People of Importance

There have been many people in my life who have had some form of an impact. Many have helped shape me into the person I am today. But of those three people there are truly three that have made a long standing impact on my life that I feel that no matter what age I am I will never forget the lessons they have taught me.

The first person is going to have to be my environmental science teacher, Mr. Briggs. He was really more of a good friend then a teacher after a while; I felt that I could come to him with anything. He was a very tall and built guy; I mean he did MMA and other forms of fighting for exercise. I remember the first day I met him, the guy seems like he has a severe case of OCD. Always has to be doing something, he had these three yard sticks that he taped together and he used that to practice his golf swing while lecturing us. But the thing that really made an impact on me was all the life lessons he taught us. The class sometimes would seem like a philosophy class rather than an environmental science class, it was amazing. I learned that my choices have a much further impact on my life then just two steps ahead I have to think further ahead in my decision making.

The second person who had a major impact on my life has to be the special education teacher at hueneme high school, Mr. Hewer.  This man has a world of patience, and for his job you have to have it. I remember the first day I saw him, he’s slow balding hair and his thick but white as snow beard, and of course his welcoming smile. He and I would talk all the time about different things in life, all the world issues and how crazy things have changed from when he was my age to now. He really taught me that one of the most important things in life is patience, and how that it can have such a major change on life.

The final person who has made such an impact in my life is going to have to be my Teacher from third grade Mr.Lofflin. He was a very tall and older man. He was a teacher who moved from Alaska to come teach where I lived in Mississippi. He had giant ogre like hands with very thick glasses. But aside from his giant features he was a very kind and gentle person. He used to give us these little tokens every time we would answer a question right and called them happy snappy. It really was my first understanding of money, granted it wasn’t money I still learned that everything comes at a price and that I need to learn to save my money so that I can spend some and still have money after.

Review Blog

This week I decided to give a review of Dominick’s Italian restaurant. The place is very hole in the wall, sitting just up the road from the Oxnard train station; it is in the back of a warehouse. The restaurant serves very classic Italian food ranging from meatballs all the way to cannoli’s. The setting of the place is really old school. It has dim lighting with old wooden tables, with red brick walls bringing it together to look very nice. The food there is beyond fantastic, especially their fresh baked bread. It is always warm and just melts in your mouth. One of the best dishes there is the pizza. Their pizza is truly what homemade Italian pizza would taste like; the cheese if fresh and gooey, the marinara sauce is amazing, and the size is way bigger than what you would expect. The atmosphere there is very quiet and relaxed. Now it’s not to the point where you’ll be getting stared at for laughing loudly or something, it is a very friendly and open environment. Now although I do not drink myself, I have gone with others who do partake in some drinks and they have quite a large selection allowing for anyone to enjoy a verity of alcoholic beverages. They also have an amazing mix drink with an Italian raspberry juice and pink lemonade, it’s above amazing. Overall I find this place to be an amazing undiscovered restaurant that can go above and beyond people’s expectations of what good Italian food is, and if you have never really had true Italian food please I implore you to give Dominick’s a chance. Let this place be your first impression of what good Italian food is and I promise you that you will be more than impressed with this place.

FFN blog

The book fast food nation opened my eyes to the world around me, in a food sense. I don’t think that I will actually change anything about what I normally due, but much more thought will go into my decisions. I think when I go to get fast food or some like generic brand food item; much more thought will go into my purchase. But I don’t feel that the book will make some dramatic change like, going vegan or anything like that. I do feel though that I have a new appreciation for many of the workers that work in the food industry. Many of them have a very tough life and are struggling. While they seem to think that they are making an improvement in their life, working for fast food seems to be a negative cycle in which you don’t really learn too much but just enough to keep you afloat in that industry. So for those who are not attending school and just working at a fast food place, I have nothing but sorrow for them and their life. Sadly I feel that fast food would just be the end of the road for many whom do not attend school and get further in life.

This semester

The truth from last week was that I don’t like chocolate, I know weird right?

So far this semester is going pretty well. I'm kind of regretting not taking either a science or a math class, but for now I feel fine. This semester has been interesting since it is my first semester in Oxnard College. I feel like for now classes are just the same as they were in high school, minus the fact that no one sits and tells me I need to do my work and to make sure I get my homework in; at least for most of my classes. One class that has been really interesting is my speech class. It’s far different from any other class that I have taken ever. I enjoy the change up from how mundane some of my classes are, to a more exciting and thrill of the moment other classes are. Another great thing about this semester is the realization that I have down time between classes and how amazingly beneficial that is to me. Overall this semester has been quite amazing, although at times very over-whelming, I'm enjoying it. With all the homework it’s hard to try to balance the work from all the classes at once; a big reason for how great having all that down time between classes. The final thing that I really enjoy this semester is my teachers. Although sometimes it seems that their giving me a tuff time they are really just trying to be helpful. Also the majorities of my teachers have an amazing sense of humor and let me have a lot of fun by messing around, and they also like to joke back. That to me is what has truly made this semester as fun and amazing as it has been.

5 lies and a fact!

1. I love to drink coffee.
2. I don't like chocolate.
3.I have 23 cats.
4.I enjoy falling on my face.
5.Spiders don't scare me.

Poem Blog

I didn't really feel like writing a blog this week so instead I decided to post one of my favorite poems, by J. Alfred Prufrock.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

How time changes views....

For the longest time, I always felt that marijuana for medical purposes was a fluke. I always thought that it was just people looking to get high and abuse the law. But over time I have met people and seen documentaries that have swayed my opinion. Before I was very conservative and didn’t believe that there was a real need for it in our society. But after I met some now close friends of mine, I have come to realize that it does have a very big impact on their lives. Now I still do not believe that it can help people with the emotional pain, to me I see that as something people just need to work on, in the own way and not try to use it as an out to just get high. Now with physical pain, I see the effects it has on the user. To many it is not about just getting stoned for fun, people need it to help reduce or ease the pain away from them. This change in my life has allowed me to become more open minded in my ways of seeing how people attempt to treat pains, but not only that it has also allowed me to help spread my thoughts and ideology behind the drug. This change did not just happen in a snap, I took a few years to even come to terms with the idea that people actually even use this drug for medical purposes, let alone try to tell people that it actually works. My friends and I have a better friendship because I have become more accepting of what they do, and not to say that they needed my approval before, but having a friend that is openly accepting of what you do is very helpful in supporting them.