This I Believe

You’re driving down a country road and it’s about mid-night. There isn’t another car in site. You have the radio playing your favorite song and your feeling pretty good. You glance over a little to your left. You see the other lane for the opposite traffic. It’s all alone, no one to ride it. You ask yourself, what would happen if I drove over there? “I better not, what if a cop is watching, or what if another car comes out of now where and hits me head on” you think to yourself. Your hands drift to the left a little bit and the car is half way into the left lane. You immediately correct yourself and put the car back into the right lane. You do it again, this time the car is almost all the way in the other lane. Again, you correct yourself. You just want to know what it’s like driving in the other lane. I believe you should drive in the opposite lane.
Ever since I was a little kid, I would get pressured into doing stuff I didn’t want to do. Parents, friends, and teachers would tell me how fun it was, how everyone else was doing it, how it would help my future. “It” is the word for the list of stuff I dreaded doing while growing up to try and please other people. Baseball, piano lessons, Jazz band, Track, Cross Country, Basketball, classes I didn’t want to take, etc. I would have to do all this stuff and rarely ever do anything I actually wanted. I say do what you want. Don’t let other people tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Now I’m not saying to go out and start driving in the other lane of traffic, but do what you want and not what other people want, even if it does get the same reaction out of people as driving in the opposite lane.
Driving in the other lane also brings up another topic, risk. People always make the word “risk” sound so bad, but how are we supposed to live our lives without it. Risk is how our ancestors made it over here hundreds of years ago. They risked everything they had to come here for a better life. Risk is how we made it to the moon in 1969. How are we supposed to live a fulfilled life if we don’t take a few risks every now and again? If you don’t take risks, you might as well be some 10 year olds pet hamster sitting in a cage all day with nothing to do, but at least you’ll be safe.
I like to skateboard for fun and people are constantly pulling over to tell my friends and me how unsafe and irresponsible we’re being. Cops pull us over on our skateboards and tell us not to ride at night and threaten to give us tickets and take away our boards. We just tell them we won’t do it again and go out the next night, because we know how big of a risk we’re taking. I think that some people need to take at least some small risks or there lives might get dull after a while, I know I do. Skateboarding is the thing I do to get my daily dose of risk and adrenalin everyday. Without it, I feel like that pet hamster stuck in a cage all day.
Driving in the opposite lane is a metaphor for two things. Doing what you want even if that raises eyebrows from other people. It also stands for risk taking and how it’s not always a bad thing. I believe that everyone needs to take risks to get what they want out of life, or you’ll regret it when you don’t have the chance anymore. You may never regret not driving in the opposite lane of traffic, but maybe there’s something else you’ll regret if only you had taken the risk.

School and Christmas

School is almost done. Only one more week left and then we're done for a month. I'm super excited. This is going to be the best Christmas break ever. I'm only a freshman so I haven't had a Christmas break a month long for about 13 years. So far we've had a good amount of snow for winter so I'm going to be doing a good amount of sledding and skiing and hopefully snowboarding. I went cross country skiing once since the snow fell and it was pretty fun. Hopefully I'll do it more this year than last years. I always say to myself that I'm going to go a lot, but I only go once or twice a year. I haven't even gone snowboarding for 2-3 years, Probably because its so expensive if you don't have your own board. Even if you do have your own board its really expensive. The down side of Christmas, though, is Christmas shopping. Although I love to buy people presents, it gets to be to stressful and expensive. I try to keep my budget in between $150-$200. That's about 20 dollars per person. My two sister, parents, brother-in-laws, and girlfriend. I don't work that much in the winter, so I try to spend as little money as possible. I'm not trying to be cheap, it's just the way it is when you don't work. My birthday and Christmas are less than a month away, so I kind of get a bad deal. My parents usually get me something small for my birthday, and focus more on Christmas. It used to bother me when I was little, but when you get older you don't care about presents as much as when you're a little kid. I really shouldn't be complaining at all because I just got a flat screen T.V. for my birthday/ graduation present yesterday.

Well I only have to worry about two more classes now. I have my Adobe Illustrator final project done, and my Design Fundamentals project done as well. All I need to worry about is Written Communications and Intro. to College Math. I am kind of worried about next semester though. Mostly because of speech though. I can't stand speaking in front of people. I always start stuttering and stop making sense. But I have to take, so I'm going to stop thinking about it. Well this has been my final blog post. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my life and life problems, the few of you that have read them. Fair Well.

Running

I liked running when I was in elementary school. About third grade we used to get prizes for running laps during recess. Me and my friend, Jacob Rieple, would run at least a mile every day, but it got old after a while so we stopped doing it. I didn't run long distances again until 7th grade track. It was a nightmare. Running two miles in the hot sun every day, and just to get trained to run 400 meters in a race. I didn't join track the next year because I hated running. But in the beginning of 9th grade, something horrible happened. For some reason I joined the hardest, and most disciplining sport known to man. I joined cross country. Why did I join, I don't know. I did feel pressure to join from some of my friends, but I usually don't get sucked into the shenanigans that they get into. I didn't think it would be that bad. A few miles to run everyday after school, how bad could it be. Well it ended up being the worst time of my life. It wasn't just the distance that hurt, it was the speed of the distance. "Ok, today you'll be running for 10 minutes at a fast pace, then 10 at an easy pace, then 10 at a fast pace again. Then finish up with a two mile cool down." That's my coach Mr. Wenthe. That was one of our workouts we would have. The worst one was a workout called a fartleck. This odd French named workout goes; run 2 minutes hard, 2 minutes easy, 3 hard, 3 easy, 4 hard, 4 easy, 5 hard, 5 easy, then the same pattern gone back down to 2 minutes. Adding a mile warm up before we do anything. It was a horrible time. But after cross country got done, spring time rolled around, and guess what comes during spring time, track season. And for some reason I felt enormous pressure to join that too. I thought to myself, "Well track races are way shorter than cross country so it won't be nearly as hard as cross country." Well that wasn't the case at all. Track was equally as hard, if not harder than cross country. A cross country race is 3.1 miles. The longest track race is 2 miles, so I thought the races would at least be easier. They were probably harder than cross country races. I ran the 800 meter run, and sometimes it was way harder than a 3.1 mile run. As much as I hated track and cross country, I still had a lot of fun too. You would think the kids that do long distance for fun are incredibly big nerds, but that's not the truth at all. Although some are big nerds, most are awesome kids who have the most fun out of anyone. When the coach wouldn't run with us, we had a lot of adventures that if the coach found out about them, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It was a hard 4 years of track and cross country, but with all the things we did, and people I met, it was well worth it, and I might have done it again if I had the chance.

Thanks Giving Weekend

This Thanksgiving was pretty fun. I didn't travel anywhere. My family just stayed around in Trempealeau. It was my parents, my sisters and their husbands, my grandma and I. We usually go to Milwaukee for Thanksgiving to visit my dads side of the family, but it's usually really hectic so we didn't want to go there this year. Most of my day was spent sitting on a recliner playing super Nintendo with my brother-in-law. We played NHL '93, which is a very hard game to get used to. It was kind of uncomfortable in my house though because our loft doesn't have any flooring right now, so we were walking on some weird floor made of particle board. The meal was awesome. We had turkey, obviously, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole(GBC), stuffing, squash, coleslaw, that cranberry stuff that know one ever eats, and rolls. Then we had cherry pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and cheese cake. I was stuffed after it was all done. We had tons left-overs, which is the best part of having Thanksgiving at your own house. The next morning everyone had left-overs for breakfast. My older sister and her husband had to leave Friday morning to go to work, so it was kind of disappointing that they could only stay one night.

It's going to be my birthday on Sunday and I'm going to be 19. I'm kind of disappointed leaving 18. I don't know why, usually people want to get into their twenties as fast as they can but I like being a teenager and I only have one more year of being one. It seems like going from 19 to 20 is a big jump in age. To me it feels like your going from a youthful teenager to a maturing adult. So now I'm figuring out my plans for tonight to celebrate my b-day. I'm pretty excited for Tuesday though because I'm participating in No Shave November and I will finally get to shave on Tuesday.

Swine Flu

I recently had the swine flu and it was no day at the beach. I started getting a small cough when I was riding my bike home from work one day. I thought it was only a cold, but last Sunday I started feeling really crappy. I started feeling achy and it felt like someone was sitting on my chest. Later that night I woke up at 4 in the morning freezing in my bed. I got up and took my temperature. I had a fever of 101%, so I knew that I had the swine flu. I was hoping that I would wake up the next morning with nothing wrong with me, but it never happens. I woke up the next day and felt even worse. My fever was still only 101%, so I thought that's as bad as it was going to get. I, of course, didn't go to school that day and stayed home watching TV all day. Later that after noon, I could barley stand up to go to the bathroom I felt so crappy. I took my temperature again and it was 102.4%. It was getting really high. I kept getting cold and hot again. I took my temp again a little later and it was up to 103.1. I felt the worst I had felt all week that hour. It finally went down after a while and I had an appetite for the first time that day. That night I had the craziest dreams. I always have really weird dreams when I have a fever. I had a fever again at about 4 in the morning and it was up 103.3, the highest it got. I was so uncomfortable that I could barely sleep that night. The next day, all I did was watch TV again all day. I got up at noon and watched I watched Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, then I watched the worst Chuck Norris movies. After that I watched The Best of Dana Carve from Saturday Night Live with my brother in law. Then my girl friend came to visit me and my sister, brother in law, girl friend, and I watched Boondocks Saints. Then everyone left but my girlfriend and we watched Spinal Tap. All I did that day was watch TV. The next day, Wednesday, I didn't have a fever anymore. I finally started feeling normal again. I probably could have gone to school that Thursday, but I decided to stay home to get totally better. I had missed an entire week of school so now I have a lot of make up work to do, but at least I don't have to worry about getting the Swine Flu anymore.

The Van

I bought got a van about a year ago from my boss I've probably driven it about 30 time since I got it. It's a 1984 Chevy Beauville passenger van. I got it because I like old vans, and because I play the drums so I need a vehicle to move them around whenever I play somewhere, which hasn't been for a while. The reason I haven't driven it so much is because things keep going wrong with it. Well only two things, but they were pretty big problems. Last Spring, the alternator went out and I didn't get it fixed until a week ago. Now that it was fixed, I got the insurance put back onto it. I wasn't planning on driving the van a whole lot, just when I needed it for moving something or just to drive around town. I put $20 of gas into it a couple days ago and yesterday I took it to La Crosse to find out a new thing that's gone wrong with it.

I was driving it to school and everything was going fine. It was running good and everything works in it including the heat, stereo, blinkers but not the wind shield wipers. I parked on the street and looked around for any no parking or 2 hour parking signs. There wasn't any so I went about my business. I got done with class at about 12:15 and went back to the van. I had no tickets and everything was going smoothly, so I began my trip back home. I looked down at the gas gauge and noticed that I had a quarter of a tank left of gas. It gets pretty bad millage so I check the gas frequently. As I was driving, I noticed a familiar smell. I smelled a little like fumes or gas. I didn't think much of it because it's a pretty old car and that can happen from time to time with old cars. I kept driving and looked at the gas gauge again. I was only about half way home and I was already down to an 8th of a tank. I didn't think much of that either. The gauge must be wrong thought. As I kept driving, the gauge was rapidly moving down when all of a sudden, the needle was all the way down. "There's no way I could have used $20 worth of gas in one trip to La Crosse", I thought to myself, so I kept driving. When I got into Trempealeau, the inside of the van reeked of gasoline and when I opened my window, it was as if the smell got stronger.

I arrived to my house and instantly called my boss to see if he knew anything about the smell. He didn't answer his phone. So I took my dog out for a walk. While I was walking down the drive way, I noticed a big trail of some sort of liquid. All the pieces in my head matched up. The van was leaking gas on my way home. But it was hardly a leak, the trail looked as of a whole river of gas had just flowed through my drive way. I figured out that there must be a leak in the fuel line of the van because no gas drips out when its just sitting there. Now I have to get that fixed. Who knows if I'll ever get to drive the van without any problems going wrong with it.

Facebook

I think that Facebook is the most distracting thing for people my age. I am guilty of being an FB user, but I don't even know why I go on it. I just log onto my page and stare and for some reason you can spend hours on it. I used to go on it every day, but now I'm realizing I could be doing more with my day than reading about how horrible John Dow's day was, or what Mary Jane has to do tomorrow. People write the stupidest things in their status. I don't care if someone is eating ice cream while watching the Amazing Race, or if someone is going to take a nap before there next class. These are real ones that I've read before.
Facebook is so distracting because I'll be doing something on the computer for school and I'll go to Facebook just to see if anything new has happened, then I start looking at other peoples profiles, then someone starts chatting me and next thing you know it's midnight and I still have to type a 3 page essay. For example, I have to write this blog for Written Communications and I'm Facebook chatting two other people right now and every time I can't think of anything to write, I go onto my Facebook page. So I could have had this blog done by now but I only have half of it done all because of Facebook.
It seems like all of my friends have the same feelings towards FB. They have one and go on it all the time, but they don't even like it and say they're going to get rid of it soon. I also have these same feelings for it. I hate admitting that I go on Facebook a lot but it's true. The only real reason that I have it now is so I can keep in touch with all my friends that went away for school, so I think that's a pretty good reason for having it.