7-30

7-30-10

I had my Fast Track today. It is registration for USD. I Left yesterday after work but we didnt even leave until like 11:30 and there was tons of storms and rain on the way. We didnt make it in to the city we were staying the night in until 2:45 and then i had trouble getting to sleep. then we woke up at 5:30 to head up to vermillion and to get breakfast beacuse i had to tack a math placement exam earlier than the Fast Track. I was running on about 3 houors of sleep when i took the exam. I managed to test out of both types of college algebra and into Calc 1. Then i went in to pick my classes. My AP scores got me credit for freshman honors level Physics and Biology and half of freshman chemistry. The bad thing is they dont have a 200 level biology so the next step would be a 400 level or 300 level course and they wouldn't let me do that. So I'm not taking a science next year 'till the spring when i will be taking the second half of

my chem class.

My schedule this next year is Math everyday first thing in the morning. Then after that i have sociology monday wednesday and friday Next i have English Comp tuesday and thursday, after that medical terminology and last before practice is spanish 201. After that i was really done with being there so went back to Souix Falls to see the falls becuase of the rain. Then i ended up working a E-Rae's my Aunt's restaurante and i thought that i was the cleanest and most organized restaurant kitchen i have ever been in. I tried some of the food too and it was amazing its just to bad that she is struggleing so much. It seems like she really needs someone else's help int the kitchen but she doesnt have enough business to hire someone. This is a pic of me and my cousin in the kitchen.

Later that night after i got off working for Elesha i watched Remember Me with Jame Patterson. At the begining of the movie i was really dissapointed beccause it was kind of slow and confusing beyond what makes a good movie. It had a really moving story though and i thought the ending was just amazing and refreshing. I dont want to spoil it for anyone but i dont think that every movie needs to have a happy ending. That isnt how it happens in real life. Sometimes watching a sad movie can cause you to feel emotions that you don't normally feel. You just finish the movie feeling better in my opinion. I thought that Remember Me was refreshing.

A Pile of Junk

We started off the day with a trip to the donut shop. I remember going there all the time when i was younger and getting cream filled donut holes. So today i of course got some of them and they were amazing. I dont think i ever saw any at a Dunkin' Donut shop. It might be because all the donut were handmade. I also got a maple bar which was also cream filled and a raspberry jelly Bizmark. After eating all of them in about 3 minutes i got kind of sick, just in time to go to to the hospital.

We went to the hospital to see a friend of my grandmothers who is also the grandmother of my oldest friend. She had though that she had had a heart attack but the doctors said that it was probably a Angina(sp?). It was a quick visit because a doctor came in wanting a electrocardiogram. She is out of the hospital now and they think she will be fine.

After that the day really started. I cleaned up a huge pile of wood in the side yard. We took out each piece and cut it into firewood. It seemed like it would be a quick job when we started but it ended up taking all day. There were so many bugs and spiders that would constantly bite me and the electric saw sucked. I was also very exhausted from not getting enough sleep last night. I enjoyed it though because i love seeing work done on this house and finally bringing it to the level it should be. It makes me happy to help my grandparents. Also the cats were fun too because they hung around all day because the wood pile had previously been their home. Here are some of the before during and after pictures i took. I wish i had done the same for upstairs but i forgot.:

This is the before picture. It doesn't look like a lot of wood but when you get to the final picture you can see how much there was and we had to cut it all up. Some time next week i want to get some other projects done in this side yard so that it looks like a nice usable yard not a garbage dump.

This is a during picture. We were pleasantly surprised when we found that the whole pile wasnt made up of 2x4s and 2x6s. It ended up being a good deal of old wood siding which was much easier to cut and break.

7-27-10

Not much happened today(technically yesterday). Well probably the first thing that i did today was i bought a camera. A week or so ago i picked up my camera to take some pictures of grasshoppers and when i turned it on i discovered that my screen had cracked. I don't know how it had happened or when but it did. I was devistated because it means so much to me. It was my first camera and i have taken more than 15,000 pictures with it since i got it for christmas 3 years ago. I continued to use it for a while without the screen but it wasn't the same because i couldnt see what i was photographing and i wan't able to change any settings.

I had been planning on buying a new one soon any ways but i was planning on giving ny old one to my grandma because she doesn't have one and i think that she could use it a lot. Now i still might give it to her because you can still use it but i might keep because its has some sentimental value and i don't know how well she would be able to use it without a screen.

My new camera that i bought is a silver Fujifilm AX250. I payed $105 for it after tax. I have not gotten it yet but i am sure that i will love it because of the following:

• 14 megapixels(my old one was 7.1 MP)
• 5X optical zoom(3X)
• ISo settings up to3200(ISO800)
• 1/1400 max shutter speed. (1/1200)
• Auto picture rotation
• Face detection
• 100 free walmart prints

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Fujifilm-AX250-Silver/14220562#ProductDetail

I will start sharing pics as soon as i get it.

Housework(7-26-10)

For those that have never been to my grandmother's house it is a old two story house that has no connection between the two floors. Before i got a hold of it there was a really old rotten deck and staircase outside that was your only way to get upstairs. It was really dangerous and my grandma wanted it taken down before the fourth celebration. My cousins, my brother, my grandma and i took it down and sawed up the pieces the day before independence day. Well what i'm getting at is that there was a lot more work to do on the house. The top floor was originally a separate house that was added on top 30 years ago with the intention of having a staircase on the inside. No one ever got around to it so the upstairs has never been use for more than a storage space. My goal when i moved out here is to get a staircase in and double the size of my grandparents house. Yesterday me and my grandma worked upstairs cleaning. We had already taken out a lot of stuff that we gave away but we still found a ton more in the one room that has ever been used. We cleaned it out and organized all the stuff in it. Then we moved a huge pile of old wood flooring that had been in the main room since they got the place. We moved it into the room we had organized . With the flooring out of the main room we really only have a few pieces of antique furniture to get out before we can have my grandfather cut a hole in the floor for the stairs.

I really am so excited to see this done. In the stuff we cleaned out we found a cabinet that we are going to install over the oven downstairs. We found another cabinet that we are giving to a 2nd or 3rd cousin of mine who lives here. I also found a old record player that is carried around folded up looking like a instrument case. When you open it up it is like a pair of double doors and the inside of the doors are speakers. When they are open they show the bottom of the turntable which folds down towards you. I had so much fun figuring out how it works but i quickly got tired of the gospel music, which was all that my grandma had. This is when i remember that i had brought all my Rush record out(my favorite band) to decorate my dorm room. The smile on my face when it started to play was probably the most i have smiled in years. It just wouldn't go away. I thought it was soo cool. I cant believe how it works. little bumps in a groove vibrating a diamond ???stylus??? which transmits the signal to a wire and then to a speaker. This was the first time i had played the records in the 4 years that i had had them.

I will keep posted on further work on upstairs and prob pictures eventually.

Cooking cooking and cooking

Yesterday was a day full of work. The church was having its monthly Indian taco sale and me and my grandma were going to help out with it. I wanted to work in the kitchen since that is what i work as at The Longbranch. I started out working the fryer but it turns out they are slow enough that my grandma could work them both at the same time. So my job became to roll out the dough and put it into the fryer when there is room. This lasted for quite a while and the church had one of their best sales ever. Eventually i had to go to work so i ran home washed my face and grabbed my bandanna.

The state soft ball tournement was being held in Pierre yesterday and so we had all 4 cooks on shift for that night in case it got really busy. It was my dad the other senior cook me and the new guy who was hired just this week. Most of the night was really slow to the point where we were thinking about sending some people home since we wern't doing anything, but all of a sudden we were swamped. My guess is that the tournement had just finished but regardless we had so many orders that we had all 4 cooks tusing around working. It wasn't too ad for me because someone assigned me to be the runner who refilled stuff and got stuff that the rest of the cooks needed. Well it got to the point where i was being given jobs to do that didnt really need to be done. I felt so useless and as a new employee i like to be seen always doing work and not standing around especially when we were as swamped as we were. Just like my last job i dont seem to really be needed there.oh well im getting paid but anyways i didnt get out of work until 10:30ish. After that i had trouble sleeping and stayed up late making today feel like a zombie.

Banana splits and Hail Storms

So ill start with yesterday.....

Yesterday i woke up and had plans to bring some of the stuff me and my grandma had taken out of upstairs, to the church rummage sale or the local second hand store. well after she takes a shower and talks on the phone for ever we finally leave at like 11:30.(I have to be at work at 2.... sort of...) so we go to the church and help the pastors wife with some of the set up for the Indian taco sale which was the next day. After this the pastor came over and needed help moving some stuff from his house to the church so i helped out with that. In the end we only managed to get rid of a small amount of stuff before had to leave to go to church, even thought that was our one goal for the day.

On the way home my grandma realized that i hadn't eaten dinner( lunch for everyone on the east coast). so we stop at burger king to get something. In order to order my grandma had to open the door because none of the window in this van work.(The sliding door doesnt work either)

After eating and getting ready i went to work where i met the other new cook that my dad had hired. 3 cooks were on and it was slow so my dad told the head cook who was going to stay with us to send me home at 8:30. I made plans to go see salt with my sister but right at 8:30 a group of 8 people showed up and 20 minutes another big group showed up.

When i finally got home the first thing that i noticed was that Darla's suburban was parked at grandma's. Upon closer inspection though i saw that it was missing the two back windows. When i got inside i found out that a hail storm had hit her and the paster with baseball sized hail on their way here. This must have been cause for ice cream because both me and my grandma really wanted to have banana splits.(it is now 10:30) So i drive us up to walmart and we are both dreaming about strawberries but when we go through the fresh produce section there are no strawberries. So we find Darla's son who works there and ask him where they are he doesnt know so we find the night manager who goes to our church and ask him where they are. "I'm sorry but walmart is all out of fresh strawberries","you should buy some frozen ones".

When my grandma picks up the frozen ones though she thinks that they will be soggy so we go looking for canned strawberries 'like the kind you use in pies.( I have never heard of a strawberry pie before) When we find them they are too expensive so we decide to go back and get the frozen ones. we leave and head homme and get the ice cream out and start making the banana splits and after i put my frozen pineapple on mine i go looking for the strwberries. "where did we put the strawberries?" WE DIDNT EVEN GET ANY STRAWBERRIES AFTER ALL THAT. WE HAD FORGOTTEN TO PICK UP THE FROZEN ONES.

7-20-2010

Today i set up my account for USD and after that i went for a run. I really need to start running earlier because with the heat i could barely take more than 12 minutes. It might also have something to do with the fact that i have ran 4 times in the last month and a half since i pulled my hamstring, which feels great.

After my run i had my meal of Venison Taco's with boiled potatoes fresh out of the garden. Then i had to go to work. Today at work was $.25 wing night and their most busy night of the week. I really enjoy working there and tonight was fun but it gets old, especially when the orders slow down.

Yesterday I went to the beach with my sis for a while and she brought some of her friends and family. When me and her are out swimming with her 7 year old cousin i look in and notice that everyone is smoking. One of them is 14 and one is 13. Wow what is the world coming to. I mentioned that it was like a bunch of frenchies and they all thought it was cool they smoke between classes in France. After swimming we went to see one of the 3 movies they are showing here. We saw the Sorcerer's Apprentice which honestly wasn't a very good movie. I don't like Nick Cage and he did not have the right personality for this movie. The main character did well but it ended in so much Cliche it was almost sickening.

Differences

This i copied from something that i had on my first attempt at a blog.

I made it to South Dakota and have been here 2 days now. Along the trip i have been

making a list of some things that are different than New York and of somme activities that

i participated in along the way.

First off is how people name the meals of the day. In New York they are breakfast lunch and

dinner. In the Western part of the country it is breakfast dinner and supper. It can be really c

onfusing when dealing when trying to make plans.

I had forgotten that many other state use unmarked copcars which can give you qiute a fright

when you are not expecting them.

When i left new york the corn height was a little less than knee height. As we continued to

move westward the height got higher and higher with the corns height maxig out in

southwestern ohio and eastern indiana. At one point in our trip we notice that a change in

30 miles in latitude made a difference of about three feet in the height.

My car does pretty good on gas and i can make it pretty far before i need to refuel. Most gas

stations have the windsheild washers that they allow people to use for free. I dont think i ever

saw anyone using one in New York so i never used one either.

Along the trip though the amount of bugs increases as you travel westward to the point

where if you dont wash you windshield evertime you fill up you will not bee able to see out of it

by the time your tank is empty again. In New York when you go into a store/restaurante/gas

station, if music is on it will most likely be pop music or classical/elevator music. In the Mid wes

t thought nearly every place you stop just automaticly be playing Country.

Another difference about gas staions in the west is that many of them sell condoms in the

bathroom which is something that you never see in New York. I personally think that it is

a great idea and can do a lot to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancys.

One great experience that i had on the trip(not) is that my car didn't have airconditioning.

So the entire trip we had both windows open and the sunroof open. Because of this i took advantage

of the sunlight to to try and get a tan. Well after the second day the left side of my bodie was fried

even my leg up to where my shorts covered and my left arm was so bad it hurt whenever sunlight

hit it. Since i was already tan to begin with i didnt look too red bu i could feel it.

In addition to bugs the speed limit also went up. 65mph in New York, 70mph in iowa and

75mph in South Dakota. this increase speed along eith the bugs can cause some serious pain to

the arm tanning out the window.

If you don't live in South Dakota you don't know what a grasshopper is. Grasshoppers

are everywhere here and are large. Within 1 day they can eat through your entire garden of

Petunias. When you walk through grass the hop up around your feet like water splashing from

puddles. They also get everywhere they are not supposed to.

Food.

This is my second attempt at documenting life here in South Dakota.

So far Since i have been here i have eaten the following while at my grandparents:

• Venison pot roast for several days
• Venison sandwich spread for several days
• Wild goose sandwich spread for several days
• Pheasant stirfry with fresh summer squash and onions from the garden
• Venison Taco meat with fresh potatoes from the garden
• Green beans from the garden and venison sausage

Its weird but i enjoy trying new things and honestly since im not big into meat i cant even tell the difference most of the time.