New years Resolution

In 2004 my new year’s resolution was to drink less soda or no soda. I have succeeded! I am now soda free for about four years now and loving it. I drank an average of one to two soda's a day. Poison of choice was Barq's root beer or Dr. Pepper. Now I know that doesn't sound like much, but it was added calories that I didn't need in my diet.
When I was growing up we were never allowed to have soda unless it was a special occasion. So when I went to college it was always a special occasion for me! I gained around 30 pounds from soda and of course food was also added, but I wouldn't have gained that much if it weren’t for my good old friend soda pop. I know now that soda and most carbonated drinks are very unhealthy.
Since 2004 I have lost all the weight from cutting all soda out of my diet. I never drink soda anymore. I would say I might drink a total of 3 cans a year if im lucky! I drink water now and I feel so much better about myself at the end of the day. When I drank soda it would make me feel bloated. I never felt good about myself because I felt like I looked big in everything I wore. Drinking more water daily doesn’t make me feel bloated and I know that it is doing good to my body. I hope that I keep this resolution and pass it on to my children because soda pop is just a liquid that weighs us down.

New Years Resolution

My New Year's resolution for 2008 is working out atleast 5 times a week and only allowing myself to 2 cans of pop a week. I decided to do this because in high school I had a gym/weight training class every quarter so I was working out every day (well not including the weekends) and now that I am no longer in high school I feel I need to get in the best shape that I can be. I am a huge fan of Coke! Last year I drank pop way too much and I know it is not good for your body, so I cut back a lot. I figured 2 cans a week is enough even though it can be hard since my body is pretty much immune to it. In between working and going to school, I found myself with little time for working out. I decided to get a membership at Anytime Fitness because it is very convenient! I only live a few blocks away and it's open 24 hours a day! I push myself to go 5 days a week so I am able to get some exercise rather than putting it off and not being active. I also drink a ton more water than I used to. I work during the day quite a bit throughout the week so instead of bringing pop to work, I fill my gigantic water bottle and refill it about 8 times throughout the day until I am done with work. It is the second month now since starting this and I have already lost a little over 10 pounds. I feel so much healthier! After all of the struggling I now know it is totally worth it! :)

Cigarette Lit...(Assignment)

At the end of the year of 2006 I decided to make a big decision in my life. So I figured since it was close to the new year I would make it a new year's resolution. I had been smoking for almost 5 years and thought it was getting out of hand and I should give it up. After trying many, many times before I really didn't think having this as my new years resolution was a good thing but it definitely put me to the test. I knew if I could stick to it, it would change my life forever in more than one way.

From the 1st of the year on I went from smoking almost a pack or 2 a day to quitting cold turkey. The first few days were alright with several urges to light one up. But as the number of days kept growing it kept getting harder. I would wake up several times a night in a cold sweat, shaking and obviously going through withdrawals. The usual cigaratte after a meal was a definite challenge when you are trying to quit cold turkey. After the 23 day mark I had finally broke free from smoking and rarely had a craving for a smoke. I felt very very good about myself and made my opinion on smoking definitely changed, although i am not a hypocrite.

My life had changed in several ways since i kept that new years resolution. I no longer have stinky clothes, cars, or home. I can actually walk into a nice place without smelling like an ash tray. One thing i noticed that went away after I stopped smoking was my constant battle with bronchitis. It seemed when I smoked I ended up with bronchitis every month but since quitting, have only got it 1 time!

Not only was I healthier at the time, the best thing is the decreases in chance's of getting really sick! Cancer is one thing I hope i never have to deal with and if I would of continued smoking my chances would of increased signifficantly. I can only hope what I did smoke hasn't caught up to me already or gave me some sort of hang-on illness. In the words of Mark Twain, "It's easier to stay out then get out."

Email 101

All of my emails have purpose, they keep my family updated on my daily life. Normally the only people that I email are my mother and grandmother. They love knowing about my daily activites and how I am doing. My mother especially loves to hear about interesting things that happen throughout my day, such as ice skating in freezing temperatures or even if I get an A on a test. I hardly ever consider the audience when I am writting an email, most of my emails are quick and brief.
In my opinion Instant Messaging hinders my academic writting, I tend to get into the habit of writting quickly, and being brief. However I know how to switch back to a more fomal audience when I am done Instant Messaging. Instant Messaging is very informal, but when writting my Grandmother emails I am very formal and I do not use slang. Many times during Instant Messaging your are just talking to your friends, so the way you write is very different when writting a formal message. When Instant Messaging a friend you might use abreviations like "LOL" or "TTUL", but when emailing a teacher you would not use abreviations. I think many people do not know how to switch back to the formal version of writting, so many student end up putting slang into their essays.
Over all I think that emailing is a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. Instant messaging keeps your friends up to speed on your life, but is much faster than emailing. Both are a great way to interact with our world, and keep socialized.

Email Has Purpose

I use e-mail every day and its purpose changes depending on whom I am e-mailing. In my personal life, if I am e-mailing my family, it is usually to make plans to do something or just simple chitchat. For example, every year around the Holidays, my mom and sisters and I get together for a weekend and bake and exchange cookies for Christmas. We always use e-mail to coordinate the dates and figure out who is making what kinds of cookies. I also use e-mail to share information. My mom and I share an interest in gardening and we often e-mail back and forth and give each other suggestions and gardening tips. Other times, my family and I will just e-mail back and forth for no other reason other than to say “hi, how’s your day going?” or “what are you up to?” E-mails in my personal life are very casual but when I am at work, e-mail is used for communicating with customers and clients and has a completely different purpose.

I work as a real estate closer for a title company and I use e-mail continuously. For example, I work with a lot of real estate agents and I need to e-mail them to ask questions regarding purchase agreements or commission amounts and to schedule closings. I also give them information as to the status of the files that I am working on. When communicating with loan officers I will e-mail them questions about closing costs and the status of loan approvals and loan documents.

When considering my audience, especially at work, I have to be very careful about the tone of my e-mail. For example, I cannot use exclamation points or type anything in all capital letters because it sends a different tone and the recipient may think that I am angry or being rude. I must always be professional and read my e-mail carefully before I send it to be sure that it has the appropriate tone and manner.

I do not think that instant messaging hinders my writing because I don’t use it that much. The only person that ever sends me text or instant messages is my daughter. I usually do not text her back because I can’t stand doing it. It's easier for me to just pick up the phone and call her. I can usually tell the people who do a lot of instant messaging because I can see it in their writing style. For example, people will not capitalize the letter “i” when referring to their self in the first person. Another example is when people will type a “u” for the word you. That is acceptable when using text and instant messaging, but I do not feel that it is appropriate in e-mails. It doesn’t take that much extra time to capitalize a letter or spell a word out entirely.

The everyday e-mail

Email can play a very important role in many people’s lives nowadays. Even I have been affected by this every day. I think emails are way more efficient than regular mail. It is quicker and easier to check. Not only is this but it free. The only drawback I find is that it may get lost in translation. Not often does this happen, but it is a possibility. I am a draftsman and I get emails all the time from the company telling of safety meetings and such. Or if I need to converse with a manufacturer on specifications I need for a drawing, I can get drawings sent to me quickly. If I were to send a sales sketch to a salesman to better his job, I would just send the drawing because he knows who it’s from and what it is. If I were to send construction drawings to a fire marshal for approving, I would probably include a little more detail in explaining what it is. I also do mechanical drawings so I have to join together with the shop person and explain to him/her what I need and when I need it. E-mailing is a big part of my job and it makes things way easier. Although we do use regular mail also, a majority is done electronically.

Electronic Mail

The role of Email in my life is very restricted to school. About 10 years ago when I set up my first e-mail account, I thought that it was the coolest thing in the world. Like many things, it lost its awe factor with me very fast. With junk mail rolling in, and not many contacts, I felt bored in the email world. Today I still keep in touch with my family, only it is through snail mail. The people that I believe would write to me on email, I do not believe know how to turn on a computer. I forget that checking my email, is something that I should be doing everyday, like I check my mailbox at home I hate it when I check my email too late, and I have missed some important messages. I feel like writing an email takes so long for me to write. I do not like when my message is read a different way than I meant it. So to avoid any misconceptions, I read and reread to make sure that my message was clear. I would rather talk in person or on the phone, so that way you can usually say more things, and it takes less time than writing, sending, and waiting for the response. I do not use any instant messaging either, but I suppose that it would be a faster form of communication. Yet I still think that it yields a higher chance of miscommunication.

The Graveyard Shift

I love my job. I work as a phone translator for the deaf and hard of hearing. I also love working the night shift. At around 10pm the call volume cuts down to about 4-5 calls an hour, and you have a lot of time in between calls. It is very beneficial if you want to read a good book, do some homework, or have a good conversation with your co-workers. Another reason why I like the overnight shift, does not apply so much to this time of the year, but more in the summer. I love to be able to have the whole day with all the sunlight hours to e able to run all my errands, and go all the places that I want to go. If everything is open from 8am - 5pm , and everyone works those hours, how are they ever supposed to get to each others store? So I save myself the hassle of being at work when I need to run errands, by working at night, when all the shops are closed and all the people are asleep. After doing the overnight shift for a couple days, its hard evening out your sleep pattern for your days off. I am not able to go to bed at a reasonable time, here it is 3 in the morning and I am wide awake. I probably should not have made that coffee 2 hours ago.

Bronchitis!!

As i sit here, nose running, and my chest feeling like i'm breathing in fire or worse yet a bed of nails that are on fire, i can't help but think of how sickness can pull you away from many things. I had this whole weekend planned out better than any other weekend, mainly because i had a paper to revise and rewrite, and 2 HUGE tests on Monday that i was gonna study for both Saturday and Sunday. But sickness is well, sickness. You can try and do the things you've planned to do, whether it was watch the third Jurrasic Park movie or study for a test. But when it comes down to it, all you can really do is just try and get better by getting some rest and not overthinking. Well that was my plan on sunday. Wake up, go to the doctor for some meds and cuddle in a sea of blankets catching up on the latest episodes of Mythbusters that i recently taped.
Waking up I actually felt a little better than I had all day saturday and figured i would go directly to the doctor. Not having any problems with being able to start my car, I figured that was the least of my worries. I walk out into the bitter cold and turn the key waiting for the car to start humming but nothing. As I try one more time I knew this was the beggining of cold 15 minutes. Sure enough it was -45 wind chill and my battery was dead. Luckily my neighbor saw me through the window and came out to help jump my car for the next 15 minutes, which seemed to have made my sickness that much worse. I finally get to the doctor and when I walk inside it was so packed, people were standing against the walls waiting for the nurse to yell out there name! So for the next 2 hours, i sat in a small room infested with as many germs as you possible can get in there and waited for the doctor to see me for 2 minutes. To me, that doesn't make any sense but I will spare you my misery on that subject.
After getting my meds and positioning myself on the couch i couldn't help but realize that all of that had made me sicker. Somehow. And now my head was just pounding trying to look at a book that i was supposed to use for studying. Enough said, i never got any studying done for either of my tests and my essay is being put off until tonight when i hopefully will feel better. On a brighter note, i did take one of my tests already and got a 95% on it so i am ecstatic about that!
I guess what i'm really trying to get at in all of this mumble jumble is sickness comes and when it comes, it is here unnanounced. I have learned a couple lessons through all of this. One could be to plan ahead and maybe start studying a week before the test instead of a couple days before the test cause you'll never know what can happen. The others well maybe i haven't learned them yet or maybe my head hurts to much right now to think about them. In the words of Thomas Fuller, "Health is not valued til sickness comes."

College is better then highschool

College is better then highschool because you dont ahve people talking about you all the time. When i was in highschool people would talk crap about everybody and in college people are to busy to even think about other peoples flaws. College is also better because you can take credits at your own pace and you can pick your times to go to school, as in you can pick your classes to be early in the day or later in the day and how many classes you want to take.

i'll never forget the time i

I will never forget the time i was tubeing on Loon lake with me boyfriend Josh and His friend Becky from his work and her friend in the summer of 2007. Becky and I where out double tubeing while Josh was driving the boat and Becky's freind was spotting in case one of us fell off. Josh was whipping the boat in all directions Becky and I were not falling off, finally Josh went one way, then came back the other way, my tube hit becky's tube and I flew into the air and landed shoftly on top of Becky. She was facing one direction and i was facing the other. her feet were in my face and my feet were in her face. I was so funny that we are still laughing about it today.

My biggest success was

My biggest success was graduating from highschool early. My age was right for graduate but when i was i in the firstgrade they put me back into kindergarden half way throw the year, so i had to take half of kindergarden over and a whole year of first grade over. My last year of highschool was very busy because i was taking my junior and senior year in on year. I was going to school after school. Nobody thought i could do it, but i showed them didnt i. The teachers where shocked because when i was in jounior high i get F's and was always into trouble.

When reading the Bryson book, I wouldn't say his writing was a process-based writing method but some of the chapters did have some similarities to process-based writing. In the hair cutting story he talked about what feeling he was having during the process of his haircut with the man they called "Thumbs" so he was explaining what most people do when they are freaked out by something they are not comfortable with. He did however explain in more of a process-based writing format in the, Your new computer story, he explained what to do, in a very sarcastic way, when you get a computer. So I would say it was more of a process-based story. I enjoy reading his stories they all come a little closer to home for me and I can compare them with my everyday story's.