stuff and make Christmas such a big deal? Well I am not sure. I think that each year we think to ourselves that we have to out do ourselves last year, meaning that we have to buy the newel, better version of what we bought last year. This said, for some shoppers it will be hard to do because of the economy, 22% said that they would not spend as much as they did last year, however, the other 78% said that they will spend as much or spend more and out do what they did last year.
If Christmas is such a big deal how come every year it seems to come way to fast? Every year when you ask anybody if they are ready for Christmas, almost all of them will answer "no".
I think that some of the no readiness has to do with them not being done Christmas shopping. We all have a tendency to procrastinate, especially buying for those that we are not sure what to get for them. The other most busiest weekend, besides the weekend after Thanksgiving, it the weekend before Christmas, the stores say that they get 5% of their sales that weekend, which is allot compared to the whole year.
So to all of you last minute shoppers for the holidays, it’s okay to procrastinate, at least you are getting it done, and now you know that you are not the only one putting it off until now, 3 days before Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all who read this, and may your holidays be safe and filled with wonderful joys.

Being Home For The Holidays

Being home for the holidays are very important. Without being home or with family during this season is nothing that can be compared to. It is one of the worst feelings ever, to miss your loved ones during the holidays is unbearable. You wish that you could just move the holiday to another time when you were not feeling this low.
I am talking about not having a home to go to, not having a family to come back to and share the joys of the holidays, or not having the loved one come home from a business trip, or the troops over in Iraq, or Iran, coming home for the holidays. During this time of year you wish that you could just stop time and bring them home, or have a home to go to.
The holidays are about getting together and celebrating the season. This is especially true for those who cherish this time of year, who are looking forward to the holidays so that they can get time off and be with their families, that maybe they only see once a year, this would be the season it would be. This would apply to the people who travel for days, across the states just to spend a day or two with their family. Another thing about the holidays is the shopping. Everybody is in a rush to get all their holiday shopping done. And for the most part, people actually like to Christmas shop, the only problem is shopping for the people in the family that you don't really want to shop for because you don't know them very well, or maybe not as well as you used to. I'm talking about the in-laws and the siblings that you don't really associate with anymore. There are those people in every family.

Gift Ideas

As the holidays are just around the corner, some of us are unsure what to get for our friends and family for the holidays. So here are some ideas for some of those last minute shoppers who don't like to just give gift cards:
For the women, most of them love anything. But more specificallly there are many candles out there that have saying on them for individual family members, (aunt, mother, father, sister, cousin, ect.) Also things around the kitchen are very nice for the women who do all the cooking.
For the smaller children, well they are the easiest to shop for, they like anyhting.

Winter Weather

Winter Weather

Here in Iowa, winter is a dreaded season fir most of us. The snow comes too early and lasts too long. There are many car accidents every day when the weather is bad, which is quite often. At least once a week here in Iowa, in the winter, we get a bad storm, an about every other week we have delays and cancellations throughout the cities.
So why do people come to live in Iowa?
Well that’s a good question. I think that Christmas is not Christmas without snow on the ground. I was once in Florida for the holidays and it was not the same. But this might also be because I grew up with the snow every winter.
Despite the face freezing days, sometimes the snow is quite pleasant. When you are bundled up inside with hot cocoa watching out the window, it’s like living inside a snow globe.
So, just like everywhere else, there are some good things about living here, as well as some not so good things. Here are just a few
Disadvantages:
Scraping off really thick ice on your car, the morning after an ice storm
Having to leave about 10 minutes to a half hour early because of the road conditions
Not being able to enjoy the outdoors when the temperature is -20 degrees
Advantages:
Enjoying a nice white Christmas
The beauty of the light fluffy snow falling

Those are just some of the joys of living here in Iowa. After all that is just the winter, I didn’t even mention the other seasons.
So come to Iowa and see for your self.

Texting

Not everyone with a cell phone texts. Surprised? Well think about it, the generations before us didn’t even have cell phones or even for that fact, know what they were. I’m obviously talking about our grandparents, when party lines still existed (which is when a whole block of houses would share the same line).
Texting became really popular, at most, around five years ago. And even then it was not very popular to text. Ask teachers, they never use to be so strict about sell phones in the class room, but now they have to be because it is very distracting and a very easy way to cheat on tests or quizzes. I think that the most popular generation for texting is the students in high school and college, and maybe some of the student in middle school. I think this because our generation is basically what “inventors” are trying to attract and they know that we are the one who are consistently keeping up with all of the new technology. Five years ago when texting was put on cell phones, who would have ever thought that it would have became so big that they would have cell phones with miniature keyboards on them. That is just how, “high tech” if you will, we are, that we need a keyboard to text faster. And I’m sure in another five years, give or take, there will be something else that everybody “needs” to communicate. How much more “high tech” can we get, we already have a mp3 player, internet with keyboard, and games, all in a cell phone, what else could we possibly come up with?
Now even parents want to learn how to text so that they can be “in the loop” with their children. Some parents are even texting their kids at school distracting them, wanting them to text back what they are doing. Well its kind of common sense what they are doing when they are at school. Even as a pretty big texter myself, I find that this is getting way “too popular”, and needs to decline some. You cannot even walk into a classroom anymore without finding at least one-person texting constantly. I think that parents should be a little stricter with their child’s text messaging. Also they should not instigate a conversation while the child is at school. I find that the teachers policies are quite fare, some teachers threaten that they will confiscate the phone if it is visible to them in the classroom. Other teachers are even stricter with the rules and threaten to take the battery of the phone for the entire semester if seen being used during class. I find it incredibly rude to text during class because you are there to learn and I’m sure that whatever you are texting can wait until after class to be said.

The Gift of Giving

As another holiday is just creeping up again around the corner, everybody is thinking of what to get their family and friends, they often do not think about what they will receive during the holidays. That is because during the holiday season a warm feeling comes to most people, even the Scrooges, ;-). Around the holidays something inside makes you happy to think about others, this may sound selfish but I think that we can all relate. We are often so busy with our daily lives with school or work, or even both, that we tend to forget about other people. But during the holidays it is hard to forget about the giving part. We know that when we see a smile on someone else's face that we have created, it makes us feel good. I think that the holiday season should be about giving and not getting. There are others out there that will totally disagree with this entry, those are the people are the ones that think that receiving is everything, and that they could not survive Christmas without any presents, according to them, that is what Christmas is all about. I have so much to be grateful for that I feel that it is time to give back, ever since I was a little kid I received a lot of presents for Christmas, but know it is different, it really took something huge to open my eyes and realize that some of the less fortunate people out there will not receive anything for the holidays. I think that most of us reading this is well aware of this, however we aren’t doing anything about this. Well I shouldn’t say that because there are a lot of people who contribute to the toy drive or toys for tots, drop some change into the buckets, and so forth, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be enough, there will still be children this holiday season who wont be able to wake up Christmas morning to a tree full of presents underneath.
I think to solve this problem, we should all buy just one toy this year and donate it to the salvation army, toys for tots, or any other organization that will distribute them out for those that need them. Just think of how many children could have smiles on their faces, all because of one toy that somebody with a heart bought. I think that that is what the holiday season is al about, the holiday spirit, of giving and seeing the happy faces on the people who never expected it.

Youtube

Youtube is the place to go to see practically anything happen. Basically if you have a computer then you know about youtube. Anybody can use it, and anybody can broadcast themselves. That is one of the best parts of it. You can find anything from Albert Einstein to the latest hit album. What i found most interesting is that schools are using it in their class rooms for teaching lessons and showing the students video clips. Some teachers are even making students post videos on youtube for class projects. Other teachers are posting all of their tests and quizzes online and making the students complete them within 48 hrs. Here is my opinion on this subject: i feel that teachers are taking advantage of the students having the internet at home. There are many students who do not have internet access at home, let alone a computer. The teachers then expect those students to make an effort to come in before school or after school to work in the computer lab to get all the work done. I think that this is very unfair because there is not alot of time to work when you have an early bird class starting at 7 and you have to work after school at 3:30. i do not think that the teachers know the gravity of the situation.

Snow Days

Almost any students that you talk to will say that they love snow days, ice days, or any other sort of thing that will delay school or even better, cancel school. The only bad thing about having school being cancelled is that you will wake up early and check the cancelations on the news, just missing the letter that your waiting for, you have to wait like another 10 minutes for all the other delays and cancelations to go by. Finally when the name of your school or your community is cancelled, you get so excited and have so much adrenalin, that you have to take out in texting all of your friends and being the first to let them know that there will be no school. So fianlly after that you are ready to go back to bed, considering you have nothing to be up for. The absolute worst part of all of this is that you just lay there and can not go back to bed no matter how hard you try, you are still so excited that there is school and you want to plan your snow day. knowing that the weather is obviosly not good enough to go anywhere, hints why school was cancelled, so you just lay there, tossing and turning in your nice warm bed thinking your so glad you don't have to get out of for anything.

The Holiday Season

When we think about the holiday season, we usually think about the act of giving and kindness, along with Christmas shopping and decorating. When I think about the holidays, I can not help but think of the people who stand out side in the freezing cold, ringing the bell for hours, on their own time, just to help others for the holidays by trying to collect donations for the less fortunate. Yes, I am talking about the Salvation Army. We all know that every time we walk out of the store we think of how nice it would be to just throw a few dollars, or even just some spare change into the bucket, so why don't we? Some of us do but others are too busy thinking of themselves. Think of all the children who are not going to get any presents this Christmas because their parents will not be able to afford it. That is where the Salvation Army comes in. they provide presents for the children who are not able to receive any. But they also do so much more than that. The Salvation Army also comes into play when natural disasters happen, such as hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. They give up to thousands of dollars to a family to help them through this hard time in their life. The Salvation Army is located in 117 countries; they also help out with proving food for the people in some of those countries, where there is starvation.
So the next time you are out shopping and you come out of the store, take a few minutes to dig around for that spare change for the bucket. Anyone can make a difference, and even the smallest thing counts. That change will go towards thousands of situations that could use help, whether it is for a Christmas present for a child on Christmas, feeding the staving people around the world (including here in the United States) or just helping a family out because they lost their home because of a natural disaster. So instead of buying a pointless CD, use the money to donate to the Salvation Army. Just remember it is going to a good cause.

The Future

As most of the world knows and all of our country knows, Barack Obama was elected to be our next president. Some people are scared because of that, but others are excited to see what he can do. His promise is change, a lot of people are worried of change, and however I think that we are in the position where we need it. We are on the brink of a recession and our economy is plummeting. No body is really to blame for that, however a lot of people put the blame on our current president George W. Bush. Some ideas about Obama becoming are that he does not have enough experience and that we will be “tested” by the rest of the world during his first couple months of office. He made a lot of promises that I am waiting to see if they come true. Such as him making the government pay for apart of student’s college education, and paying for the entire education if the student is going to become a teacher. Obama’s also promised to bring our troops home safely from Iraq and the other countries.
I can’t imagine living over in the foreign countries where are troops are. Even though the media is making it seems way worse than it really is, I would still hate to live there, with how the government treats their citizens.
I am hoping that in the near future, with our new president, we will have a stronger ecomony and better education system and that our troops will come home soon.

Music

Music is a huge influence in today's world. Everybody wants to hear it all the time and they love it. There is new music coming out all the time and that keeps the listeners attention. There are so many different types of genres, and different styles. I believe that each genre can produce a feeling. One song can mean specific things to one person but yet have an entirely different meaning to another. Some music can be up beat and put you in a better mood, or cheer you up every time you hear it. Then on the other hand some can do the opposite and make you break down and cry. If you think about it, the music is not exactly what makes you cry, it is the thoughts that the music or songs make you think of. There are some types of music that makes you feel sad and depressed, then others that make you happy, by reminding you of happy times. I think that music is a very strong influence in young people because they are the ones that are exploring different types of music and they are the ones exposed to the new music, more often than adults. They may find a song that they think fits their lifestyle and want to live by that song. That could be a positive thing or a negative one. If the song has a subliminal message in it telling them to kill themselves, then it is obviously a negative affect on the child. However there is music that can describe a life and end in a good way. Such as telling the listeners to hang in there, that everything will be alright. That is how strong I think that the music influences are in the world today. There is a lot of really meaningful music today about very serious issues that deal with the corrupt world. Music can also even be proscribed by some therapists and doctors for depression. There are certain uplifting genres that they can suggest that can relax you and help take things off your mind and slow down a racing mind.

Technology

Music is a huge influence in today's world. There are so many different genres and styles that one can choose from, it are impossible to dislike music in general. From rock to reggae, and rap to jazz, there are so many different artists and composers that are still popular from decades ago.
If you are one of the types of person who can not get through a day without an ipod or some sort of mp3 player, then you are the type of person who can not live without music. When the word radio is mentioned, most people probably have the word music come to mind, but when the radio was invented and was used to broadcast shows and such things in the 1920, there was few music productions that were on. Not until a few decades later was the radio known for music. Now a days everybody that has a radio is unsatisfied with it, they have to have a cd player, or better yet an ipod/mp3 player of some sort. These things are all because of the technology these days. The United States is one of the best place for technology to take place. You don’t go to Iran or Afghanistan and see people listening to music while walking down the street, or at school, or work. We are very privileged to live in such a great country that is able to produce all types of technology for the people to use, instead of just the government. We are able to put our power to good use instead of bad. Our government does not take our things aways as they do in some of the other countries.
From little hand held compact music devices, to cellular phones that have the World Wide Web on them. I think that this is our nation’s strongest advantage, technology. It keeps growing and growing and everything gets better. There always has to be a newer, better one. And some how that attracts people, therefore they buy it, and that generates the growing of technology.

Life and It's Offers

Life and it's offers... there is so much to say about life, whether it is great or it sucks, I think that everybody can agree on one thing, life is not fair. We have all asked ourselves why. Why things happen like they do, why people die and why others do not when they should have. We often wonder what happens when we die. According to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Hyperion, we die because that is what we live up to, because it is not until after you are dead that you are able to know the reason you were put on earth. I will not give away the books lesions or they people that you will meet. However, you do not have to be religious to read this book. I think that it gave me a better perspective of dying. We all have our own image of death or heaven, and the book makes that clear. I think that life has some major factors such as sacrifice. Sacrifices are what make life so unfair, you can never make everyone happy so you have to choose what you want to do, which some people don’t like. But can you imagine your life with out decision-making? It would be so boring and simple, no amusement to life. That is also why America is such a great place! In America you are able to do practically whatever you want, you can choose your own beliefs, wear what you want and work where you want.

The Reason I Blog

The Reason Why I Blog Here is why I Blog… I blog, not because my grades depend on it, but because it is a great way to get what I want to say out into the world. I blog because it is the new way of writing of our time, a social network, it is what keeps you in the loop with all the other writers, or in this case, bloggers.
Blogs are like journals, except a little less personal, which is nice because it keeps readers interested and they can follow the blog and keep up with the blogger's updates. However, the ideas are endless for bloggers; they can expand on any topic or idea that they have. I think that blogging is a great tool to help become a better writer because when you post a new piece; you know that it is at the world’s fingertips. Therefore you know who your audience is and you can write how you want and then you can get feedback from the readers and other bloggers, whether it be a question or suggestion. Blogs are very convenient. There are blogs about just about everything, from dogs, to politics. So it is guaranteed that you will find a blog out there that you are interested in. I'm hoping that some blogger out there will find my blog interest in my topics and choose to follow the blog. Another reason blogs are a good communication tool because it allows people to view and comment on other boggler’s opinion. You are able to comment on each other’s blog posts and ask questions as well.

Paranormal Activity

Boo! Did i scare you?

The term ‘Paranormal’ is defined as a phenomenon or an experience that is beyond or unexplained by conventional theories of science. There are many types of paranormal activity; Clairvoyance, Extra sensory perception, ghosts, levitation, prophesy, telekinesis, remote viewing, and precognition and so on. To break this down we’ll start with clairvoyance, which is defined as the supernatural power of seeing objects or actions removed in space or time from natural viewing.
Extra Sensory Perception, which is when you feel the presence of another spirit with you.
Ghosts, which are defined as The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats. Levitation, meaning an act or phenomenon of levitating,
Prophesy, which is defined as to foretell or predict the future. Telekinesis, which is where you have a supernatural power to read other’s minds.
Remote Viewing, which can be described as being able to tell another’s past.
and Precognition, which is the knowledge of a future event or situation, esp. through extrasensory means and so on. Laws of science can explain none of these phenomenons. They are therefore, held to be, unexplainable. The perception of the paranormal is divided into two groups, believers and non-believers. It may seem too brief and people may think they are in the middle of believing or not (not quite sure) this such category does not exist, you either believe or you don’t. Somewhere down inside you know, many believers have had personal experiences rather they have talked about them or not. Any people with an open mind can bring themselves to believe such may exist, communicating with a multi dimensional universe. There are a lot of stories out there about paranormal activity, so a lot of them have strong influences on both believers and non-believers. For the non-believer, some stories may seem too far fetch to seem real, and for the believers, it might have happen to them before, leading them into being a stronger believer.

Moving

For some people, moving into a brand new house would be a dream, but for others it is dreadful. There is a huge difference between wanting to move and having to move, and the people from the outside can't see that. Due to the Midwest flood of 2008, 4 thousand homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were ruined, leaving over 9 thousand people homeless. Over half of those people were not able to move back into their home because of the damage. Most of those people had to relocate, some were happy because they didn't want this to happen to them again, but others dreaded the idea of having to move away from the home that they had lived in their whole life, or the home that they built with their own two hands. People from the "outside", meaning that you were not affected, and those people were sympathetic, but had no idea what you were going through. everybody that I talked to told me to be happy because I was getting a brand new house and I didn't have to worry about keeping up the maintenance of the old one, non of them thought it was that big of a deal. But I didn't see it that way, to me it was life changing, I saw it as leaving the home I grew up in my whole life, the home my dad built by himself, and the home where all my favorite memories were. Moving into a new house is going to take a lot of time getting used to, it will be a different layout, so I won't know my way around in the dark, like I could in my old house, it will be a new location, so I will have to remember how to get there, instead of going there by habit. But over all it is a new start, which I didn't want but maybe I needed.

From Fall to Winter

As everybody knows, fall is among us and winter is not to far away, with the freezing dark mornings and the early dark nights, we know that winter is near. The first official day of winter is December 21, which is ways away, thanks to daylight savings time, which is this coming weekend, November 2, we set our clocks back an hour and catch an hour of sleep so we’re able to wake up and go to work/school in the light.
However there is a downside to the glistening snow falls and the work/school cancellations, such as the roads get snow covered and icy, causing a lot more accidents. I can't bear to think of all the people who have lost their homes due to the flood over the summer, where will they go? And it will be too cold for them to continue working on their houses in the winter, along with all the other homeless people that sleep in parks, or under bridges.
According to some people, the day the first snow falls, is how many days of snow we will get that winter. Last year the first snow fall was on November 21, the day before Thanksgiving, and after that we got 21 days of snow, which added up quickly and broke the snow fall record here in Iowa. However New York and New Jersey has already gotten a blizzard and a few feet of snow. I’m hoping that this year will not e as ad as last year’s winter and not get as much snow, because then hopefully we will not have much rains in the spring and not have another flood.

JFK Conspiracy and The Warren Commission

I disagree with the Warren Commission because I do not believe the magic bullet theory, nor do I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of JFK, or that Jack Ruby acted alone. I do not believe these things because it was proven impossible for the bullet to go through the neck of JFK, through the ribs of Governor Connelly, shatter his wrist and be implanted in his left thigh. Let alone that the bullet went through his neck when the autopsy showed that the bullet entered through his upper back (approximately five inches below his neck), and exited through the throat. And not even a dent in the bullet after all that. I think that there was more than three shots fired, one in which entered the upper back/ lower neck of JFK, the second one in the throat of him, the third bullet was the one shattering the wrist of Connelly and implanted in his thigh, and finally the fourth bullet being the fatal shot to the head of JFK. I believe that there was another shooter involved for the fourth and fatal shot, and they were positioned behind the fence of the grassy knoll. I think this because of the way of the headshot, and the way the head moved when the bullet hit and shattered the scull, and the way that the pieces went. I think that Lee Harvey Oswald was used by the government and did not act on his own, I think this because he denied everything and I think he was covering something up for the government and then Jack Ruby was hired to shoot Oswald to make sure that he would not say anything about the government. I think that the government did not like how Kennedy was running things so they planned to take him out. And that way more people were involved with it than expected, that is why people today are still questioning it. There are so many questions unanswered and the government can not find the answers, such as why did they drop his coffin into the ocean, what was it hiding, or how it was so coincidental for anyone that thought that his assassination was suspicious, they were murdered, or died unexpectedly, or disappeared. I think that the government never thought that the public would see the Zupruder film or the pictures from the autopsy, so they thought they could through together something for the Warren Commission, because they thought that the public would believe the government, plus there was no evidence that what the Warren Commission says is false. They thought that they committed the perfect crime since all the government documents are confidential, nobody would ever find out.

The Mayan Calender

I'm sure that all of us have heard of the Maya calendar. Those that have not, it is a long ago legend that supposedly predicts our worlds end that is believed to be December 21, 2012. Some people actually believe this because it has predicted some of the major event that have happen in the past, such as world war I and world war II, and the tragic day of September 11. Now the calendar didn't specifically say that there would be a terrorist attack on that day or that the wars would be the way they were, the calendar said things that could possibly be connect with these events, which some say are just coincidental.
There are more prophecies from an ancient wizard named Merlin, from the time of King Arthur. His prophesies also known to have the date of the world’s end of December 21, 2012. Which is quite a coincident because these people were not around at the same time and had no knowledge of each other’s prophecies. Fewer people have heard of Merlin because he does not have as many predictions as the Maya calendar. One of Merlin’s prophecies were that he believed that he could foretell the uniting of the kingdoms of Scotland and England under the person of James VI, (which was King of Scotland, who became James of England).

Global Warming

We are all aware of the global warming issue, however we are not all participating in trying to protect the earth. Some people don't actually believe that we are ruining the earth, but others think that everything that we do in our daily life is leading to consequences. According to some, the natural disaster rate is higher than ever do to global warming. There is more tornadoes, hurricanes, and record high waters. All of this is leaving thousands upon thousands of people homeless, and unemployed. So is all of this really because of global warming? Well, it is hard to answer, we know that the hurricanes are caused by a warm and cold front, as well as the tornados, and the midwest food that raised well above the record was said to be caused by all the snow that we got in the winter, and it didn't melt fast enough, so when it did it, it had nowhere else to go than down the river causing the Cedar River to flood.

My Blog

This Blog is going to be based upon what is happening in the world today.
There will be comparisons of now and then, and also what I think will become of the future.