Most people do not understand...

Most people do not understand the true meaning of Christmas. I fondly remember helping my mom bake Christmas cookies, wrapping presents, trimming the tree, and waiting so impatiently for the big day to arrive. That was back when I was a child growing up in a small town. It was the little special things that made Christmas special to me. Because we lived far enough away to make going to a shopping mall inconvenient, there were a lot of Christmas presents that were hand-made. We would come to Fargo one time prior to Christmas and buy most of the gifts, but my mom would still make some too. She would sew my two young nieces Christmas dresses every year. Or she would crochet a scarf and mittens for me. We also didn't have the quantity of gifts back then. If you made a Christmas list, you were fortunate to get one maybe two items on the entire list. And I worked hard on that list, pondering over the JCPenney Christmas catalog every year of what I should ask for. I also wrote to Santa every year and mysteriously received an item from my letter under the tree. I could never figure out how he got in our house, because we didn't have a chimney! Anyway, people seem to forget the "specialness" of Christmas these days. Resorting to buying gift cards in bulk, and buying huge dollar items because they can just put it on their credit card. I've lost interest in Christmas because it's too commercialized with Christmas stuff coming out to the retail stores long before Halloween and Thanksgiving. It's sad to me, maybe not to others, but I miss the little things. Maybe I miss it more since my mom passed away 7 years ago. Someday I hope that Christmas will go back to the way it used to be.

Life would be easier....

Life would be easier if I had a personal assistant of sorts. Someone to run errands to the bank and to the grocery store would be a couple hours a week freed up to do something fun or more important. If I had someone to just keep the house clean, do the dishes, cook the meals, think of how much time I would have to do things I don't have time to do now? Laundry takes up a ton of my time and that's just for myself. I am lucky if I get my clothes washed and dried, let alone put away or hung up. Sometimes they just end up folded in the laundry basket and that's as far as they go until they get worn. Although my fiance and I love to cook, I'd like the option to not cook if I didn't want to. If all I had to do was sleep, get up and go to work, come home and relax, then go to bed and start the next day all over again, and not worry about the small things, I would be much less stressed out.

My biggest success

At my last full-time day job, I started out in customer service. Eventually a couple years later, I wanted to spread my wings a little and asked if I could be put on the Sales team. I was told that the only sales area available was the Twin Cities area. So I jumped at the opportunity and soon I was out making sales calls to our customers. I had a company vehicle and my sales territory was primarily Minneapolis/St. Paul. I drove to Minneapolis twice a month and stayed for a week each time. It was lonely work, and the driving was challenging, it required a lot of organization. I had to learn where our accounts were located and what the best way was to get there (without getting lost). I had to make at least 10 calls a day to satisfy my boss, so it was a real struggle sometimes. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, most companies demand that sales people make appointments to meet with their buyers, so another challenge was to make those appointments on time, otherwise you may not be able to meet with the buyer that day and to reschedule would be a nightmare to try to set up. It was challenging sometimes to go out and make a cold sales call where the buyer I was talking to didn't recognize my company's name and showed no interest in what we were selling whatsoever. My biggest success was in the fact that I never thought this job was something that I would be able to do, much less do well. I wanted the opportunity to prove to myself that I could make sales to people that I didn't know, to learn to drive in the cities well (scary), and make sales presentations to groups of people and teach them about the products I was selling when I didn't care for speaking in front of people at all. I learned alot in those 4 years with that company, but most of all I learned that even if something seems impossible, there usually is a way to work through it if you don't give up. Trust me, I spent some times sobbing in my car, lost in a scary area of the cities at 7pm at night trying to get back to my hotel without getting murdered or car-jacked. I vowed to quit several times because of mean customers, but I didn't, I hung in there and learned a very valuable lesson from it.

I'll never forget the time I....

I'll never forget thet time I went to Las Vegas. My roomate and I in Oregon decided that we would drive to Vegas for a couple Dave Matthews Band concerts that were playing that weekend. Not knowing what was in store for me, and being the biggest DMB fan ever, i was super excited to finally get there and start the Vegas trip. We get into town thursday afternoon and check into our hotel and start touring the place and any place that we see in sight. Thursday night went fun, woke up friday and started to get ready for the first concert. That concert was absolutely amazing and got me completely excited for the next nights concert which would of been ten times better. Well saturday rolls around and everything is going fine until about 1:00 when i start to get this horrid stomach ache and then dizziness. I had no idea what was going on and figured i was a little hungover from the night before and thought i would just kind of drink though it. Well by 5:00 and a couple drinks already down it was not getting any better and actually getting worse. Thinking that i have a concert in about 3 hours i didn't know what to do and was freaking out that i would have to miss my favorite band that i drove 16 hours to see. Well i was on the verge of throwing up when i walked into the place and sat down in my chair for the opening band. I made it through one song and was so close to throwing up on the person in front of me that i decided to leave and go back to my hotel room. Since i have seen about 16 DMB shows before i figured i could miss one.
Anyways, the deal with DMB is seeing them live. And a lot of people keep track of what songs they have seen live and how many times and which songs they really really want to see and just never have. Well the song that i have always wanted to see and after 17 shows still haven't seen is Halloween. I remember telling myself in the hotel room that night while i was lying in bed almost dying that they were not gonna play it and i would not miss out. Well after falling asleep at about 9, i wake up to my roomate coming in the room at 3 in the morning and saying "Dude, you missed a hell of a show and guess what??" He didn't even need to say it, i already knew. I said "They played Halloween didn't they?" He nodded his head and all i could say was a bunch of explicitives. I don't know why that song is haunting me and why i can't see it live but to this date after seeing a total of 22 shows around the country, i still have not seen it. The next morning we figured out that i had got food poisoning from one of the buffets there and i missed the show because of that. Hopefully sometime soon i will get my halloween!

I'll never forget the time...

It was a dark and gloomy day when my family and I piled into the van and headed to the beach. It was going to be a day of foul smells, rain, and perhaps a few fond memories. Our first stop was at an old fisherman's house to pick up a bucket of fish heads to bait the crab nets with. The awful aroma filled the van, and after ten minutes of suffocation we were released into the muggy air of Oregon. The piers were dark and dangerous looking, but with some reassurance from my family I walked somberly to the end. My Uncle baited the net and I dropped it down into the murky water. I settled into my purple lawn chair, flipped down my pink sun glasses, and had a sip of my ice tea. I had started flipping the pages through Cosmo when my Uncle called that it was time to pull up the nets. I grabbed the line, and after getting some lingering looks from the old washed up fisherman, pulled up my net. Millions of tiny red crabs crawled and wiggled on the old dock. One crab in particular gave me a devilish look and with a tiny claw grasped onto my toe. Yelping with fright I ran backwards into my cousin and got caught up in his crab net. With one swift move I toppled over into the lurking water and was sucked under. The last thing I remember was looking towards the surface, and watching my pink sunglasses float off my head. Wriggling my feet, and gulping for air I was grabbed out of the water. Sea weed wrapped around my hair, and sand filled every pocket of my clothing. There were all sorts of commotion, cameras were flashing, people were running, and my mother was wrapping me in a towel.
The next morning I awoke to the sun burning my arm, and a news paper laying on my stomach. I leaned up, still tasting sea water, and glanced down at the news paper. On the front page read the headline, “Young Girl Falls Into the Pier and Nearly Drowns!” There in front of me was my picture, drenched in water and covered in sea weed. To this day I will never forget when I became the most talked about girl in the town of Charleston, Oregon.

Bryson's Essay

The difference between what Bryson wrote and a process essay are that Bryson was not telling some one how to do something or informing them on how something is really done. All Bryson is really doing is telling us how he feels about certain things that we all have to do. When he talks about taxes he does not really say to much on how to pay taxes he just makes fun of the whole process. Same with computers, he doesnt mention anything about how to get it programmed or anything he just presents the process in a way that he percieves it. The only one where he actually explained the any sort of process at all is when he was decorating for christmas. There he actually, in some way, formulates a step by step process on how he does it, but he does not intend to have you do it the same way

Tale's of the hairstylist

I'm a hairstylist, and sometimes being a hairstylist is harder than most people think. Being able to sit with so many people day after day gets hard. It's hard to remember everyone's name, it's hard to remember what you did to their hair last time, it's even hard too just remember them in general. I talk to many people every day, some are very interesting and some, you just can't wait to get out of your chair! Some people will only talk about how wonderful their children are and how perfect they are, when we all know there isn't a perfect person out there!! But some will also talk about things that interest me also, those are the clients that are fun to have in the salon!
I hear what most people don’t even tell their best friends or family members. You kinda get an idea in your head on what that person is like outside the salon!! I have made many friends’ just by doing their hair over the past years and its a good feeling when they put so much trust in me by doing what I do best!
I'm more of a unique hairstylist so I have many clients that get crazy colors and funky styles done with their hair. I enjoy being original also, but doing the same on everyone gets old too!! I love my job but its time to move on and get a big girl job!!

Life would be easier if only...

Life would be easier if only there was a garbage shoot directly to the outside dumpster. Have you ever noticed how fast your garbage can build up? I swear I empty the trash at least once a day, and after the aggravation of the smell, the over flowing contents, and my nonexistent muscles, I have finally realized I need a direct garbage shoot. I lug garbage bag after garbage bag down four flights of stairs, throw myself against the large outside door at least three times before it decides to open, and then finally slip slide my way across the ice skating rink path to the garbage bins. After heaving the three to four garbage bags with immense force into the bins my work is done and I somberly slip slide my way back to the four flights of stairs that I have left to climb before I can sink back into my couch.

Puff the Bearded Dragon....

As you already know, I have a bearded dragon. I am very proud of him. I always love showing pictures or telling people or even showing him off. I picked him as my topic because I figured it would be somewhat original and I wanted to do it just because I like to share some knowledge I do have.

I got Puff in June of last year and it has been fun every minute of it. just in this past year he has grown so much. When I got him he was only a few inches long. Now he is about 16 inches long. It is crazy to think how much he as grown in such a small amount of time. And to think when I first got him he would only eat about 3 or 4 crickets at a time. Now he eats about 40. I chose him as my topic to show how much I enjoy my pet.

I'll never forget the time I...

I'll never forget the time I went to the dentist to get my wisdom teeth pulled. I had them pulled this summer. My wisdom teeth were already fully grown in. For some reason, ever since I was little, I've always feared the dentist.
I even cancelled my first appointment and rescheduled because I was so scared to go in and get it done. I figured I would be put to sleep throughout the whole ordeal so I got the courage to go. When I was in the chair at the dentist I asked him if he was putting me to sleep. He said that I would be awake but wouldn't feel anything.
It was the worst dentist experience of my life. If you ever need to get your wisdom teeth pulled make sure you asleep because being awake is the most dreadful thing ever! Hopefully I won't be seeing the dentist anytime soon.

My biggest failure...

My biggest failure was not taking college seriously after graduating high school in 2003. The summer after graduating from high school I moved to Fargo. I got really caught up in the social aspect of my life. I was enrolled in the spring of 2003 at MSUM. Once school started I went for the first couple of weeks.
Not to soon into the first semester I was so worried about my social life that I stopped going to school. It is something I really regret. I just took my education for granted. Having a child depend on me and look up to me made me realize that I had to better myself. The only way to do that is through education.
If I would have taken college seriously I would have already graduated with a degree in nursing. It's better late then never.

Life With My Daughter

Life with my daughter is the best but not the easiest thing. Being able to be there for my daughter as she grows is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced. Even though its not the easiest job in the world, it has its benefits.
My daughter, Isabella, is two years old going on three in May. When she came into this world everything changed for me. Taking care and raising a child isn't something you can take a break from or quit. Starting school again has been the biggest challenge. It's hard trying to balance out my work load at school and home. The main reason that I went back to school is to better my life as well as Isabella's life.
Having a daughter has its ups and downs but all in all I love being a mom and wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

Bryson Essays

Bryson's essays were not directional process analysis. They were more of a informational process analysis. A directional process analysis gives the steps in a process that the reader can perform if he or she wants to and informational process analysis is more for informational purposes that are more than likely not going to be performed by the reader as stated in Ch. 9 pages 251-252.
In the essay "A Visit To The Barbershop" Bryson takes us through each step of his visit to the barbershop. Also in "Deck The Halls," he is giving his step-by-step process that he goes through every year in preparation for Christmas.
The main purpose for using process analysis in his essays is to entertain and to express his feelings and relate his experience to the reader.

My process paper!

I've been thinking about doing a certain topic for my process paper and have been freewriting a bit. I've decided to go with how to choose and setup a fish tank. The thing that blew my mind is how many times a day at my job, Petco, i tell someone how to choose a tank, all the items, set it up, choose the fish and i can ramble everything out in one minute. No problem. Now that i sit down to write an essay about it, it's hard to put it in sentences that would make a good essay. I'm gonna try and do an outline and write some more things down before i actually start writing the rough draft.

Another thing i want to bring up is while i was writing this blog, i had a news show on in the background about the Natalee Holloway case and how the one suspect basically told the whole story under a secret camera. It's very disturbing and is really sad that justice won't happen in that case due to the laws of Aruba. Makes me sick.

I get so angry when...

I usually don't get angry about little things or for that matter, even big things. But a couple weeks ago i was watching a democratic debate between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards and got perturbed. I wouldn't say i'm a political nut or care that much about how the government runs things. I pretty much think they all lie anyways, so it never pays to listen to them(in my opinion). Which gets me to the point i was trying to make. I just happened to flip by the beginning of the debate and started to watch with an open mind. The first couple minutes were fine with each candidate talking about the economy and what has to happen to change the way it is now. All of a sudden it turned from a debate of three people to a verbal fight between two, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. At first i thought it was very humorous and started laughing because they were making themselves look non-professional. Then as the debaters kept going at eachother for another 10 minutes without even letting the third debater speak i got to thinking.
I don't know about anyone else that watched that, but i got angry when all they were doing was attacking eachother with their past's. The main reason why they put the debates on tv is so viewers and the voter's of this country can understand what the candidates stand for and for what they believe in. In order for me to vote for someone i would like to hear what they think of abortion, capital punishment, or the war. Not listening to them rant about how their pasts will affect them while they are in office or all the things they have done wrong. That only makes me think that they don't even care about the country and only care about the negatives about everything and that is definitely not what i look for in a candidate.
I am a strong believer in having a government that actually gets something done even if they don't like eachother. I know everyone can't get along and that is fine if we have people that get something done even if they hate eachother than everyone getting along and nothing get done to help this struggling country. This country has to do a lot of things to help the economy, save lives, and run productively but worrying about what someone hasn't done is not going to get it anywhere!

Life with a pacemaker is...

I know i tend to sometimes talk about my heart troubles and my pacemaker if you haven't noticed. And if you don't think so, just ask my girlfriend that hears about it all the time. Haha. But it was pretty recent and a really big shock to me and the people around me. Maybe in a couple months i'll stop talking about it. But life with a pacemaker can be eventful. Not to much of my daily life has changed. I do activities that i would normally do with ease and no hesitation, though there are some things i have to watch out for.
I used to work around car engines and trucks a lot for my previous job and one thing i can't do anymore is lean over a car engine. The spark plugs will cause my pacemaker to stop working. Another thing that i use on a daily basis is my cell phone, which can also cause it to stop working. So instead of using it on my left ear, no matter what i have to use it on my right ear. It can get quite tricky driving, shifting and trying to talk with my cell phone now! But don't worry, i don't do it often cause i know it is dangerous.
I recently just started to work out and try to gain some of the weight i lost from the surgery and i have to watch how hard i work my heart! I recently took a stress test to see how my heart handles at streneous levels. My heart passed with flying colors but my legs and my lungs were not doing so good after running hard on a treadmill for 15 minutes. I guess life has been back to normal for the most part.

The Bryson Essays

The Bryson essays for unit 2 are not directional process but they still contain process-based writing. The difference is informative writing, which is a process based writing rather than directional. The target audience for informative is learning a specific task but is not asked or expected to perform the steps like a directional essay. Informative essays tell the audience/reader how to do something that is being done by other people. In "A Visit to the Barber Shop," Bryson talks us through each task the barber does from the beginning to the end of the hair cut. Another example is in the reading "Deck the Halls," each procedure that Bryson does, he lets the reader know every little thing he does. Such as climbing into the attic which terrifies him and then rembers that the Christmas decorations are not up there. Bryson talks us through every step he goes through when trying finding the decorations and while hanging them up. Though it was a painful task to perform, Bryson puts on a smile and puts up decorations despite the bumps on the way, he does it because it is a ritual. It's Christmas!

I personally think Bryson's purpose is to show the audience a different type of process writing in his own way. A lot of people know more about and see more directional process, and this way, Bryson allos us to see a different version of a process.

Bryson essays (Extra Post)

The difference between directional and informational process writing is that the directional process involves giving an audience specific directions on how to do or make something, while the informational process explains how something is made or done and the author does not expect the reader to perform the process.

In the Student writer textbook in chapter 9, page 263, the author is using a directional process to show how feng shui can help you sleep better and work more productively.
This is written so that a reader could actually do the process if they wanted to.

In Bryson’s essays, specifically in chapters 9 and 37, he is using the informational process to describe his experiences in decorating for Christmas and getting a haircut. In chapter 56 he is using both the informational and directional process in that he lists the steps to hook up your new computer how he perceives it, but the steps are so exaggerated and far-fetched that he really wouldn’t expect anyone to follow those directions. In chapter 43, he is using both as well. He is explaining how to understand a tax form but the confusion of the directions is so overwhelming that no one could actually complete a tax form using those directions.

His purpose is to entertain us. His audiences are people who can relate to his experiences and how we share some of the same feelings he gets from trying to fill out an actual tax form and setting up a new computer. Those processes can be exhausting and frustrating and he is exaggerating them in a very amusing manner.

I'll nver forget the time...(Graded)

I’ll never forget the time I saw mountains for the first time. My husbands work often takes him on the road and in the early winter of 2006, he had to work out in Yakima, WA. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to take a vacation and go see some sights that I had always longed to see. I have seen the mountains in pictures and movies, but I wanted to see them without the limits of a photo lens.

We left on an early Saturday afternoon and drove all the way to Miles City, MT where we stopped for the night. It was about an 8 hour drive from Fargo & there was not much to see. Even so, I was thrilled to be traveling through parts that I had never seen. There were areas with scattered buttes and rolling hills and the painted canyon in the badlands of western North Dakota was quite a sight to see. But soon we would be back on the road and just a few more hours down the road we would be approaching Billings, MT where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains can be seen.

The anticipation was killing me. As we were driving further into Montana, it seemed that we were always driving uphill, never down. I suppose that is because we were climbing in elevation. When we finally approached Billings, there was an explosion of excitement in me. We crested a hill on the East side of the city and there it was! My first glimpse of a beautiful majestic mountain! I saw it in the distance beyond the city. It was far away and didn’t look very big at first but it rose above the flat terrain with jagged snowy capped peaks. It seemed to take forever to get close to that mountain range and when we finally did, I was absolutely speechless. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. The mountains were huge in comparison to anything I had ever seen. I couldn’t stop smiling. The mountains were everything and more than I had ever imagined.

My husband, having spent a lot of time out west, just smiled and shook his head and said “you haven’t seen anything yet!” He was right. As we got further into Montana the mountains got bigger and even more beautiful and they continued to impress me the entire trip. It was an unforgettable experience and I will go back out there every chance I get!

After.....I was never the same again (Graded)

After having my first child, I was never the same again. Before my daughter was born, I considered myself quite selfish. I didn’t care much about how my actions affected others. Sure, I was young, and young people are generally a little more selfish than their elders, but I was the epitome of selfish.

Regrettably, I had little time for my family. Being the youngest of seven, there was always an opportunity to engage in a wide variety of family activities, but the way I was, I would rather have spent my time with my friends doing things that I should not have been doing, which, consequently, is the biggest reason my daughter came into this world.

When she was born, my whole outlook on life changed. Family became the center of my life. My daughter helped me to see that the world does not revolve around just one person and that without family, life would be empty and very lonely.

Life would be easier if only.....(Graded)

Life would be easier if only I had gone to college before having a family. Homework and studying takes us the little spare time I have after working a 40 hour week. It is a struggle balancing work, school and family.

I am lucky that I have a husband and kids who support my decision to go back to school, but I have a certain amount of guilt associated with the obvious lack of attention they get from me. Since this is only my first semester of school, I hope that I can find a way to develop good study skills that will still allow me to spend quality time with my family.

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