Shivers' Big Journey!

You may be wondering what in the sam hill is that title about. Well the short answer is that it's the title of a book. In one of my classes we had a project where we (4 people in a group) had to create a book online that was accessible and offered assistance to students with disabilities. We came up with the idea to have it centered around a penguin named Shivers who wants to swim to the North Pole from Antarctica so that he could go work for Santa. I created all of the illustrations for the book which I am quite proud of. I drew the outlines on paper. Then I scanned them into the computer. In a free program that is like photoshop I put all the color in. Then I overlaid them on photographs that everyone in my group had.
I was a lot of fun to make, and for the first time in my college career I didn't mind staying up late to finish this homework.
Here is a link to the book
Here's my favorite picture

Homecoming Weekend

Beth and I had a great time this weekend. Her family made the long seven hour trip from Escanaba (six for me). They took us and Beth's sister Jackie and her husband Eric to the MSU hockey game against Ohio State on Friday and we all went to the amazing football game on Saturday.
I had never been to a hockey game before and it was a lot of fun. We were in the third row right by the action. I looked around around the 2nd period and I noticed that I was literally the only person wearing just a t-shirt. I guess they breed em' for a colder climate in the Dutch city.
Before the game we watched the band perform at Adams Field and march to the stadium. The sad thing is that this is my 5th year here at State and I didn't know that they did this. It was cool though. Eric was in the drum line when he went to Michigan State and he said that if anyone tries to run across the road or break the line when they are marching they have permission to break it and beat them up. He said this happened once while he was there.
The game as you probably already know was quite the thriller. We were all going crazy on the last play. Our seats were right on the goal line and I knew it was a touchdown.

Overall it was a great weekend, and I had a blast spending time with Beth and her family. Now it's back to reality...

It's Pumpkin carvin' time

So Beth was all excited to carve some pumpkins so we decided to give it a whirl Saturday night. We visited her sister Jackie, and her husband Eric after the football game. Their little boy Eric has grown pretty fond of me. He's really into video games and playing with his Nintendo DS. I brought mine over with my hacked game card (holds like 15 games I downloaded off the internet). Ever since then he thinks I'm the coolest person. I guess he cried on Friday when he could't see me. At dinner I found out he asked if he could spend the night at my house hahaha. Unfortunately my apartment isn't equipped to handle small children...
We ended up picking out some pumpkins at a place in St. Johns. We only had one carving kit, and Beth broke one of the two saws about 2 minutes in. I was reluctant to give her the other one...
We ended up having to go get some more tools to finish the job.

Can you guess which pumpkin belongs to me? That's right, the one with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named on it! In non-geek terms it is the villain Voldemort from Harry Potter (O.K. I guess that's still geek terms). Beth's is the cute ghost, after four broken saws hahaha. We kept the seeds and cooked them. They are pretty good with a little salt on them.

The Cider Mi!!

 One great thing about living in East Lansing is that we are pretty close to Uncle John's Cider Mill (about 25 minutes away). Beth and I decided to to go there on Sunday. We don't have that many pictures so we brought her camera along and the tripod I got her for her birthday. It worked like a charm and we got a couple nice shots.

It was crazy busy there. They have big inflatable things for the kids (like Crazy Bounce).  I was tempted to go on them, but I figured I wouldn't endanger any children's lives. We bought some cider and doughnuts which were delicious. Then we ventured out into the corn maze. This thing was intense and we quickly got lost. We kept passing this one couple and each time the were walking further and further apart, and the guy looked angrier and angrier.
At one point Beth and I got a little heated trying to decipher the map...

Just kidding, that was staged. After about 45 minutes I could tell Beth was getting a little sick of it so I used my superior navigating skills to get us out. It was a good thing I had those 2 weeks in the scouts.
All in all it was a pretty great day, and we got some much needed photo-memories to cherish like my favorite shot of the day that Beth and I both made into our profile pics at the same time.

Kickoff to Summer

Hey everyone, looks like it is time to sit back and enjoy summer. It felt like it would never get here. Sadly I only had a couple weeks to rest my brain because I started summer classes today. Summer classes at State are split up into 2 semesters, and they go by really really quick. I'm only taking one class this semester 4 days a week, but I'm taking 2 the second semester. During the second session I have a class that goes from 6pm-10:50... Not looking forward to that one.
I successfully completed my first overnight shift at Speedway (11pm-8am). There were a few characters, most notably an extremely intoxicated man that could barely take his wallet out to buy cigarettes (5am) I had to count his money for him. At least he donated all of his change to Children's Miracle Network because he said he would just lose it. Speedway is also giving everyone in my store a fleece jacket because we sold the most cookies in our district... So yeah, pretty awesome. Now I can just donate my NorthFace to charity, or Jeff...
The Ruckus is running good, and it's a real head-turner when I'm on it. I parked it outside a gas station today and some guy came in and said he tripped over it, broke his ankle and was going to sue me. The man was missing all of his front teeth and had a ponytail... We ended up chatting about mopeds for a couple minutes, and after he dropped 6-10 F-bombs about other drivers cutting him off when he was on his I quickly gave him the "Well, see ya," and politely left. Nice guy.

Update

Sorry it's been a while since I've updated my blog. I've been really busy with school, a lot of projects are starting to be due so there have been a couple late nights. My roommates and I were reminiscing about the good ole' days and someone mentioned how they used to tuck their arms into their sleeves, pull their pants up and put wear their shoes on their knees to make it look like there were a little person. It's probably no surprise that I used to do this too. I decided to bring the look back, you're looking at my new facebook profile picture.

Almost everyone in my 400 level Teacher Education classes have gotten their student teaching placements for next year. Sadly I still have another 20 credits to go so I will be taking summer classes and then one more semester of them in the fall. I plan on living in an apartment with my friend/current roommate Shane and two other of our friends. The plan is to keep working at Speedway and substitute teach after I'm graduate because I won't be able to start my student teaching until the following year. Then the plan is to live at home and get a placement somewhere in Grand Rapids.

The Ruckus is running great for me, I just can't wait until I can ride it without a winter hat and gloves on. On Wednesday I was running late in the morning. I was planning on taking the moped and getting there in like 10 minutes but with 15 minutes before class started I looked outside and it was pouring out. I only had one choice... I had to power through it. I put some sunglasses on to keep that rain out of my eyes but they fogged up about halfway through. I ended up pretty soaked by the time I walked into class, but I was on time.

Waiting For Superman

I rented the documentary on the US school system "Waiting for Superman" on netflix a few weeks ago. My plan was to invite some friends over from my TE class but never found a good time. Tonight I finally broke down and watched it when I got back from work. I watched it with my roommate Dan and his girlfriend Aimee (who is also an elementary education major.) If you haven't heard of the movie if shows the story of like 5 families that have to enter a lottery in the hopes of getting their children into a good school.
It was the first movie that my eyes kind of welled up since I saw Air Bud like 10 years ago. You know the scene where he has go get rid of him and says, "Go away! I don't want you anymore!" He totally did, but that's beside the point. It was just so sad that basically the only way these kids will get a good education is if they win the lottery to get into one of the very few good schools in their district. Most of the lotteries were like 800 applicants and 20 openings.
One of the biggest points I took away from it is the problem with ineffective teachers. The movie claimed that after a teacher has tenure it is basically impossible to fire them. So there are all these crappy teachers out there but there is no way to fire them. Obviously this movie only presents one side of the argument, but the side it presents is a pretty strong one.
I encourage you all to watch it and then we can discuss it next time I see you.

Speedway Recap

Ok I have a few short stories about working at speedway
1. There is this old lady that comes in every week and buys us out of bottlecaps candies. If there are 17 left in the box she buys them all. You would think she would get sick of them after a while. I'm doing some math and lets say she buys 10 packages of bottlecaps every week (which is conservative) at $1 a piece. Thats over $500 a year on candy.

2. An old guy came it at like 10pm and bought a banana. Then he held the banana like it was a gun and pointed it at me... awesome.

3. Tonight I shut this ladies pump off because she was sitting in her car while it was pumping. This is against the rules because that can build up static electricity which can start a fire. She marched inside not too happy, I tried to explain to her the situation but all I got was, "SO YOU SHUT MY PUMP OFF!?" Then she said she was never going to come to Speedway again, awwww shucks!

4. Some a-hole came in and bought cigarettes, when I turned my head he put them in his pocket. When I gave him his change he said I never put the cigarettes out (then how the heck did I wring them up?). I said I did and he started laughing and replied, "It never works." He thought it was a hoot, I didn't find it very amusing.

5. Someone stole one of the plastic cases that holds the towels by the pumps. Why?

Some Old Photos of Dawgs

I don't know if everyone is filled in with the whole dog fiasco that is going on with Jeff's facebook profile, but I'll give you the scoop. Dan and a couple other of Jeff's friends posted like 3 dog youtube videos on his profile. Jeff made a comment that people were going to think he was some sort of crazy dog guy, so ever since then literally everyone has been bombarding his profile with dog videos (they spell it dag). One of my personal favorites was from B.J. (http://deadspin.com/#!5760394/heres-a-video-of-dogs-saying-i-love-you) of dogs saying "I love you." 
I was looking through some old photos on my camera and found a few gems of the old band and a deaf/blind dalmatian (named Chico I believe) we watched for a few weeks for one of Dan's college buddies.

Chico had a little trouble knowing when he was going to need to go to the bathroom. He would get up, walk and drop excrement as he meandered through the house. Another problem was that he couldn't tell where he went poop so he would walk through it and just spread the mess. One day I was the first one to get back from to the house from school and Chico had one of these accidents (a particularly bad one). I remember thinking "I have two options, number one clean it up, or number two I could try to play it off like I didn't notice it." Lets just say that it would have been pretty difficult to pull off option number two convincingly...  

The Perks of the Job

Here's another Speedway post for everybody. I may not get much free stuff, but when I do it is amazing... Check out this awesome speedway swag everybody in the store got.

It is supposed to act as a hair net when you make food. I decided I was going to wear mine for an entire 8 hour shift, but I knew if I saw how goofy it looked on me I would take it off immediately. I was doing pretty good with my plan until it got dark and I saw my reflection in the window. I decided to keep wearing it anyway.
These hats are pretty hot, you can't even get them off lids.com. However if someone was really dying to have this top notch fashion accessory I might be able to pull a few strings.

The Old Yearbook

So today I went to my placement at Herbison Woods Elementary in DeWitt (5th grade). First I had to get my car out of the driveway which was an ordeal... It was picture day today and all the kids had those little order things just like we had back in elementary school. However they didn't hand out combs, score one for Holland Christian. It was funny all the guys were complaining about how their moms made them dress up. This one kid put on a vest right before he got his picture taken, and then quick yanked it off right after. They also had a class photo and the photographer was lining them up according to height. Then Mrs. Lucian and all the kids insisted that I got in the picture, so I will forever be in the 2010-2011 Herbison Woods yearbook. I felt really good that she insisted I was in the picture. I can guarantee that I'm the only one in my class that was awarded that opportunity.
Yearbooks are such a fun keepsake to have, they really take you back. The best part is seeing all of your friends old pictures. I also like looking at the yearbooks that were "edited" by us when we were younger. Man kids can be cruel... Anyways it was a great day.

Speedway Stories:Series 1

As most of you know I work at Speedway gas station, and have been for about 6 months. As you would suspect this enables me to meet a wide variety of people from all walks of life. There is one regular in particular that I believe to be post-worthy. He is a 30-something year old man with big glasses. I think there's something a little off with him. The first time I met him he came in and bought two 5-hour energy drinks and talked to me about gun regulations in Michigan. Then he spent some time in the parking lot (presumably to drink his unhealthy amount of caffeine. When he came back into the store he had drawn whiskers and a cat nose on his face (it wasn't halloween). I see him every couple of weeks and he always reads a Guns n Ammo magazine in the store and in line, then he sets it down on the counter and asks if I would mind putting it back for him...

Something I've just noticed in the last week is that people have been swindling me with their 64oz drink refills. First of all lets just get one thing out of the way, why do people think it is necessary or healthy to consume 64oz of pop or slushy at one time. That is 2 liters of liquid... I digress, I have been charging people for a cold refill on their 64 oz mugs (pop/slushy) for roughly $1.37. Then I find out that this one yahoo has been filling his up with coffee which costs like $2.50. I finally caught him because he asked if it was alright if he made some 100% Columbian coffee (as he opened the bag-we don't make it after 7) When he came up to pay I charged him for a hot beverage refill and it threw him for a loop, and he had to dig for extra change in his pocket.

Wow did I really just write an entire paragraph explaining that...

Anyway, that old coot ain't gonna be fooling me again!

Balloon Animals

I've always been curious as to how hard it would be to pick up on making balloon animals. I found out when Alex and Shane came back from the dollar store and they had a balloon making kit. I started messing around with it and made like 15 animals and swords. At one point Alex said, "You like the weirdest stuff." he could see the joy in my face when I made my signature animal... the poodle.

I must admit I looked online for how to make this one.

 However these two were all me, the giraffe and the turtle in case you couldn't tell.

Socks

My mom can attest to the fact that I'm not one that is known for throwing away socks. I will wear them until they disintegrate. When I lived at home she would just throw out the ones that needed to go into retirement. However since I've been doing my own laundry for over 4 years this hasn't happened in a while. One day I just got frustrated that I had so many mismatched holey socks and it was time to do something about it. I took out all of the salvageable pairs I could find and put the rest into a pile. This is that pile...

My roommate Eric was a witness to all of this and decided to try and put on as many as possible...

 They look like wooden shoes made out of socks.

 He said they were really warm

Then I discovered that one of my roommate's (Shane's) socks mixed up in the bunch. As you can see there is a vast size difference...

Stupid Things to Pass the Time

Living with 5 immature 22 year olds and me being one myself we find a lot of stupid activities to help occupy our time. One of our new favorites is what we call "Tallman Challenges" where we come up with strange activities for our roomate Alex Tallman (who was my room-mate in the dorms last year) to do. Many of them are food related. McDonald's has this promotion where you get 50 chicken mcnuggets, 2 large fries, and 2 large pops for $15. Alex, Eric, and I split one and we asked Tallman if he could finish it all by himself in an hour. The rules of the bet were that we would pay for the meal if he could complete the challenge, he would if he couldn't or if he regurgitated it.

 His strategy was to power through the fries because they would be really gross and hard to put down once they got cold

 He was doing good with about 15 minutes left, but he still had about 1 and 1/2 pops to go.

 Struggling on the last drink

 More struggling

 With a couple minutes to go he went for broke and with sheer power of mind over body finished the last pop.

He puked right after, but out of pity we didn't make him pay for his "meal."

New Blog

Since Dan decided to revamp of his blog I figured I would start a new one (not for school). We all know I do whatever Dan does, monkey-see-monkey-do (at least according to him). Over the years it has been a lot of things like visiting the same websites, magic cards, going to MSU. I'm sure he will be able to think of a few more.
Well it looks like all of us boys are all growing up, Chad and Jeff are members of the workforce, Dan's in Chicago, and I'm winding down my time here at MSU. It seems like only yesterday we were having crabapple fights and crashing go-karts in the backyard. Hopefully this blog will stir up some old memories from those days, and fill everyone in on the current ones.