Sports

My boyfriend asks me yesterday what i though of the Matt Holliday situation. We were discussing sports, haha.. that's a joke, I was basically saying that I like watching sports (because in all honesty I don't follow anything). Anyway, the way he asked me i knew i should know who Matt Holliday was, or for that matter what sport he even played.

Yes you might view me as pathetic for not keeping up with my city's pride and joy, The Cardinals, but frankly baseball bores the crud out of me.

So, when my boyfriend asked my opinion on the $113,580,723 salary bestowed upon aforementioned Holliday, I was all in all un-opinionated.

But upon further reading, yes i do read my news (occasionally), I am a bit surprised, if not utterly outraged, at these outrageous pre-determined earnings.

First of all, why the heck do Athletes need to be paid that much money?

The minimum salary for a Pro Baseball player is $400,000 per season.

That's at least 2,000 every game. Whether they play or not. And that's only the MINIMUM!

That's an insane amount of money. An insane amount.

I just don't see the need to pay people that much money to do something they love.

It's not dangerous. It's not a vital occupation necessary for our Nation's growth. It is simply providing entertainment. And they get paid more than most doctors and lawyers combined.

Second of all, and the actual issue in this situation, is the fact that Puljos is/was paid less than what Holliday is being promised. His contract is up, and will the Cardinals have enough money to re-sign him?? Or will they just remain complacent with the fact that they now have Holliday, and deal with the loss of a great ball player.

Should the cardinals focus more on keeping a player who has been with them for his entire major league career? or should they risk putting all their money on their team newbie.

I have to admit i don't know enough about sports to answer those questions.

But it seems like a delicate decision has been made, and St. Louis Cardinal Fans will be anticipating the '11 season when Puljo's contract is finally up.

More Senior Stuff!!!

Soooo many events for senior year!

This weekend the first big one, Mother Daughter Bunko!!!!

My mom and I will be fiercely competing, and winning the game this Saturday morning and we will leave our competitors in the dust.

I am super excited!

I love bunko! the last time i played i won $25 dollars!!!

The thing i find funny is one of the girls signing up was like "Oh bunco!!!! Great, my mom is SOOOO good at that game"

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Obviously she doesn't understand the concept of sheer luck...

An elephant never........ what's that word??

Today in Psychology we started a chapter on Memory. Our teacher played a few games with us to test our short and long term memory ability. She had us recall the names of the 7 dwarfs and recall noun/adjective pairs from 20 sentences.

It was a really great class, and a fun lecture to learn.
What really scares me is my own memory.
I have baaaadddd problems with remembering things.
ask my parents how many times i have left something at home, forgotten to ask a teacher something, forgotten to call them when i've arrived at a place.
It's gotten to a point where i get mad at myself for forgetting things i know i should remember.
Even writing stuff on my hand doesn't guarantee that i will bring in a folder for orchestra, or 7 dollars for lunch on the shelf.

And wow do i HATE that i have a excuse.
One of the maaannnnyyy symptoms that comes with Fibromyalgia is memory loss. A battle i am not happy to fight.

In January of 2007 I got a severe concussion while playing indoor soccer. Ever since then I experienced back, shoulder and neck pain. I blamed it on the stress of finals as my freshman year of High School ended. But even after finals were over, and during our family trip to Disney, I still experienced muscle soreness. My mom took me to my doctor but she didn't think it was anything. I went to another doctor, and she diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia. I've been living with fibro for about 3 years now, I'm 17 and a senior in high school, and the chronic pain has not defeated me.

The memory loss is caused by chronic pain. Research shows that pain is connected to the brain's encoding of new information.
The lack of sleep that fibromyaglia effects the brains ability to remember things.

Long term memory isn't a problem,

• difficulty remembering details
• difficulty remembering new information
• difficulty finding the right words to express yourself

those are things i've got to worry about.


“Fibromyalgia causes a tremendous amount of suffering and there are really no good treatments for fibromyalgia right now,” says Dr. Mary Lynch, the director of research at the Pain Management Clinic at Dalhousie.


weird things i've noticed about living with Fibro:
when the weather changes, so does the pain.
not eating wheat helps with the stomach and head aches.
when I get a cold the pain increases.
for me, the pain is less in the morning

some facts
Roughly one-quarter of people with fibromyalgia are work-disabled
FDA approved the first drug for fibromyalgia in 2007 and more treatments are being developed!!

Symptoms

• Muscular aching, throbbing, shooting, stabbing, or intense burning.
• Extreme Fatigue Difficulty concentrating and retaining new information may seriously interfere with everyday mental tasks. referred to as "fibro fog"
• Trouble falling asleep and more importantly staying asleep,
• frequent abdominal pain
• chronic headaches
• jaw pain
• depression and anxiety

Ok.... sorry for the pity pot. I'm not looking for pity. I am just writing for awareness. I know many people out there suffer from this and I would love to support them.

An excerpt from Angels and Demons. One of my favorite books.

I think this is one of the best written speeches i've ever read, it is absolutely fantastic.

Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca:

To the Illuminati, and to those of science, let me say this. You have won the war.

The wheels have been in motion for a long time. Your victory has been inevitable. Never before has it been as obvious as it is at this moment. Science is the new god.

Medicine, electronic communications, space travel, genetic manipulation… these are the miracles about which we now tell our children. These are the miracles we herald as proof that science will bring us the answers. The ancient stories of immaculate conceptions, burning bushes, and parting seas are no longer relevant. God has become obsolete. Science has won the battle. We concede.

But science’s victory has cost every one of us. And it has cost us deeply.

Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and drudgery and provided an array of gadgetry for our entertainment and convenience, but is has left us in a world with out wonder. Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed. Science proclaims that Planet Earth and its inhabitants are a meaningless speck in the grand scheme. A cosmic accident. Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone. We are bombarded with violence, division, fracture, and betrayal. Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history? Does science hold anything sacred? Science looks for answers by probing our unborn fetuses. Science even presumes to rearrange our own DNA. It shatters God’s world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning… and all it finds is more questions.

The ancient war between science and religion as over. You have won. But you have not won fairly. You have not won by providing answers. You have won by so radically reorienting our society that the truths we once saw as signposts now seem inapplicable. Religion cannot keep up. Scientific growth is exponential. It feeds on itself like a virus. Every new breakthrough opens doors for new breakthroughs. Mankind took thousands of years to progress from the wheel to the car. Yet only decades from the car into space. Now we measure scientific progress in weeks. We are spinning out of control. The rift between us grows deeper and deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves in a spiritual void. We cry out for meaning. And believe me, we do cry out. WE see UFOs, engage in channeling, spirit contact, out-of-body experiences, mindquests — all these eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, but they are unashamedly irrational. They are the desperate cry of the modern soul, lonely and tormented, crippled by its own enlightenment and its inability to accept meaning in anything removed from technology.

Science, you say, will save us. Science, I say, has destroyed us. Since the days of Galileo, the church has tried to slow the relentless march of science, sometimes with misguided means, but always with benevolent intention. Even so, the temptations are too great for man to resist. I warn you, look around yourselves. The promises of science have not been kept. Promises of efficiency and simplicity have bred nothing but pollution and chaos. We are a fractured and frantic species… moving down a path of destruction.

Who is this God science? Who is the God who offers his people power but no moral framework to tell you how to use that power? What kind of God gives a child fire but does not warn the child of its dangers? The language of science comes with no signposts about good and bad. Science textbooks tell us how to create a nuclear reaction, and yet they contain no chapter asking us if it is a good or a bad idea.

To science, I say this. The church is tired. We are exhausted from trying to be you sign posts. Our resources are drying up from our campaign to be the voice of balance as you plow blindly on in your quest for smaller chips and larger profits. We ask not why you will not govern yourselves, but how can you? Your world moves so fast that if you stop even for an instant to consider the implications of your actions, someone more efficient will whip past you in a blur. So you move on. You proliferate weapons of mass destruction, but it is the Pope who travels the world beseeching leaders to use restraint. You clone living creatures, but it is the church reminding us to consider the moral implications of our actions. You encourage people to interact on phones, video screens, and computers, but it is the church who opens its doors and reminds us to commune in person as we were meant to do. You even murder unborn babies in the name of research that will save lives. Again, it is the church who points the fallacy of that reasoning.

And all the while, you proclaim the church is ignorant. But who is more ignorant? The man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its awesome power? This church is reaching out to you. Reaching out to everyone. And yet the more we reach, the more you push us away. Show me proof there is a God, you say. I say use your telescopes to look to the heavens, and tell me how there could not be a God! You ask what does God look like. I say, where does that question come from? The answers are one and the same. Do you not see God in you science? How can you miss Him! You proclaim that even the slightest change in the force of gravity or the weight of an atom would have rendered our universe a lifeless mist rather than our magnificent sea of heavenly bodies, and yet you fail to see God’s hand in this? Is it really so much easier to believe that we simply chose the right card from a deck of billions? Have we become so spiritually bankrupt that we would rather believe in mathematical impossibility than in a power greater than us?

Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this. When we as a species abandon our trust in the power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faith… all faiths… are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable… With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. If the outside world could see this church as I do… looking beyond the ritual of these walls… they would see a modern miracle… a brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control.

Are we obsolete? Are these men dinosaurs? Am I? Does the world really need a voice for the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the unborn child? Do we really need souls like these who, though imperfect, spend their lives imploring each of us to read the signposts of morality and not lose our way?

Tonight we are perched on a precipice. None of us can afford to be apathetic. Whether you see this evil as Satan, corruption, or immorality, the dark force is alive and growing every day. Do not ignore it. The force, though mighty, is not invincible. Goodness can prevail. Listen to your hearts. Listen to God. Together we can step back from this abyss.

Pray with me.

And the bug comes back.

The cold has come back in town,

but this time with a new twist.

The fear of the swine. (more appropriately known as the H1N1 flu)

I'm not so worried about it, although i've got a cold right now.

It's flu season people, THE FLU HAPPENS....

just wash your hands,

get some sleep,

and drink water.

Today i drank 6 water bottles in 7 hours. Mission accomplished.

I am going to beat this cold before it gets the better of me.

September 11th Remembered Well At Lafayette

It was 8 years ago that we had the scare of our lives.

I can't even believe its been that long!

It seems like just yesterday i was in fourth grade, sitting in my classroom when the teachers turned on the television to hear the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

Now, i don't remember very much because my parents made sure that all the newspapers and TV reports were hidden from us kids.

But now, September 11th is remembered in the most subtle, yet meaningful ways.

Yesterday at 7:50 outside on the football field, the ROTC, the principle Mr. Shaughnessy, a trumpet player from our band, and myself along with 100 or so other students and faculty held a commemorative ceremony dedicated to lives lost during 9/11. It was simple, yet as my principle and i said after, meaningful.

Then throughout the day, 4 bell were chimed followed by a requested moment of silence to signify the four plane crashes that day.

In orchestra we played a piece entitled Dedication. It was a sight-reading piece (meaning our first time as an orchestra reading through a piece of music with no pratice) But the seniors in the class have played it three times before. My orchestra director plays this every year with us as a memorial to the bravery of the firefighters and police who dedicated their lives to protecting our country.

Later that night we had our first home football game. While tailgating we saw a firetruck by the entrance of the field and an American Flag was raised above the gate. Then while walking in, all of the Superfans (a great club at LHS dedicated to cheering on our athletes) were given little american flags which were held, stuck in ponytails, head bands and proudly given to younger kids around the stadium.

Then, before the game, Mr. Shaughnessy gave a small speech and the choir proudly sung the national anthem.

Overall i am really proud to be an American and a Lafayette High School Student.

I want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

For the first time in the almost eight years we have lived in Missouri i have ventured out onto the well paved, beautifully landscaped bike trail.

Today my youth group was cancelled, it was a beautiful 76 degrees, and i had finished all my homework.

So Shelby and i packed our two bikes into my car.

Yes, two bikes into the tiny Chrysler. Despite my dads insistence that they wouldn't fit, they fit perfectly!

Anyway, we drove down to the high school and rode our bikes a little over 6 miles.

A nice quick ride. It was beautiful and quite enjoyable.

We had such a great time, and now we're super sore and ready for our next "adventure"