Valentine's Day

Why does Valentine’s Day mean something different to everyone? To single guys, they could care less about Valentine’s Day. Now there are the occasional single guys that are suckers and get sad on Valentine’s Day but it is not often. To single girls, they just want to lock their self in a room, cry, watch dramatic movies, and eat ice-cream. Now there are the occasional single girls that do not care and go about the day with their everyday life. Taken guys, it is a test for the girl to see how much the guy cares or what he will do for her. Taken girls, well the day is all for her. Think about it Valentine’s Day is a girl’s day! It is full of pink and red flowers, teddy bears, chocolates, hearts, etc. All the stuff girls like.


Some people call Valentine’s Day “Happy Singles Awareness Day.” Why do people make such a big deal of a nothing holiday? It is because they are either jealous or sad, and if so then why would they draw attention to it. I personally think people make such a big deal about it because the media, stores, advertisements, etc. You cannot escape it. That is why the holiday is so popular because it is a money making holiday. Think about how expensive flowers get they go from like twenty dollars normally to about forty or fifty dollars. Chocolates go way up. Cards…I think Hallmark invented the Holiday so they could make money between the holidays. Jewelers must love this holiday and trying to help the guys out on what to get that special someone.


So how did Valentine’s Day really start? According to History.com, one legend Valentine was a priest during the third century in Rome. Emperor Claudius II said that men without children or wives made better soldiers so he got rid of marriage for young men. Valentine thought that was terrible and preformed marriages in secret to young lovers. Claudius found out and killed him. Another legend said that while Valentine was in prison he wrote a letter to the jailors daughter to whom he fell in love with. He signed the letter “From your Valentine” before he was killed. That phrase is still used today. I personally like the story about the priest performing secret marriages because that is more romantic then someone signing a letter before he died.


I had an AMAZING Valentine’s Day!! I hope you did too!!

Haunted House

My English teacher told us to write a fictional story with three details: character, a woman with a secret who wants to tell someone; setting, a closet; and detail, a record player with no record. This is where my imagination took me.


In an old abandoned house, that has been on the market for at least ten years, there many stories about why this house is haunted. Some say a husband killed his wife with the record playing, left her in a closet and ran away to married another girl. The scary part is there is no body in the closet and no record on the record player. People think she still lives there and hides the record hoping he will come back looking for the record, the song that was played at their wedding, so she can have her revenge. Others think that she just wants someone to talk to because having a story like that stay on your chest that long can make you go crazy, or she might just want to go out on dates but is scared that guys won’t like her because of all the scars on her face. Others say that a long time ago there were little teenagers playing seven minutes in heaven. There was one girl that had a major crush on this one boy and she got seven minutes in heaven with him. They made out in the coat closet down stairs. After the seven minutes he left the coat closet first; leaving her awe struck. She was so excited that she really wanted to tell her best friend but before she could he had asked her best friend on a date. Meanwhile there is a record playing during the whole scene. She gets really mad (more hurt) and takes the record so she can burn it and try to forget about the boy who broke her heart. Rumor has it her best friend and the boy go back to that house to remember the first time they got together. When people try to come in they scare them away so they can have the house all to their self. No one really knows why the house is haunted…it is all up to your imagination.

Web Laundry

I really like this idea about Web Laundry that Virginia Tech just started. Web Laundry lets the residents check to see if any washers are available before they carry all their laundry down two flights of stairs to find out that all washers are taken. If there are certain hours in the day where I can do laundry I will be able to reserve a machine during that time; however, you only have five minutes to use it once you reserve it. When I go back upstairs and wait forty minutes sometimes I forget what time I put my laundry in so I end up going down stairs ten minutes before it is over. The flaw is the text message tells you it is almost done twenty minutes before and it is complete ten minutes before. I guess they do that to get you down stairs by the time it is actually done. The bonus to the ten minute waiting period is that I get to meet the other people who are also waiting for their laundry to finish. It is nice to meet new people that live in my same dorm. The ten minute heads up is also nice because sometimes I get carried away with my homework or a TV show and I end up going down to get my laundry ten minutes after it is done. This is very scary because I do not want my nice clean clothes to end up on the floor because some greedy person wants my washer or drier and is not patient enough to wait fifteen minutes. I understand after thirty minutes if the person does not come pick up their clothes then it is fair to move it. But honestly I do not particularly want to move boy’s underwear so I can get the drier. This text message idea will remind people of their clothes so others are not put in awkward situations. There are weekends when I decide to do laundry at one am because no one else is and people have clothes in the drier when I start my laundry to when I finish my laundry. This new service will make the chore of doing laundry run more smoothly and efficient. I am so glad they installed this new system.

Computers with Food for Thought

Has anyone ever thought about how much time they spend in front of the computer? Has anyone wondered how did they do and submit homework in college before scholar and blackboard? How did they take math quizzes and tests before the Math Emporium? How many hours a day are we checking email, Facebook, scholar, blackboard or even chatting on Skype? What happened to MySpace or AIM I hardly hear of people saying MySpace me or IM me, now it is Facebook me or Skype me. Why do we take nouns and turn them into verbs?


I do it too. I spend all day on the computer from doing homework, taking notes in class, skyping people, checking email, listening to Pandora or iTunes, checking Facebook, replying to emails, uploading pictures, submitting class work, taking quizzes, checking grades, etc. Do you think this is making us more self oriented and making words not as personal because there is no more interaction between people, the interaction is through a computer? For example, in you college used to have to write papers on paper and the students would have to go pick up their grades. Now, we submit papers, quizzes, everything online and get them back graded online. We do go to class and listen to a lecture but you are able to take classes online and do the work at your own pace as long as the quiz is submitted by the deadline. Last semester, when I took Linear Algebra I meant and saw my professor once in person and that was the first day of class when we had to go see her. I did not need to go see her so I never did, because of that I lost the interaction between student and teacher.


Students rather play video games on the computer than go outside and play soccer. Typing is not proper exercise. Every college student knows when a new game comes out because the internet slows down dramatically, it is crazy.


It makes me wonder, how did people keep in touch with each other before Facebook and emails? I know there were phones and hand written letters, but hand written letters have the potential of getting lost in the mail and phone calls used to be so expensive. Now people send thousands of text messages a month and do not even own a house phone just a cell.


How did people find jobs and apply to jobs before the internet? Fliers and newspaper. Maybe the internet is away for the world to “go green.” We submit all our work on the internet, we apply to jobs and activities on the internet, receive grades on the internet, and we keep in touch with each other on the internet; maybe this is away for us to reduce the use of paper.


Well I hope all of you are having a great week.

Snow Day!

I really want snow. It looks like we might get it this weekend. I have had the weirdest snow days in high school. For Senior year, the day of the Presidential Inauguration there were calling for a 100% chance of snow. Every household received a phone call at 5:45am to tell us that school was canceled for the day. I was so excited. As I sat on the couch watching the inauguration I kept looking out the window for a flake of snow. There were times when my eyes and mind were playing tricks on me because for a second I thought I saw ONE snow flake. On the evening news the weathermen insisted that it did actually snow in the atmosphere but it evaporated before it made it down to where we could see it. That made me so upset. A couple weeks later, there was actually a dusting of snow and I was excited. The only problem was they did not cancel school. Because I drive to school I had to drive with the black ice all over the road. Get this! Half of Chesapeake had a snow day because the buses could not drive on the bridges. AND only half the people actually showed up to school so the teachers could not teach anything anyway. Both times Senior year, snow days were a bust. I got out of school for no snow and had to go to school for snow.


I live in Chesapeake so the first sign of snow everybody flips out. No one knows how to drive in the snow, VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation) does not put salt on the roads early enough, I don’t even know if there are a snow plows on that side of the state. The last day I got out of school for snow that I remember was 7th grade (2004). That snow day was nice because it lasted a week :)


I remember my mommy making soup, me setting out a bucket to catch snow in to make snow cones with evaporated milk and vanilla extract, getting pulled down the street on a trash can lid, and drinking hot coco and cuddling on the couch watching a movie and looking out the window at the winter wonderland. I also remember that my mommy used to come in my room and pull up the blinds so when I woke up I would see all the snow outside.


I miss the few snow days I got; however, I am grateful for every minute. I hope your snow days were as memorable as mine were.

Winter Break

Since we just got done with winter break I thought I would tell you all why mine was amazing. Well, it did not start amazing. The day I was packing to come home I called my mom to ask her if there were anything else I should bring or anything I might be forgetting. She said in a soft tone you need to bring your suit home. At that time I was very puzzled but decided not to ask any questions so I could have a nice ride home. When I got home my mom told me that my great aunt died and her funeral was the following week. I still hung out with all my friends that I have not seen and for some it had been four months. See in high school, there was a group of us that were always hanging out and we were all really close friends. If I were not spending time with my friends I was with my family. The first two weeks my cousin was in town and so I hung out with her as much as I could. When she left I was either hanging out with my friends or hanging out with my family or doing chores. My friends and I went ice skating, out to lunch, played monopoly, watch the comedian Jim Gaffigan, went to see Sherlock Holmes (great movie I cannot wait for the next one), had a girl’s night sleepover, went bowling, celebrated New Years, etc. My family and I went to the Virginia Dinner, to see Blind Side (great movie made me cry), to see Avatar (IMAX and 3d was amazing), to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens, to dinner, to church, shopping, celebrated Christmas, etc.

Christmas Town in Busch Gardens Williamsburg, VA was amazing. It was at maximum capacity when I went. Busch Gardens is set up with a theme, Europe and each place inside is a different European country. It is very family oriented so there may be a pub in Ireland but there are little kid rides in England or Germany, etc. The shows during Christmas Town were spectacular just like they are all year round, except in Christmas Town they were Christmas theme and not country themed. The reason the park was at capacity was they did not have all the countries open and only one rollercoaster running. This was their first year so they probably did not know how many to expect plus it had been raining for about a week before. The place was full of lights, had penguins from Sea World in Florida and California (that was a bust though because I stood in line for 30min to see 5 tired penguins), a tall Christmas tree whose lights blinks to the rhythm of the music, tons of Christmas shows, and more.

Well, I hope all of you had an amazing break like I did. I was not bored once.