This Year in School...

By Bart Everson

            This year in school, I have been doing pretty well. I definitely did better than last year. I mostly like all my classes, except for math. I think math is boring. I’m not bad at it, but I really don’t like it. Right now in math we are learning about factoring polynomials. Blech.

           I like religion, because it's really fun, and right now we are making soap operas. (Long story… will post them later) They class I hate most though, is band. I like playing my instrument, but that’s all I want to do, I don’t want composers worksheets, and I really don’t want to practice. Double Blech. Other than that, I pretty much like all my classes.

Happy Valentine’s Day! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Do you have a special Valentine?

National Debt....

             As you probably know, our national debt is huge. Really huge. If we spilt up our debt, there would be $200,000 for every man, woman and child to pay. But Why?

We are self indulgent

We spend money we don't have

We need to lower our debt, or else other countries will stop lending us money, and we'll be even worse off. 68% of our borrowed money is from other countries, and they are getting impatient.

Obama refuses to pass this problem on to another generation

Doing nothing is not an option, and we need to lower the national debt.

But what I don't get is:

Why’s the deficit so high?

What is it we are paying for?

Was there something huge that started the debt?

When we were in the green with Clinton, why?

How can we pay back other countries without raising taxes?

 

TACKLE THE FLU!

http://www.lincolncountyhealth.com/PH/FluPage.htm

        This past month for class, we've had to make flu prevention related public service announcements. I was in a group with Megan, Jacob and Tim. We definitely had an interesting time. Tim played our flu germ, but we couldn't figure out how to portray the flu. We ended up just making a giant paper germ and hanging it around his neck. We weren't sure people would be able to tell what he was, so we had to make a sign too. Unfortunately, Tim's costume kept ripping and we had to use packing tape to fix it. Paper probably wasn't the best choice. 

       I hope you enjoy our video, we spent a long time on it. If you want to see some of our classmate's videos as well, they are on http://vimeo.com. Just search flu prevention under groups. These videos were made for a contest online. The winners get $1,000 for their school. Wish our group luck! Winners are announced February 11th. Enjoy our video:

 

Tackle the Flu from sharleen berg on Vimeo.

Catholic School's Week

         This week is Catholic School's Week. It's like spirit week for Catholic School kids, but ironically we have spirit week, too. The real reason for Catholic School's Week is so the staff can try to get a whole bunch of people to register for St. Mary's next year. My mom and I came in on Sunday to lead tours of the school. We only got to lead one tour in the hour and a half because the people asked so many questions. We were successful though, because right after the tour, they registered! During Catholic School's Week, we do lots of fun things. Today, for example, we have to dress up as book characters. I'm Jesus. Sadly, only three people in my whole grade dressed up. Party Poopers. Tomorrow is Era Day, and I'm wearing a poodle skirt and saddle shoes. Wednesday, each grade is wearing either red, white, or blue and then when we are at church, someone will go up in the choir loft and take our picture, because we'll look like an American flag. Thursday we'll be in camo, because it's support our troops day. Friday, we're wearing sports  clothing. Look's like fun!

Why I Love Going to St. Mary's!

     
        Yes, I go to St. Mary's...I think its a great school. I've been going to St. Mary's since preschool, so I've been there for ten years, and that's a lot of my life! I wouldn't spend that much time at someplace I didn't like (unless my parents made me...)  I like St. Mary's for the obvious reasons... small class sizes...Catholic teaching...etc. But I also enjoy St. Mary's for other reasons. My friends are there, and if I went to public school, I'd probably be an invisible nobody. At St. Mary's, there are less than 40 eighth graders, so everybody knows everything about everybody. That can be a positive or a negative thing, because good and bad things about you can spread quickly. Overall, St. Mary's is a great school, and I will be very sad when I go to the public High School next year.

I'm... Czechoslovakian

http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Czech-Republic.html

   
     Most of my family came from Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia people eat a lot of different things, that I find gross and funny looking, but I'm sure that most of them think the food we eat in america is weird too.
Here's some some food that I think sounds most interesting:

• Smetane: sour cream 
• Pudink: pudding
• Kapr: carp
• Kynute Houscove Knedliky: yeast dumplings with sauteed bread cubes blended into the batter before steaming.
• Husa: goose
• Bramborove Knedliky: potato dumplings

Well... pudding and sour cream sounds okay to me, but the rest not so much. For sports, they have a lot of the same sports as America. Czechoslovakia has football, baseball, some tennis players (woo!!) and a nice ice hockey team. On another note, the most popular name for a boy in Czechoslovakia is Jakub, and for a girl, its Tereza. In America, the most popular baby name for a boy is Aidan, but for a girl its Sophia.

So.. that's my ethnic heritage! I'm am also a mix of...

1.  Irish
2.  Norwegian
3.  German

So that just proves that America is a great big mixing pot :)

Prezi...

Nanobots on Prezi

Fred, The Hot-Tempered Mouse

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21599153@N00/123885782
by: Andi

       In my house, there lives a hot tempered mouse. His name's Fred. Fred G. Baker. He works part time for minimum wage at a shoe string factory in the crummy part of town, in the hole under the bathroom sink.  Every morning he makes his commute up the stairs, over three rooms, through the kitchen and into the bathroom.  He was a wife and five children, and as you can imagine, with a part-time, minimum wage job, it's not easy to make ends meet. Everyday at work his task is to put the plastic ends on the tip of the shoestrings. That seems like a pretty simple job, but noting is ever simple for a mouse. One day, he registers his name being called. FRED!! FRED G. BAKER!!! It was is his boss, Mr. K. Ratt. Fred has been assigned a job. He is to go and get extra wax from the neighboring factory. That means (gulp) that Fred has to cross... the yard. Fred sets off across the yard cautiously. He is wondering why the yard seems so quiet. Then as if out of nowhere... Stacey, the neighbor's black and white cat appears.(double gulp) There's a meow and a flash of claws and fur. Poor Fred the hot tempered mouse is never heard from again.

Once Upon a Snowman

The End.....

Photo Fun!

      Why should we use photos when blogging? Well like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words... and when you add pictures to your post, it makes it much easier to understand the point that they are trying to get across. Such as if I say, Becca ate cookie monster, you wouldn't know what I meant, but if I said Becca ate cookie monster and then included this photo of my little sister devouring her cookie, it makes it much easier to understand:

 

See? Now you get what I mean! If you didn't, I'd say you are pretty clueless... just kidding.

Another thing to keep in mind when blogging is attribution. I didn't put any attribution on the photo above, because I took it. That doesn't really mean its mine though, because I don't have it copyrighted. If someone wanted to, they could just take it off my blog. I'd be mad if they didn't use attribution...keep that in mind. :)

Here's an example, let's say I'm posting about something random (as I usually am), and for some odd reason, I just have to have a picture of a glass of water (don't ask me why), and I went on and posted a photo like this:

Now that's a great picture, but I didn't do it right, because I didn't add attribution. Now let's try again:

Photo taken by Greg Riegler

See, that's better! Get it now??