Preparing for winter

         With the first few snowfalls of winter I have realized I have not yet prepared for winter. There is more to preparing for winter that just finding winter jackets and hat and mittens. I have already done that along with finding snow shovels and putting a window scraper in my car. I have emptied the lower unit of the boat motor, but have yet to put the boat in the barn. I also need to organize the barn and put all the other summer equipment away like lawnmowers, rakes, and summer fishing rods. The biggest part of getting ready for winter for me is changing my summer fishing equipment into winter equipment. Part of that includes finding, cleaning and fixing the following: the ice fishing rods and reels, the auger, the ice fishing house, the sunflower heater, and buckets. I also need to put away summer rods and reline reels with bad line. The last and most important part is to take all of the jigs, hooks, and spoons that can be used under the ice into a ice fishing tackle box and but equipment I still need.

Summer of Family and Friends

A picture of our house.

Last summer was hard for my family. Our house was flooded out during the June 2012 flood, our friends and family helped us get our house and clean our yard. They were a giant help and made the summer much easier both emotionally and physically for my family. They also helped us move all of our belongings that were in decent shape to my grandparents house, where we stayed while they were in Florida, and a to a storage unit. This summer began with my family moving out of my grandparents house and into our new house; once again our friends and family were a big help. We traded off jobs of packing boxes, bringing the boxes outside, loading up all of the vehicles and then driving the boxes to our new house. Once we got to our house we would do all of that backwards, the drivers would unload the car and then put all of the boxes in the garage. We repeated that around seven times until all we had left were bigger objects to move like washing machines and cabinets. Once we just had the larger object we took a break and met up again that next morning.  One of my parents' close friends brought their truck so we could have two pick-ups move the washing machines and furniture. After the house was cleaned out we had a storage unit that also took a few trips to clean out. We are now settled into our new house and with the help of friends it was a moving job that was very easy and quick; we finished a job that would take over a week and finished it in about two days.

Our dog, Moose, and our cat, Aggie, sleeping together.

The summer of family added three new family members; two kittens and a dog. The kittens, Aggie and Darby are both female and are now about four months old. They run around all day and are always in a good mood. They look to play with anyone they can. That can get them in trouble when they try playing with our older cat Suzie who is now 15 years old and doesn't like to do anything but eat and sleep. Our new dog moose is female and around a one and a half years old. She is a mastiff Newfoundland mix.  She can be very stubborn and is always in the mood for a belly rub. She runs 1-6 miles a day with me, my sister or my mom. She loves to play and that can be scary when she is running full speed at someone with her mouth open. The three new family members have become best friends and eventually maybe they will become friends with our older cat.

The most fun thing I did all summer was play dodge ball during our parties on the weekends. My mom would start baking at nine or ten in the morning. She would make wild rice soup that is always a favorite. To go along with the wild rice soup she would make two different types of biscuits; a biscuit that tastes just like the biscuits you get at red lobster and biscuits that taste like Texas Roadhouse biscuits but way better. After that my mom and sister would make dessert. They would cook chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, brownies and more. My dad grilled brats, fish, and whatever other meat he had. Friends and family would start showing up around noon and everyone was eating by one. At around two-thirty, the dodge ball games would start. We played dodge ball on a custom-made court that my dad  and I made. We put poles in the ground three feet deep and attached grouse netting to the poles to stop the dodge balls from becoming lost in the woods.  We would then play dodge ball until it got dark when we all moved to the bonfire. We sit by the fire adding any wood we can scavenge. People started filtering out by around eleven. We sat around the bonfire until everyone left around two or three in the morning.

 

What I learned from my Shawshank presentation

My group of Tim, Dan, and I researched post-conviction DNA testing. I learned that innocent until proven guilty is not completely true; someone may have been found guilty but still be innocent. There have been over 311 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States (innocence).  The main reason for incorrect convictions have been racism, eye witness misidentification, improper forensic science, over-zealous police, and inept defense counsels (Schneider). The average time done in prison for those who have been exonerated is 13.6 years (Van Buskirk). Those people can sue the state but no amount of money can take the years back they have missed, the years the could have spent with their family and family, the years they could have gotten an education or job, but most of all their image. Even though they have been proven innocent people may still see them as criminals and that will never change. 

This project helped me better understand shawshank because I saw how easy it is for someone who is innocent to be proven guilty. That relates to Andy who is innocent but found himself stuck in prison. When people who are sent to jail and  they haven't done anything they may do crazy things.  The average time done in prison for those who have been exonerated is 13.6 years and that gives people time to think. (Van Buskirk). people may go crazy trying to prove their point or like the case of Andy try and escape.  


Van Buskirk, Christian. "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: CLEARING 
           MASSACHUSETTS'S UNCERTAIN ROAD TO POST-CONVICTION DNA TESTING."

          St. John's Law Review 85.4 (2011): 1-27. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Sept.

          2013.

Schneider, Sydney. "WHEN INNOCENT DEFENDANTS FALSELY CONFESS: 

         ANALYZING THE RAMIFICATIONS OF ENTERING ALFORD PLEAS IN THE

         CONTEXT OF THE BURGEONING INNOCENCE MOVEMENT." Opinion: n. pag.

         Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Sept. 2013.
 

Innocence Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2013.
          http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Alan_Newton.php.

Snapshots of My Summer

My house (bottom left corner) as the flood water started receding.

This summer started out by my family moving into our new house. Last summer, our house was flooded out during the June 2012  flood and has since been torn down. We had all of our possessions packed away in a storage locker and stored at my grandparents house where we were staying while they were in Florida. We moved all of our stuff into a storage building in our new house. That meant we had to load our three family vehicles, with the help of family and friends, completely full and then take a 20 minute drive to our house and then unload all of the stuff we just loaded up. We took a total of 7 trips from house to house until we were done; after we finished unloading the house, we had to unload our storage unit that we rented. We took another 4 or 5 trips from the storage unit to our new house. Our new house is located 5 minutes out of Cloquet and sits on forty acres of land that we own. On that forty acres, we also have two barns, one that is in poor condition that we will tear down and another that is in good shape; two storage building; a sauna; and a big garden that we were not able to plant in this year. We have trails run throughout our forty acres. Next to our forty acres, there are another forty acres that the owner is allowing us to use. In that area, trails run from our house all the way to a creek located at the end of the other forty acres.

A view from my bedroom window; the sauna is the building you can see.

A picture of our three cats Aggie (far left), Suzie (top of stairs)
and Darby (bottom of stairs).

This summer we also got three new pets: two kittens, Aggie and Darby; and a dog ,Moose. The kittens are both female and are now about four months old. The dog is also female and is about a year and a half old; she is a Newfoundland Mastiff mix. Our cat that we have had for 15 years did not get along with any of the new pets; she hissed and paws the new kittens and ran away from our dog. Now she still dislikes our dog but allows the kittens to be in the same room as her. The dogs and kittens have become best friends and the kittens now lay on our dog.


Me walking my dog Moose.

The best thing I did all summer was play dodge ball during our parties on the weekend. My mom would bake and make desserts and my dad would grill brats and fish. People would start showing up around noon and everyone was eating by one. At around two-thirty, the dodge ball games would start. We play dodge ball on a custom-made court that my dad  and I made. We put poles in the ground three feet deep and attached grouse netting to the poles to stop the dodge balls from becoming lost in the woods.  We would then play dodge ball until it got dark when we all moved to the bonfire. We sat around the bonfire until everyone left around two or three in the morning.