Two, One, Sneeze!

O.K. this is one that we have all been through, and I am sure you all can guess what I am talking about. Yup that is right, a cold. We have all had on whether or not we have wanted one. As most of you know I have been going through one this very week. But there is a lot more behind the scenes, as most of you know. (From Health)

Well for starters we must all remember that a cold is virus. So when we all take pills to relieve our cold, that is exactly what we are doing, relieving our colds. So in other words we are just relieving our symptoms. These include scratchy throat, general malaise, sneezing, runny nose, nasal congestion, and a headache. The average adult averages 2 to 3 colds per year and children average 6 to 10 a year. There are over 100 cold viruses in the world, but the most important is the Rhinovirus, which causes at least one half of the colds. But don’t worry because colds only last 2- 14 days. (On average) After that they turn into more serious infections.

When you first attract a cold it is believed that the virus comes in through you nose and travels to the back of you throat, where they attach around the area of your adenoid. The adenoid contains cells that the cold viruses attach to.

So now whenever you guys have a cold you’ll have something new to think about. Isn’t it amazing that whenever we are having what we think to be just a little cold there is so much going on behind the scenes? But don’t you kind of wish that when we were all going trough health that we could have had a nice consolidated lecture instead of a couple days of lectures on what seems to be such a boring subject? But now that we are in the season of the cold, we will probably all have to go through one before the year ends. So maybe if you remember this information it will cheer you up a little when you do get a cold.

The Common Cold

Sneeze, sneeze, sniffle, sniffle,
Rush to the box of tissues,
Normally being sick is no problem,
But with colds, I have issues,

I cannot barely breathe at all,
My nose is very stuffed up,
No matter how many times I blow,
My nose never gets cleared up,

My ears are ringing in the morning,
My throat sore in the afternoon,
All the while I am sniffling,
Hoping to be saved from this sickness soon,

Popping pills into my mouth,
They're here to save the day!
Saying, "The fight is nearly over!"
"The cold will soon go away!"

Four doses of Tylonel daily,
Four of Sudafed,
Four boxes of Kleenex,
For while I'm sitting here in bed,

My nose is like Rudolph's,
This tale is growing old,
For now, I can only sit and wonder,
When I'll defeat the common cold...
-Unknown


Works Cited

"Understanding Colds." Common Cold. 2007. commoncold. 1 Dec 2007 .

Turkey Day!!

Well it has come and gone for yet another year. As you can tell by the title I am talking about thanksgiving. For some this is their favorite holiday of the year. And yet for others it is yet just another day with an extremely large supper involved. And yet again you can say for others it means the day after Thanksgiving. (Shopping) But for me personally I think that it means lots of time with family. With school in full swing I hardly ever get to see all of my other family members. Most of the time I just get to hear funny stories about them from my Grandma or Grandpa. And then of course there is the food. Always the food takes center stage when it comes to Thanksgiving and it is no wonder why. But sometimes we need to remember where the holiday came from in the first place.

Thanksgiving originated from the Pilgrims back in the 1600’s. It was originally a day set aside after the harvest to eat and give thanks for the year. The Thanksgiving that we are all most acquainted with had Indians involved. And you may ask where did they come from in the first place? The Indians were from the Wampanoag Tribe, who which the governor had invited to come to the feast. That feast that I speak of just so happened to last three full days. Apparently during that time period somewhere the Indians went out and killed five dear which they presented to the governor as a gift. But you may still be asking why do we still celebrate it today? And why is it considered a national holiday?

It all happened in 1789 when George Washington issued a national thanksgiving proclamation. He wrote, "Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country...for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed...and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually...To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best." And ever since then we have been celebrating this wonderful holiday. So lets all try to keep the right spirit about it.

Not Again

Have any of you ever to been an event that lasted so long that you just couldn’t take it any more? And you kind of wanted to shoot yourself by the time it was all over. Well over the weekend I had such an event linked to a very long day. On Saturday I had to go to a high school swim meet that lasted for seven and a half hours, actually it was longer than that but I left a little bit early. There were 12 teems at this meet which is not even funny, the pool deck was so packed that there was nowhere that was dry. My team’s whole deck space seemed to be under water; half of it was the warm up/ cool down pool. Any ways there were over four heats of everything, when it came to the fifty freestyles there were 28 heats of them, which many take over half an hour to run through. By the time the meet was over and I had finally gotten home I get told that I got a call from the rocks and minerals coach for science Olympiad and he wants me to come take a test for Science Olympiad to determine if I am going to be on the team or not. So I head to his house, and what I thought was going to take a half and hour turned out to take over an hour and a half. There were a hundred and fifty eight rock specimens that had to be identified, and to boot there was a written test that was absolute murder. (How many of you have heard of triboluminesence?) So I finally got that done, and by this time it was about five o’ clock. When I get home I nearly get run over by my sisters and mom heading out the door way to a ballet. (They were performing in it) Luckily I didn’t have to show up for another hour to that thing. So during this hour of rest period I mainly tried to catch up on all the things that I had gotten behind in during the day. When my dad finally got home from work we had enough time to hurry and eat dinner and then head out the door to my sisters’ ballet. (The Nutcracker) The Nutcracker did not end until about twenty after nine, unfortunately we did not get home until about ten to ten. When this was finall all over I was absolutely exhausted I had gotten up at 6:00 am and now I would not get to bed until about ten forty-five. So have any you had a day like this recently? Or do you have days like this every time you walk out of your home? I know for a lot of you your lives are so jammed packed full that it seems that you hardly have time to take a nap. So let me know what do you think of you day? Good. Or Bad?

The End of Term.

This last week we all were affected by yet another end of term. It’s hard to believe that we are a quarter of the way through our last year in the junior high. We all received the dreaded report cards and from talking to most of you it seems that you all did quite well. But on the subject of report cards it comes time to ask, do you think that Honors English is benefiting you for the good or do you think that you are wasting you time by having to complete all of the assignments it requires you to do on your own? My answer to that question would have to be that it is definitely benefiting me for the good. It kind of excites me to think that in ninth grade I will already have an “Honors” showing on my report card. And it requires very little effort on your part once you think about it. But staying on the topic of Honors classes, a lot of you are taking Algebra II and this just so happens to be an Honors class as well. Do you guys think that this class is a benefit or do you think that it is one that the school should do away with and devote that time and money to other courses? And now just like I did on the last question I will answer it first and then I want you guys to tell me what you think on the comments. I think that Algebra II is a great thing to have at Fairfield Junior High. I also think that we are lucky we have a teacher who is willing to teach us to the best of her abilities, and who is willing to help us if we need help. I do not even think that Algebra II is that hard of a class considering the fact that it is High School Level.

And now for the final question, what do you think of Honors classes in general? Are you glad that we have the chance to take them, or are you kind of mad because it makes you make choices on what you want to do with your education? Do you think that they should do away with Honors and/or A.P. classes and make everybody take the same classes regardless? So here is my answer again, I think that we are definitely lucky to have the chance to take Honors classes. Look at how it will benefit us in the end. By taking the kind of classes we do now it will affect what colleges look at us, what kind of job we get, and how we live our lives in the future. So ultimately in the end it does affect our lives. It almost worries you to already be affecting you life so early on. A lot of times this is the period of time that people ruin their lives. Sometimes it is through not focusing on their education and other times it might be through drugs and alcohol. So what do you think, what are the kinds of conclusions that you have?

Our Changing Personalities

Take your mark, go! Most think that competitive swimming is an easy sport. Yet just about as many don't even know that it is a sport. But the truth is, swimming is a sport and it might be one of the most difficult out there.

Swimming is definitely a physical and mentally challenging sport. Swimming takes hours of disciplined practice, on average two to three hours of practice a day five days a week. Most of the time people find that they go home drained of almost all energy. But that is only the tip of the ice berg. The part about swimming that is the most fun must be the meets. Swimming meets are kind of a way to prove yourself; they are kind of a way to see what you can do. When you’re swimming your events at the meets you kind of go into your own world. Everyday matters do not even occur to you any more, only what is at hand. In the background you can hear all of your friends and coaches cheering you on with all of their energy. It gives you amazing self satisfaction.

But really it doesn’t matter what sport you favor in the end. Everybody has their own preference. But the thing that does matter is if you find satisfaction in what you do.

I know that most of you do favor other sports, so just to clarify; I am NOT saying that swimming is the best sport out there. I am just expressing an opinion. I know that all sports are only as good as you believe, not what others say. There are lots of cool sports out there tennis, basketball, skiing, snowboarding, and more. I am simply expressing my view on the one that I chose.

All sports do require things of the participant. It is this that I think gives us all our personality. Not the sports in which we participate necessarily but the things required of us in our day to day lives and how we react to them in given situations. We all react to things in different ways, which in turn gives us our personality. All of our personalities change over the courses of our lives. Though there always is that underlying thing we all have that will last us our entire live. It is kind of fun to look back on you personality in seventh grade and relate it to your current one. Most would be amazed at the changes that have been occurring during the years and us not even realizing them. We all have gone from nervous little seventh graders who were afraid of getting lost in the school, to the most comfortable kids in the school and not one bit nervous. We all know the school like a second home (regrettably) and traverse its halls almost daily. It would almost make us want to go into our teacher’s minds and see what they thought of us in seventh grade and what they think of us now. It almost scares you to think of it.