Drew

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It’s really hard for me to believe that the school year is almost over.  It seems like it was only a few days ago that I walked into Stone Bridge for the first time as a freshman and wondering where I was supposed to go.  What’s even crazier is that in only a little more than a week, it will be summer!   I’ll be very happy when school is over, because being in high school is a lot of work.

I’m very excited about Spring Break this year.  I’m going to be driving down to Florida, where we’re going to be going to Disney and Universal Studios!  Then we might go to Sea World before we have to come back.  WE got the idea when my mom suggested we go down to Disney for Spring Break.  My brother and I definitely wanted to go, but my dad didn’t really seem to want to because he thought we were, “too old” (Which is weird because how can you be too old for Disney?).  So we decided to go, and got a room at a hotel there, and we just need to wait until Spring Break to start next week.

American aerial skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson just won silver in freestyle skiing!  Speedy landed his signagture move called ‘The Hurricane’ that consists of three flips and five twists.  It is extremely hard and obviously helped him a great deal.  Alexei Grishin from Belarus got his country its first gold from Vancouver, and Liu Zhongqing from China won bronze.  Grishin’s score was 248.41, which beat Speedy’s score of 247.21 by just 1.2 points!  Great job Speedy!

Things don’t always go the way you want them to,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Well, I guess that’s just life

You forget to do your science homework, you bomb your math test,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Well, I guess that’s just life

You leave your gym uniform at home, you don’t have any lunch money,                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Well, I guess that’s just life

Your parents aren’t home, and you don’t have a house key,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Well, I guess that’s just life

Terrible things are happening all around the world,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     People are starving, houses are getting burned down by fires,

So we must remember something about our little everyday problems;                                                                                                                                                                                                                              That’s just life

Tonight is the night that the Olympic Torch is going to be lit and signify the start of 2010 winter Olympics at Vancouver.  No one is really sure who is going  to light the torch yet, but there are four people who most people think have the best shot at getting that honor.  One is Betty Fox, the mother of Terry Fox, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was 18 and had to have his right leg amputated.  However, three years later, using a prosthetic leg, he ran one marathon a day for over 300 days to raise money for cancer research.  But, then doctors realized that he’d been running with cancerous tumors in his lungs, and he passed away ten months later.

Another choice is Wayne Gretzky, Canada’s most respected hockey player.  A recent poll says that 25% of Canadians want to see him light torch tonight.  He is the NHL’s all time leading scorer, but never managed to get Canada the gold while a actually playing, but was Team Canada’s manager in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City, when they got the gold medals.  The Canadians’ nickname is “The Great One”.

Choice #3 is Rick Hansen.  When he was 15, he was in a car crash that paralyzed him from the waist down.  He was always an athelete, and being in a wheelchair didin’t stop him from winning medals in the 1980 and 1984 Paralympic games.  He’s best known for his ‘Man in Motion’ tour that took him around the world to raise funds and awareness for spinal cord injuries.  He raised over $26 million in funds!  He runs the Rick Hansen Foundation and is actively involved in raising spinal cord injury awareness.

The final possibility is Cindy Klassen.  She is a speed skater and is currently Canada’s most decorated Olympian, and will be competing in this year’s Olympics.  In 2006, she became the first Canadian to win five medals in a single Olympics.  Even though current Olympians aren’t usually chosen to light the torch, she still hs a chance.  So, who will light the Olympic Torch?  Watch the Olympics to find out!

Over the weekend, I went to the White House with my parents, my brother, and a whole bunch of my cousins, uncles, aunts and my grandmom.  After everyone was there, we had to stand in two lines in the snow.  It was really cold.  After we went through the lines we went through a metal detector and went into the White House.  When we got in, there were some paintings, and rooms that were roped off but that we could look at.  When we went up some stairs we went through The Green Room, The Blue Room, The Red Room, and The State Dining room.  The Green Room was mainly a parlor, but it was also used to sign the U.S.’s first declaration of war (the war of 1812), and was used to hold the funeral service for President Abraham Lincoln’s youngest son.  The Blue Room is usually the room where the presidents formally receive their guests, and was used for the wedding between President Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom.  In 1809, First Lady Dolley Madison started using the Red Room for socializing between members of opposing political parties, during a time when there was fierce segregation between the parties.  Starting in 1903, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted press conferences for woman reporters in the Red Room because they were not allowed in the president’s press conferences.  President Jefferson used the State Dining Room as his personal office and used the Red Room, which was right next to it, to receive guests.  In 1903, the room underwent a massive transformation that allowed it to go from having a maximum capacity of 40 people, to 140!  A person in the Secret Service said that all of those rooms get used 2-3 times a week.  The tour was fun, but it was pretty short.

Today in health when we were in the gym with Mrs. K. handing back papers while the 10th graders were in the health room, I saw a friend of mine doing a Rubik’s Cube.  He was very good at it, another friend of mine kept mixing it up for him, saying, “He’ll never get it this time,” but he always did.  And so that made me think just how confusing Rubik’s Cubes are!  I have one, but I can never figure it out!  I just randomly turn it hoping to some how get it, but that just makes it even more mixed up than it was when I started.  My friend told me there’s a pattern or something like that that he follows to help him sove it, but I just don’t get it.  The world record for the fastest time someone solved a completely scrambled Rubik’s Cube is seven seconds!  It just seems unreal that someone could solve it so quickly, when I can’t solve it at all!  I guess that a Rubik’s Cube is just the kind of thing that some people can do easily, and others either can’t do it or have to take a long time doing.

You come each morning because the sun is bright,

But you vanish in the evening to darken the night.

Some can call you with the flip of a switch,

Though others must catch you like the golden snitch.

You flicker as a fire as you allow us to see,

Or you’re a flashlight, with a long, steady beam

You’re a synonym for good, justice and fun,

You’re are loved by many, probably everyone.

So please continue to brighten our days,

Or else we will all become very dazed.

A weird thing about Santa’s reindeer that I doubt anyone knows, is that despite everyone referring to them as “hes”, all of Santa’s reindeer, even Rudolph are really girls.  Because, male reindeer lose their antlers in early winter, while female ones lose them in the spring.

This is a poem that my grandma told me that I think is funny.

On a bright day in the middle of the night,

Two dead boys got up to fight,

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other

The deaf policeman heard the noise,

Came upstairs and got those dead boys.

Now if you don’t believe this lie is true,

Ask the blind man, he saw it too.