Babysitting My Siblings

Don't you just LOVE babysitting your siblings? If you haven't ever tried it, you should one day! It's the best! Once your parents leave, your siblings listen to every word you say. They don't disobey you whatsoever. They get along like they love each other. The don't yell, run around, scream at random, or do anything to make it difficult for you. They go to bed when they're told, they can all agree on a show, and they do everything that they're told. To top it all off, the pay is wonderful!

Ok, well if you haven't guessed, everything that I just said was a lie. Not word one of that was true. My siblings NEVER listen to me. I'm babysitting tonight, and one of my sisters made my other sister cry. I sent her to her room, but she refused to go. She claims she's scared. I have no idea what of, but she never did go to her room.

My siblings don't ever obey me. I tell them to do something, and it goes in one ear and out the other. They are totally insubordinate, and there's nothing I can do about it. It really bugs me.

My siblings don't get along. It's mostly my two sisters though. They are constantly fighting. Most of the times it's over things that don't even matter. Usually one of my sisters will scream or something, then a fight follows. I can't seem to get it in their heads that it DOESN'T MATTER! Geez it drives me crazy!

My sisters yell at each other. Like I said before, usually it's over things that have no point.

All of my siblings run around. They start playing games and I'll just be sitting and watching them. They run all over the house, and it's crazy! I can't control them! I have no leverage over them. If they disobey me, the only thing I can do is tell my mom. They stopped being scared of that a LONG time ago.

One thing that my sister does that drives me insane is just scream at the top of her lungs at totally random times. Sometimes she says she's scared of something, but other times she doesn't even know why. It gets under my skin so bad!

If I tell them it's time to go to bed, they always say, "No! One more show!" I have to give in, or they won't ever go to bed. Eventually they'll just fall asleep, but man... it takes them a LONG time!

When it's time to choose a show to watch, they can never come to a decision. The excuse for never deciding a show is always "Let's find something everyone wants to watch!" So it takes a while to finally decide on a show. And, you guessed it, it's never one I want to watch!

Well, I think I've made my opinion pretty clear. I really do not like babysitting. Oh, and especially tonight when I could be hanging out with friends. I just feel way bad knowing that I could be having a lot more fun right now... You know what I mean? Well, I guess I'll be done with my ranting on babysitting. :) Good night!

Christmas and a Joke

I'm gonna take a break from my cruise story for a week. First, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Next, I have a joke that I heard from my uncle. My brother didn't get it when I told him, and it took like five minutes for him to get it. Well, here it goes...

An old man owes the IRS a couple thousand dollars. He decides to take his lawyer with him to have a meeting with an IRS agent. The three of them meet and start talking. Once the meeting was under way, the old man makes a bet with the agent. He bets $1,000 that he can bite his own eyeball. Not thinking that this was possible, the agent takes the bet. So the old man proceeds and takes out his glass eye, bites it, and pops it back in. The old man, wanting to make a little more money, bets the agent double or nothing he can bite his other eye. The agent, believing that he would be blind if he bit both eyes, accepted the bet. So the old man pops out his dentures and bites his good eye with them. Now the IRS agent is a little upset. The old man makes one more bet. He bets the agent double or nothing that he can stand up on the lawyers desk, pee across the room into a garbage can, and not miss a single drop. The agent, really wanting his money back, accepts the bet. So the old man stands up on the table and starts peeing. He misses, and it goes everywhere. Now, the IRS agent is ecstatic because he's just won all his money back. But then he notices that the old man's lawyer is practically in tears. The agent asks whats wrong, and the old man says, "I bet my lawyer $25,000 that I could walk into your office, pee all over everything, and you would be happy about it."

The first time I heard it I thought that it was hysterical! So I thought it was pretty funny. But I still need 100 more words... So I'm going to just summarize my break I guess. :P

My winter break has been pretty boring. I've mostly stayed home. The first week I guess I went out a bit to be with family. We went over to my grandparents, and then they came and slept over at our house. Christmas was fun, I got an iPod Touch (even though so many of you wrongly refer to it as an iTouch! Geez learn what it's called!) and I'm really excited about that! And that's really the only big thing I got. But after that I hung out with some friends a couple nights, celebrated new years, stayed home, and that brings us to today. So it wasn't really very exciting, but it's always nice to be able to have time off from school. But it's starting back up again in two days, so I have to go back to reality. :/ Oh well... Well that's it for me today. See yall later!

Cruises (Part II)

Alright! I am back for Part II of my cruises story! I believe I left off last time at the amazing dinners you get...

So after dinner there is always a show at night. They have performers like comedians, acrobats, magicians, singers, and dancers. The show after dinner is always one of the best parts of the night. I liked it best when they had comedians. There were these two comedians (and I can't remember their names right now) that were so dang funny! I just couldn't stop laughing! They started out just telling some typical cruise jokes (like about how small the "cabins" are), but once they were on their normal act, it was hilarious! They chose someone out of the audience and kept making comments about what she was doing every once in a while, and by the end of the show they had written a song about it! And it wasn't just like a cheesy song, it actually sounded good, and it was funny! I couldn't believe it!

On each ship, they have a cruise director. What that person does is basically make sure there are good activities for everyone and just make sure everything's running smooth. Our cruise director, Richard Spacey, was the best cruise director I've ever had! He was amazing at his job! He was great at the shows every night, he made sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing for that day on the cruise, and he was funny on top of that! The whole ship knew who he was and they loved him! I don't know if any of you have ever seen the Evolution of Dance video on YouTube (if you haven't, I posted it at the bottom), but on the last night our cruise director did his own version of it, and he nailed it! It was so funny! (I've also posted his version below the original).

So after you've had a show and gotten to know who Richard Spacey is, you head back to your room to get ready for the night. When you get to your room, you find that your beds are made, a towel animal hanging on your ceiling, and a piece of mint chocolate on your pillow. You feel like a king! So after you get changed out of your dinner clothes, you decide to try and get to know the ship a little bit more. What better place to start than the Royal Promenade? The Royal Promenade is like a minimall on the ship. There's a gift shop, coffee shop, ice cream parlor, and even a barbor shop! You are still amazed by everything! Next, you go exploring the floors to see what's there. You find an Egyptian theater, fitness center, spa, the kids' place, the skating rink, and lots more! But that's not even the best part, you go explore outside next...

And that's where I'm going to cut off for this week! I'll continue with Part III next week!

This is the original version by Judson Laipply.



This is Richard Spacey's version.

Cruises (Part I)

I've been looking at some pictures from my cruise this summer, and I've made a decision: cruises are the best! Once you've been on a cruise, it's really hard to think about traveling any other way again. They're just so flippin' fun!

The first day isn't the best day of the cruise. You have to go check in before you get on the ship. This includes things like getting your boarding pass (which is also your room key), loading luggage onto the ship, and going through customs. Once you've gotten all of that out of the way, you get to go find your room. At first you're pretty excited to go see your room. You expect it to be really elaborate like on the movie Titanic. Much to your disappointment, it is MUCH smaller. And I'm not talking like hotel room small. I'm talking like hotel bathroom small. The rooms (or "cabins" as they refer to them) are TINY! But you'll get over it pretty quickly, because the only time you're really in your cabin is to sleep and get ready.

So after you've been to your cabin, the whole ship has to have a mustering drill. This is just a safety test so that you know what to do if the ship starts sinking. That isn't really to fun, but after that you can go tour the ship and try to get to know it. Usually my family heads to the Windjammer Cafe to get a quick bite to eat before the ship starts moving. After that we head out to the front of the ship to see it start to set sail. It sounds more exciting than it really is though. It starts out moving extremely slow and doesn't really pick up speed until the night. After that its almost dinner time.

Dinner is probably my favorite part of the whole cruise. You have an assigned table with an assigned waiter or waitress that you sit at every night. When you walk in and take your seats, the waiter (in our case) is waiting for you to sit down. Once you are in your seat, he places the folded napkin in front of you on your lap and brings a basket of rolls to get you started. Our waiter was one of my favorite people on the ship. He knew everything there was to know about the menu, the ship, and the ports-of-call The first night at dinner he learned everyone's names at our table and didn't have trouble remembering them for the rest of the cruise. He also learned our favorite drinks, and made sure to have them waiting there for us when we came down for dinner. He was amazing! So once you've gotten rolls and drinks, he brings out the menu. It all looks really expensive, but you really couldn't care less. Everything on the menu is absolutely FREE! And I mean totally and completely free! It's not like you can only have one of something, you can have as much as you want of whatever there is on the menu that night! My cousin Wil, who is about 7 years old, ate four lobster tails one night! My brother Blake was having trouble deciding what he wanted one night, so our waiter brought out both of them at no cost! It was wonderful! Not only was the price amazing, but the food was unbelievably delicious! I tried a bunch of different meats including duck, lamb, and snail! That's right, I ate snails! I didn't expect them to be that great (in fact, I was a little reluctant to eat them, because they're snails for cryin' out loud!), but they turned out to be really good! So once you had stuffed yourself full of snails, you get the desert menu. It was all DELICIOUS! Royal Caribbean really knows food, because everything that I ate on the cruise was just delicious. Especially the desert. Well, that's all I'm going to say for this week! I'll continue my cruise story next week...

Guitar Hero and More Band Woes

I have been playing Guitar Hero quite a bit this week, so I decided my opinion about would be a good blog post for this week. First of all, I think it can be a really fun video game (and I am pretty anti-video games) as long as you don't devote your life to playing it. Then, to me, it's in the same category as all the other video games. But I like it because I play guitar, and I just think it's cool that you can play guitar as a video game now. However, it is nowhere near the same as playing real guitar.

I don't think you should play Guitar Hero for hours everyday. This just makes you miss out on tons of other things you could be doing. One reason I don't really care if I'm really great at it or not is because I play the real guitar, which in my opinion is a lot more fun. Something Rivers Cuomo (lead singer for Weezer) said really got to me. He said that with all the time some people play Guitar Hero, they could use that time to learn a real instrument which would be a lot better for them later in life. That is actually very logical. That is why I take more pride in playing the real guitar than Guitar Hero.

And that would be my opinion on Guitar Hero...now for more band woes...

The new band teacher keeps on doing things that are not right. For the past month we have been practicing nothing but pep band music during class when not everyone is going. Actually, I would say that hardly anyone is going anymore. Anyways, that's all that we have been practicing. We just barely got our music for the Christmas concert. It's in two weeks. The teacher thinks that we will pull it off, but most of us know better. One of the pieces of music we got, Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson, was given to us in Symphonic Band last year. We practiced it for a month and we never got it good enough to be able to perform. And remember, that was Symphonic Band from last year...when we still had an amazing band teacher and were the best band in the district (maybe even state). We are now (probably) the worst band in the district, with less time to practice, and we are comitted to play it! Does something not add up to you? Because this is kind of scaring me... I won't go more into it than that. But if you do go to our concert, don't expect much. If you do, you'll be sadly surprised.

Guitar Experts?

First of all, don't forget to enter my contest! There are still no entries, so you could still win!

Ok, I don't know if any of you are guitar experts, but I'm looking to get a new electric guitar. I'm torn between two guitars, and I really don't know which one I want more. I'm looking for some suggestions from people, so if you have any opinions on either of these guitars, they would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Gibson SG Standard

Qualities that drive me crazy!

Are there certain things people do that drive you absolutely crazy? I know there are for me, so I just thought I'd list a few of them.

The thing that bugs me the most is when people are hypocrites: they say something and do the exact opposite. I can't explain how bad this frustrates me. There is this kid I know that does nothing but play video games in his spare time. Any time I go over to his house, his mom answers the door and sends me to the basement where he's sitting on a bean bag playing Wii or Gamecube. His life is devoted to video games. So one day, I'm hanging out with him, and a little group of us go up to my other friend's house. It was his birthday a few days before, and he got the new Guitar Hero World Tour. Guitar Hero is one of the only video games I really like, so I wanted to play it. We did for a little while, until my video game obsessed friend suggests we stop playing it. Normally, all he wants to do is video games (and that has made me really dislike most of them because that's all he ever does). But right now, when he's actually got me here playing them, he wants to stop. And, I am not kidding, he said, "I hate just sitting in one spot for a long time, I like being outside better!" When he said that, I just really didn't know what to say. I can't stand when people are hypocrites!

Another thing that bugs me is when people are so full of themselves. They think they are so much better than you at something. Even though sometimes they may be, they shouldn't be bragging it up. There is one kid I know, and he has it in his head that he is so good at everything he does and that he is sooo much smarter than everyone else. We play football over at our church field every once in a while. We try to make the teams fair, and he thinks he can choose teams the best. He'll try to stack his team. If he thinks the teams are unfair, he'll just mope around, not play, and try to get the teams stacked to work out for him. And another about that that bugs me is that he makes judgments on how good he thinks someone is. I know I am not the best there is at football, and I'm fine with saying that. But what he does is say that two people are better than everyone else when we're making teams, and I think it makes other people feel bad about how they're playing when he does that. Of course, he always puts himself higher than other people. He's really no where near as good as he thinks he is. In a lot of ways, he is actually a disadvantage to the team he plays on. He does more bad than good. He does all this thinking he knows what's right, but doesn't.

The last thing I'm going to mention is people who try to be funny all the time, but really they're not. It bugs me so bad when you have someone talking to you, constantly telling lame jokes that you have to force a laugh at so you don't make them feel bad. I'm not going to get into this farther, but I thought it was something worth mentioning.

Well, once again thanks for reading!