Signing up for college classes

                     Bemidji State University hosted an event for all incoming freshman to register for classes and housing and to learn more about our next four years of schooling. The event started at 8:30am on a friday. My parents were not able to go because my mom was taking care of my older sister's baby and my dad was at work. My cousin, who got out of college two years ago, decided he wanted to come with me to Bemidji. I had to get up at four in the morning and me and my cousin left at five. Bemidji is over 150 miles from my house in Cloquet, but it is easy driving. My house is two miles off of highway 2 and we took highway 2 all the way to Bemidji. It took much less time then we were expecting and we got to Bemidji at 7 a hour earlier than we were expecting and an hour and a half until the event started. We drove through Bemidji and stopped in a Gander Mountain parking lot to get out and stretch. Bemidji State university is located on lake Bemidji with the Mississippi river running through it. The campus is on the shore of lake Bemidji and the are hundreds of other lakes in the area. The actual registration went great and I already have my schedule for the fall semester.

Random Acts of Shakespeare.

In English class, we have to act out a part of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night for random acts of Shakespeare. I was in a group with Dan K, David G and Luke P. Dave played Maria's helper, Dan played Maria, and I was Toby. It was act one scene three, and we filmed it at Kenwood gas station. In this scene Maria yells at Toby because he keeps staying out all night drinking. they fight and Toby says that all he needs to do is drink and Maria tells him that drinking might be his downfall.

Spring

                 This is my family's first spring at our new house since we moved in. The last couple of weeks were  spent by pickaxing our driveway to remove the foot or so of packed snow and ice that have built up. This past weekend was no different. The weather was beautiful in the 50's and the snow was definitely melting. My sister and I were throwing snowball at different targets when my parents got home and we started pickaxing the driveway again. Everything was moving slow but perfectly fine, when my dad opened our garage door to find four inches of water on the floor. There is a drain in our garage but we never used it, we didn't even know if the drain worked. The first thing we did was try and take the cover off the drain. I tried with a round file and a screwdriver, but the file broke. I then found the two thickest screwdriver I could and was able to take the drain off. We got the shop-vac out and tried to clear the drain out. It took emptying over ten full buckets of water, rust, and whatever else was stuck in the drain before we bought the house before we could even the pipe. We would suck a whole bucket of water and then change the hose around and try and blow the dirt around to break it up. Every time my hand hit the top of the shop vac to turn it off I would feel a shock. That doesn't seem too safe considering i was standing in a pool of water, but it didn't hurt so we kept going. We ended up getting rid of all of the water and we cleared to drain so it is working properly now.

Conversation with Molly

             Recently all of the English 12 classes had a Skype discussion with Molly, a Marshall alum, about her blog Confessions of a First-Time Mom, college, The Lovely Bones, and everyday life. Molly's blog is about her raising her son Liam, and balancing being Liam's mom and being her own person. One of Molly's recent posts was published on CNN and we got a chance to ask her about that.

Picture Thanks to Ms. Kosmatka 

           Before we started talking to Molly some people in the class were nervous. Nervous to talk to her, nervous that there might be technical difficulties, and nervous about possibly getting a bad grade. I thought of it as just talking to another person, and the worst thing that could happen is I get a bad grade (compared with some of our fishbowl discussions it couldn't be much worse).
           Once we actually started talking to Molly things got much better. The first group went a little slow and looked a little nervous, but Molly was such an easy person to talk to that after that it seamed like the question and answer turned into a genuine conversation. She told us her thoughts about the book, her experiences at Marshall, and her fight to be her own individual instead of just Liam's mom. Molly told us how she doesn't want to be the mom that cleans up all of Liam's messes, she said that he will need to learn to pick them up himself.  "People grow up by living" and that is just what Molly is going to let Liam do (19).   Her stories about Liam and her time with Dr. Nygaard were very amusing and made the class period fly by. Before the class we were fighting to come up with questions to ask her, but as the conversation her her flew by you were fighting to ask your best questions in the 10-15 minutes you had.

Ping Pong

Later in the day after our "Failed Trip", we had a ping pong tournament. My dad started the fire in our garage as soon as we got back from ice fishing. My dad and i spent almost the rest of the day and night in the garage; we finished cleaning the garage and kept the fire going. While my dad and i were in the garage my mom and sister were in the house making supper. They made taco meat with chicken and re-fried beans for tacos and made Swedish meatballs and cheesy chicken wings. Many people came, including Pierce and his parents, and the whole day and night was spent talking and playing ping pong until one in the morning.

Basketball

           Now that basketball is over I had a free weekend for the first time since early November. Slowly i have been getting more and more tired and sore. Going into the weekend I told myself I was going to do something productive and fun that i wasn't able to do during basketball, something like ice fishing or walking around our property in waist high snow with my dog. What actually happened was much different I woke up at 11 am when the night before I fell asleep at 10 pm. That set the tone for the weekend because that night the same thing happened, I fell asleep at 10 pm and woke up around 11:30 the next morning. That is 26 hours of sleep in two nights. It turned out all I did over the weekend was sleep, eat, and watch television. Even tough I didn't actually accomplish anything it felt good. I had no commitments, and could do whatever i wanted. Yes, I miss basketball the after school practices and of course the games, but one thing I will never miss are those Saturday morning practices that make you wake up early and put a kink in your whole day. The sleep and rest felt really good, my body and mind needed it. Now on Monday i am not groggy and sleepy like most Monday mornings during basketball season, but instead i'm awake and attentive.

Failed Trip

            My mom wanted everyone out of the house so that she could cook for the party we were having later that day. My dad, sister and I decided we would go fishing to get out of the house. When we woke up everyone got dressed to go fishing in the cold weather. What my dad and I didn't know was that my sister only wore crocks and two pairs socks under my dads slip on boots. Then me and my dad loaded the ice house in our truck and we went to the bait shop.
        At the bait shop we got two dozen minnows and wax worms, some of the cheapest minnows we bought from anywhere. Grand Lake is only eight minutes from our house and we got there in no time. We were planning on walking 300 yards to get to where we wanted to fish. The second we got on the lake we knew it would be a challenge. The snow was up to my knees and for my sister and dad it was almost impossible to walk through.
         Half way to our spot we finally noticed my sisters boots; there was snow in them and her feet were frozen. My dad told her to walk back to the truck and warm up while me and him drag the sled back. It ended up just being me dragging the sled back as he was having trouble just walking in the snow. When i got back to the truck i was exhausted, it was probably the biggest workout i had all year so far. Things didn't happen as we planned but my sister was fine this wasn't our first failed fishing trip and unfortunately wont be our last.