• Nov. 15, 2007
The Turkey News

This is a story I wrote a couple years ago in a writing class. The assignment was to write about Thanksgiving from a turkey's point of view.

                                   The Turkey News

            “This is Tammy Turkey reporting for the Turkey News Network.  Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and we don’t want to be the main course at dinner.  Many turkeys are putting up a fight.  Some even became violent at a protest this afternoon.  Tom Turkey has the story.  Tom.”

    “Well Tammy, several turkeys have been injured from all the pecking and clawing.  Human authorities are trying to get the crowd under control, but the turkeys refuse to leave until the humans promise them that no turkeys will be eaten this year.”

“Thank you, Tom.  While some turkeys are protesting, others are trying to promote the use of Tofurkey, tofu flavored and shaped like a turkey.  The Gobble family has been going door to door handing out flyers promoting Tofurkey.  They say, ‘It’s a fun family outing, and the kids love it.’ The Gobbles plan on having a Tofurkey dinner for Thanksgiving.

Many turkeys are trying a new diet called ‘ The Thanksgiving Diet’ based on the idea that people don’t eat slim turkeys.  Others have started exercising.

Turkey counselors get a lot of business this time of year.  Many turkeys come to them for emotional support before and after Thanksgiving.  Some come because their loved ones were eaten for Thanksgiving dinner, others come because they were nearly eaten themselves.  Local counselor Tracy Turkey says, ‘It’s hard to give advice to so many traumatized turkeys, sometimes you just want to cry with them, but it’s great for business.’  Tracy’s profits have gone up ten percent since last year.

Have a good Thanksgiving! Thank you for watching and good night."

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• Aug. 22, 2007
I've Been Tagged

Lilie tagged me, so here it goes. I have to tag 4 other people and then type my name with my fingers, nose, chin, and elbows.

fingers: faithgirl92

nose: rqit5yt8ir4lo92

chin: gftswdssaaaakkkkitynbgiortl9023

elbows: cfaZijrftgbhbnjgvir;l98w2

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• Aug. 16, 2007
42 Things About Me...I Tried to Come Up With 100

 

1. I have been homeschooled my whole life.
2. I have my black belt in karate.
3. I am the oldest of 3 kids. I have a brother, 12, and a sister, 10.
4. My favorite band is Hawk Nelson.
5. I am a big Star Wars geek.
6. I’ve done hip-hop, jazz and swing dance. Hip-hop is my favorite. This year I’m adding lyrical, modern, and ballet.
7. I’ve also done a little modern and ballet.
8. I plan on going to fashion design school after high school.
9. I’ve been a Christian since I was three.
10. If I could visit anywhere, it would be Italy.
11. My favorite food is any kind of pasta, particularly ravioli or tortellini with pesto.
12. My second favorite food is grilled cheese on sourdough bread with mozzarella cheese, garlic butter, and fresh basil.
13. My favorite dessert is Zuccoto, an Italian cake with chocolate mousse, a tiny layer of cake, and dark chocolate ganache frosting.
14. My second favorite dessert is ice cream.
15. I don’t have a favorite color, but I don’t like orange or yellow.
16. My favorite animals are pandas.
17. My favorite season is summer, because it’s warm, I don’t have to do schoolwork, and my birthday is in August.
18. My second favorite band is Relient K.
19. I also like Krystal Meyers, Superchic[k], Stellar Kart, Paul Wright, Aly & AJ, Stellar Kart.
20. My favorite TV show is either American Idol, or Lizzie McGuire, and I like Hannah Montana a lot too.
21. My favorite books include the Diary of a Teenage Girl series by Melody Carlson, the Lily books by Nancy Rue, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and any kind of mystery.
22. I’m learning to play guitar.
23. I love to laugh.
24. I love High School Musical and I’m throwing a party for the premiere of the sequel.
25. I like to stand out from the crowd, but fitting in is still somewhat important to me. I don’t really understand why. I hate cheerleader-ness, but in some ways I envy it too.
26. I hope to someday be a wife and mother. I plan to homeschool my kids.
27. I’m currently writing a teen mystery novel. I’ve written about 2 chapters so far.
28. I’m having a really hard time coming up with one hundred things. I guess I’m boring.
29.  I don’t have a boyfriend, and don’t plan on having one until I’m ready to consider marriage.
30. I did have a boyfriend when I was five. We were always getting “engaged.”
31. I love acting and hope to take improv and Shakespeare this year
32. If our house was on fire and I could only take one thing with me, it would probably be the laptop, because it has so many things on it that I wouldn’t want to lose.
33. I hate bananas, raisins, and tomatoes.
34. If I had to pick a favorite color, it would be brown or pink.
35. My favorite ice cream flavor is probably peppermint with little mint chunks in it. It tastes like candy canes. I also really like mocha.
36. My favorite holiday is Christmas.
37. I’m 5’8
38. I’ve been to Canada.
39. I’ve been to Mexico.
40. I’ve never been off this continent.
41. I can’t stand country music.
42. I have the curliest hair of everyone I know. Or at least almost everyone I know.
43. I’ve only come up with 42 things, but I’m going to post this anyway.

 

 

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• Jan. 10, 2007
Review: Eragon

Eragon is the story of a farm boy who finds a dragon egg while hunting in the forest. The egg hatches, the dragon, Saphira, chooses Eragon to be her Rider. Eragon soon realizes that he can't simply be a farm boy anymore. He is the only person in the Empire who can defeat the land's evil ruler, Galbatorix. When Eragon is forced to flee his village and travel to the Varden, the rebellion against Galbatorix, he is swept into the world of dwarves, elves, dragons, and magic.

I'm not normally a big fan of fantasy, but I really enjoyed Eragon, and its sequel, Eldest. Written by a fifteen-year-old homeschool graduate, Christopher Paolini,  I found their only downside is that the plot was very similar to Star Wars. I thought that they were very well written. They're not exactly a quick read; the first is almost 500 pages, while the second is over 600. I would recommend them to everyone, but especially those who are fans of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

I saw the movie a few weeks ago, and it unfortunately didn't live up to my expectations. I thought it was well made and overall things looked like I pictured them.

Warning: if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, skip this part!

There were a lot of big flaws in the movie. I can totally understand a lot of the story changes that made it shorter. It's a really long book, and they had to cut a lot out to make it movie-length. However, here are the things I think they should not have changed.

Arya. her hair is supposed to be black. It never mentioned her being an elf. She had normal human ears. She was too short. I did actually like the actress that played her, and the hair and her height were acceptable, but not her ears.

Angela. They totally ruined her. I can understand cutting her out of Farthen Dur, and cutting Solembum, but if they were going to put her in the movie, they could've at least made her a little bit like she was in the book.

Where were the dwarves? And the Twins? And Katrina? I don't know how they're going to make a sequel without these things. And the killed one of the Ra'zac. Why didn't Eragon get a scar on his back? That was what like half of the second book is about.

I could go on and on, but those were the biggest things they changed. Here's some of the things I really liked about the movie. Ajihad and Nasuada. They looked so cool. All the Varden did. I liked their colorful clothes. I thought they did a good job on Saphira. She was perfect. I loved Durza. He wasn't at all how I pictured him, but he was totally scary and cool. I liked Galbatorix too.

You can start reading again.

Overall I thought the movie wasn't half bad. If you're a fan of the book, you will most likely be disappointed. I wouldn't normally say this, but I think in this case if you haven't seen the movie or read the book, go to the movie first. You'll probably like both better. I think I would've loved the movie if had seen it first.

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• Jan. 3, 2007
Identical Twins

 

Have you ever thought about how weird it would be to be an identical twin? I was contemplating this very question after two recent confusing experiences with identical twins.

The first was at a dance performance I was in a few weeks ago. It was a production of the Nutcracker---except for one little twist---it wasn’t just classical ballet, but also several other dance styles including jazz, hip-hop, tap, lyrical, and swing. My swing class had been invited to do a number in the show. Since I was only in one dance this included a lot of waiting, during which my classmates and I played games. A few other people joined in, including the twin sons of the owner of the dance studio. One of them was playing the Nutcracker, and the other the prince. They switched during one of the scenes. That itself was confusing enough. I watched that scene during a tech rehearsal, and I had never seen the boys before, and without costumes, I really didn’t understand what was going on. Anyway, when we played games, they normally switched off with each other, when one of them had to go onstage. To make matters worse, they’re names are Calen and Coleman. And of course it didn’t help when one of the girls in my class started calling them Bill and Jimbo for some reason. I could barely keep track of who was who when they were in costume (it did help that one of them had a partially painted face to play the Nutcracker) but then in the middle of the show they had to switch vests, so one of them could wear the fancier vest for a certain dance. It was really quite baffling, and even after several rehearsals and two performances, I couldn’t track of them.

 

My second confusing story about identical twins happened a few weeks ago at my youth group. I started going to youth group at a really big church this fall, and I only know about 25 of the couple hundred teens that attend. I was early for Wednesday night group, so I was just sitting and people watching. I noticed this girl ‘cause she was babysitting a cute little girl. She was wearing an orange t-shirt and jeans. I’d seen her around before, but didn’t really know anything about her. Then a few minutes later, I saw her all dressed up with makeup on, and she was telling someone that she had to leave for work or something. This wouldn’t have seemed that strange, except later during the group, I noticed her wearing the orange shirt again and standing in the back, not wearing as much makeup as she had been just a few minutes before. This had me totally puzzled. Why did she get all dressed up, leave for less than half an hour, and come back in her other clothes. I didn’t really think much about it until Sunday morning, when I was waiting for the service to start, and I saw the girl walk in, with her twin sister. I had really seen two totally different girls on Wednesday. The orange shirt girl had been there wearing her orange shirt the whole time, and the dressed up girl had left, and not come back.

These experiences got me to thinking about what it would be like to be a twin. I’d never known any until a few weeks ago. It seems like your whole identity would kind of be wrapped up in it, like, it would be hard to be your own person, separate from your twin. It made me wonder, if like in The Parent Trap, I could secretly have a twin. I was telling all this to a friend of mine who was adopted as a baby, and we were talking about how she actually could have a twin. Wouldn’t that be confusing!

 

 

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• Nov. 29, 2006
Portland

We went to Portland over Thanksgiving weekend. We drove up on Thursday afternoon. We didn't exactly have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up at Elmer's eating everything but turkey. There were only two restaurants open, Marie Callender's and Elmer's, and Marie's was packed.

 

We went to OMSI on Friday, and went to the Star Wars exhibit. Here's us with a real Yoda puppet, and Mace Windu's costume from Episode III.

 

 

Leia's costume. (Polyester, proof that it's from the seventies.)

 

 

Anakin and Obi-Wan's Jedi robes from Episode III.

 

 

Vader's helmet.

 

 

There were a lot of other neat costumes and models on display, like Luke's landspeeder from Episode IV, and a Chewbacca costume.

 

Here's some pictures of my uncle's Chihuahua puppies. The lighter-colored one is the girl, Parrot, and the darker is the boy, Cholo.

 

 

Here's Poppy, my cousin with Parrot. She adored the puppies. She kept squealing and saying, "Doggie, doggie."

 

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• Nov. 15, 2006
Top Five Christmas Movies

1. Ernest Saves Christmas

 

2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the one with Jim Carrey)

 

3. Christmas with the Kranks

 

4. It's a Wonderful Life

 

5. Miracle on 34th Street

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• Nov. 8, 2006
Top Ten Christmas Foods

1. English Toffee

 

2. Russian Tea Cakes

 

3. Pecan Tartlets

 

4. Mandarin Oranges

 

5. Candy Canes

 

6. Chocolate Oranges

 

7. Beca's Torte

 

8. Egg Nog

 

9. Breakfast burritos for Christmas brunch.

 

10. Sparkling Cider

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• Nov. 6, 2006
My Top Ten Christmas Traditions

Now that it's November, I've decided to start getting in the Christmas spirit. Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year. I love the smell of baking cookies and pine needles, the sound of Christmas music, the twinkling lights, and the crowded stores. Here's my ten favorite christmas traditions.

 

1. Candlelit Christmas Eve service at church.

 

2. Driving around town and looking at Christmas lights.

 

3. Figuring out what all my presents are. I hate knowing I'm getting something, but not knowing what it is.

 

4. Going to Jerry's to get a Christmas tree and going to Winter Wonderland while we're there.

 

5. Early Christmas morning at my grandparents house with a fire in the fireplace. The coziest morning of the year.

 

6. Playing games (mostly Hearts) on Christmas Day and on Boxing Day.

 

7. Making gingerbread houses.

 

8. Making snowflakes.

 

9. Advent calendars and Advent candles.

 

10. Taking down Grandma's christmas tree and watching Gone With the Wind.

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• Nov. 6, 2006
My Civil War Dress

Here's some pictures of my Civil War dress. My mom (Mintflower) and I made it for a Civil War dance.

 

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