weeks.. long one

                My week was to say the least hectic.  I always seem busy no matter how hard I try not to be.  I’m always at work, always doing homework, and always trying to make time for friends.  I know people say college is amazing, it is better than high school, but they need to work full time and also be a full time student.  It’s not impossible I know and I’m sure theirs things I could do so I wasn’t so busy.  I could try to cut out some work time, I don’t need to work full time I just do it for the money. I know a lot of people have it worse than I do don’t get me wrong.  I couldn’t do what a lot of people do with raising children, running a house, and going to school I have a lot of respect for those people. 

                The only thing that keeps me sane is that I spend time with my girlfriend about once a week. It’s not much time but I love it.  We don’t get a lot of time together but the time we do have, it’s amazing. I can’t get enough of her, we randomly met at a tennis in October. Since then we’ve been through a lot together. I was with her when her grandma died, that was really hard for her and it just happened. Her grandma was one of her best friends she told her everything.  That was a time where I wanted to be with her more but she understood that I’m busy with work and school and she told me just to be there for the funeral if I could.  We seem to understand each other really well, we are both young but we’ve been through a lot. I know that some couples are together for years and they’re happy still but that honey moon phase fades. I’m hoping ours lasts for a long time because I don’t want it to fade. I know it will but while we have it I want it to stay that way.

                I know I complain a lot but I’m really thankful for all I have, I could be a lot worse off.  I have a family who loves me and a great job. Some people don’t even have a job right now, and they’re trying to support a family.  I’m also in college to better my future and my families future. I want to be able to provide for them and enjoy the time we have together.  Working full time might be a pain but at least I know I’ll be able to support myself when it’s time to adventure off into the real world.  I just want to stay young for a little longer. What with everything that we go through nowadays it seems like kids don’t get to enjoy the years they have. We are going through a rough time in Americas history but we will get through stronger and closer then ever.

marijuana?

Let me make one thing clear, I do not smoke or condone smoking of marijuana. I believe everyone in entitled to their own choices and do not look poorly on anyone for such choices. I’m sure that you have all heard the whole why marijuana should be legalized spiel. Well let me tell you why it should not be legalized and should stay the way it is.  If you were to legalize marijuana then you could make stuff from hemp. Some things include, paper, clothes, and a lot of other products that are useful.  But hemp would make other companies go out of business because you don’t want to make things to cheap then they make no money.   Also if you were to legalize marijuana then government would be able to tax it. With so many people smoking marijuana this could drastically help out our nation’s deficit! But I guess a few trillion dollars in debt isn’t too bad right? If you made it legal what would we do with all of that extra money? We couldn’t give people a job on a farm to help out the unemployment rate because then no one needs the Medicaid.  With all of these people getting jobs we wouldn’t want them to spend too much money because then we are messing up what our country was founded on, borrowing money. 

                Medicine, we all need it at some point in our lives.  If marijuana was legal it would be almost too easy to use as medicine.  I know that when my brother had cancer he was put on medical marijuana of a sort. Man he got the munchies like crazy, he could eat four beefy 5 layer burritos from taco bell fast. But it helped him so no one complained!  Marijuana can help patience so let’s keep them suffering so that they don’t get better.  Because let’s face it, with less sick people the hospitals wouldn’t be needed and that’d be a bummer for all of those doctors.  We can all get a prescription for Vicoden though which some kids use as a drug that’s a lot better than marijuana. Yeah making marijuana legal sure looks crappy, we definitely don’t want to do that.

                Now let’s look at why it should be legal, you don’t have to worry about petty criminals in jail because they were caught selling weed.  With less people in prison our tax dollars don’t pay for the inmate’s expenses. This would save us a lot of money in the long run because we aren’t on drug patrol as much as the cops can be looking for real criminals.  With marijuana being legal you could get some companies money because their junk food would sell with everyone being hungry all the time.  You could also find a way to turn the profits from the tax like the profits from tobacco are used for schools.  It seems like a good way to raise tax and to keep our tax dollars from being wasted on prisons I think.

fun week

                This week has been a fun week for me.  On Saturday night I and my friend Jory randomly decided that we would drive to Columbia, Missouri to hang out with a friend we hadn’t seen in awhile that’s attending MU.  On the way there we got lost in Osage Beach because the roads were not in our GPS.  After driving around 30 minutes there looking for our way out we finally got back onto highway 54.  At about 11:30 pm, we got pulled over by a state trooper.  He asked us if we knew why he pulled us over and I couldn’t stop laughing because honestly we had no idea where we were even, or if we were heading in the right direction.  After a few minutes of getting questioned we saw two more state troopers; that was a lot of fun.  They finally let us go with a warning to stop swerving and with the directions we needed to get there.  We headed home Sunday afternoon, stopped and ate at lamberts, pretty awesome place to eat.  On Monday I missed my first two classes because I overslept, not that I cared I hate going to those classes.  But then I worked after my accounting class.  The next day went the same way, work and school. Seems like a fun week so far.

                Wednesday my week got a little better.  Thankfully I didn’t have school because I’m not a senior, but I also was told not to come into work.  So I decided I’d go see my girlfriend whom I only get to see about once a week because she lives an hour away from me and gas is freaking expensive.  But while I was there we went out on a double date.  Went to the park also, you know all the cheesy things guys do randomly. It was probably the best day I had all week. 

                Since Wednesday I’ve been working, going to class, and doing homework.  I’ve kind of gotten behind on homework so I’ve been playing catch up.  I’ve realized that you should never put homework off because when you realize its late you have about 6 assignments to do.  Oh well that’s my own stupid fault, I’ll learn sooner or later that I should just suck it up and get it done the night it is assigned.  Tomorrow will be a good day, I have the day off and then in the afternoon my girlfriend is coming here so that we can just hang out.  It’s always fun when she’s here, I never know what to do though because I’m a very spontaneous person and making plans never goes well for me.  We will probably just go to dinner hang out at my house and watch movies.  Maybe I’ll get crazy and go skating or something, like I said not very good at planning things.  But I won’t complain, seeing her twice in one week isn’t very common so I will take it when I can and be happy. Overall my week wasn’t too bad I suppose.

Right to bear arms

In America you have the right to bear arms, but is this law used effectively? The second amendment also says that you have a right to a well armed militia.  Some people within the government would like to make it to were owning a firearm is impractical.  They are trying to limit is so much that at the end of the day a firearm is just an expensive club. Personally I believe that if you want to own a gun there should be no restrictions.  I understand that not all people who own a firearm should, but to limit it completely violates the thing America was built on. There are some restrictions that are well thought through on gun restrictions. Some people are just not mentally mature enough to own a firearm; if you have ever been in a mental institution then legally you cannot purchase a firearm or ammunition.  Also if you have ever been a convicted felon you cannot buy a gun.  These restrictions are logical for many reasons.  You don’t want a mentally insane person owning a firearm because then you never know when they’ll have an episode of inflict damage on themselves or on someone else.  If you have been convicted of a felony then why would you be allowed to own a gun? The only gun you can own as a convicted felon is a muzzle loader (black powder gun).  The only reason you can even own this is because you only have one shot, and muzzle loaders aren’t very accurate. 

                Along with owning a gun, some people like to have the right to a concealed weapon.  I see nothing wrong with this. Personally, I feel safer knowing that someone I am with has a firearm hidden on their person.  Others might not agree because the person might be “irresponsible” with such a firearm.  To get your license to conceal you must take a class; this class is not very hard from what I have heard.  You have to be 23 years of age to take this class, some people don’t think that is old enough.  I can see why people don’t like have a concealed weapon around them, with such an easy class anyone can go take a two hour class and pass. This is a legitimate fear, I think that you should make the class harder so that you can weed out the people who aren’t responsible enough to own let alone conceal a weapon.  Too get a handgun you must be 21 years of age, so you have two years to become effective with a handgun before you can actually carry one legally.  But to buy a rifle or a shotgun you only have to be 18 years of age. This seems backwards to me, anyone can shoot up close but in order to be accurate farther away you have to be calm.  I would think that to own a rifle you’d be 21 and to own a handgun you’d be 18. 

                I know why people believe that you should not own a gun, but I believe you should.  It’s not guns that kill people, but morons with guns that kill people.  If the screening process to buy a gun was harder and longer then less people that don’t need guns would have them.   Likewise if the concealed weapon class was harder then you’d have less people carrying around a gun.  I can see why people don’t like them.  I myself own guns, and when I’m 21 I will buy a handgun.  When I turn 23 I will also get my license to conceal because I’d rather be prepared in the case that I need it.

Snow Sucks

This week I am talking about work and how much fun it was to drive around in the snow.  I work at a graphics art company and we were extremely busy this week.  My best friend’s dad owns the company, which is why I got the job.  But we had so much snow this week that it was hard for me to get into work.  I actually missed Tuesday and Wednesday because it was impossible for me to make the 10 minute drive.  I live on a huge hill and my car, a mercury mountaineer with rear wheel drive, was stuck at the bottom of the hill.  I tried for probably half of an hour to get it out but I couldn’t.  I called my immediate boss and he told me to not come in but if they needed me they’d call.  I’m glad that he didn’t call though because the only way that I was going to be going into work was if I walked, there was absolutely no way at all I was going to walk that far. 

                Well on Thursday I finally got out of my driveway and my 10 minute drive turned into a 40 minute drive thanks to all the idiots going 15 miles per hour.  I mean I understand that they roads are bad but do you really need to go that slow? You’re probably more likely to get stuck going that slow rather than if you just grew a pair and sped up just a little bit.  I was at work for about 5 hours and we really were swamped, no one was there really and I was bored.  I had to fill orders all day, because we sell stamps and things basically because the woman who usually does it couldn’t get to work, she lives a mile away. 

                Then today when I went in, the roads still sucked and people were stilling driving slow.  I saw more cars on the side of the road today than there were yesterday.  All day I had to ship orders because fedex and ups were actually going to pick up today.  I was supposed to be off work by four today but because of the snow I didn’t leave until after six.  Fedex ground was running way behind and couldn’t get to our company; they had to pick up 20 packages. Then I had to help him load all of them because he couldn’t get to our shipping department.  It took him longer to load the stupid boxes then it took me to ship everything.

                On my way home I thought that maybe people would be driving the speed limit but no such luck.  The roads still suck because all of the road cleaners for MODOT were busy cleaning the highway off.  It took even longer to get home today then it took to get to work.  When there’s just a little bit of snow people freak out.  I know we haven’t had this much in years but come one people, use some brains, don’t cut people off, stop earlier at a stop light, and speed the heck up a little.

Abstinence only vs. Abstinence plus

In high schools all around the world kids are going through sex education. In these sex education classes kids learn how to stay abstinent, but they don’t learn how to be safe if they do have sex before marriage.  Let’s face it most high school students don’t wait until marriage to have sex anymore.  If abstinence is the only thing that they’re taught, then when they have the chance to have sex they won’t be prepared with the proper knowledge of how to protect themselves from teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases or sexually transmitted infections.  There is a better method though to preparing kids, its abstinence plus.  Abstinence plus is basically like sex education but it better prepares for choices you might make about sex.  It shows you what you can do to stay safe, and how you can protect yourself from sexually transmitted diseases, or sexually transmitted infections.

                I went to Carl Junction and they taught us abstinence, they didn’t give us another option at all, it was just remaining abstinent until marriage so that you don’t get pregnant.  This wasn’t the smart thing to do; they didn’t give us an alternative.  If they had taught us alternatives then maybe my class wouldn’t have graduated with 15 girls pregnant or have had kids.  The abstinence plus program shows you how to do just that, it takes the normal abstinence only approach but spins it to making sure that you are safe.  They do this by telling you about condoms, and making sure you can get checks for yourself. 

                Let’s face it we were all at one point a hormone crazed high school students.  You didn’t care what your parents said about anything, if you wanted to be alone with your girlfriend or boyfriend you were going to be.  You could always get protection from the nearest gas station bathroom for fifty cents.  You might not have thought about consequences about your actions.  At least you were being safe right? That’s what abstinence plus is all about, showing you the alternatives.  As long as you are safe you’re and emotionally and physically mature you have the right to be sexually active.  I found on a website that with abstinence plus a third of students had sex within 24 months.  But with abstinence only 42 percent had sex within 24 months. 

                I can see why a lot of parents prefer their kids learning about abstinence only, in today’s world its scary how many diseases you can get from sex.  No parent wants that for their child, in that aspect abstinence only is a great method because it only shows you how to stay safe.  Abstinence only can work if you do it correctly as shown on this website talking about abstinence only.  It shows you that if both people remain abstinent until marriage then you have no chance of getting a sexually transmitted disease.  Abstinence only shows that if you don’t want to get pregnant before marriage then the best way to do that is to not have sex.  If you are safe then you don’t have to worry about any of that. 

Busy week

                This week has been busy; I have had so much freaking homework that it’s insane.  In my Econ class I had an assignment do on Thursday, I had an assignment do that I had to write out all of the questions too also.  It literally took me 2 hours to finish the stupid assignment.  I didn’t even get anything out of the assignment other than that if you don’t know an answer just hope he doesn’t check that problem.  It seems like all of the homework is due in the same few days.  I had the econ one and then I also had three assignments due for my computer class. Those ones were pretty easy though, we had to do excel assignments.  In high school I had actually taught excel to my class when the teacher was gone.  I hate having to take it again; it seems like a waste of my time.  But I guess it’s required for my major I really don’t have much of a choice but to take it.  I also had accounting homework do, It made me mad I had to redo an entire problem because I put a “.” where a “,” was suppose to be.  Oh well I guess homework is an everyday thing in college, you either do it or you fail.

                I have decided that 8 a.m. classes suck, I have a class every day at 8 a.m. and it’s tiring.  If I had a choice I’d go in at 11 everyday, but I have to work full time so that’s not an option.  All my classes are done by 11:50 so I guess it’s not too bad.  Only bad part is waking up at 7, I haven’t made it to an 8 o’clock class on time yet.  I can leave earlier every day but I’m always stuck in traffic, to actually make it on time I’d need to leave at like 6:30 but there’s absolutely no way I’m going to do that, I’d rather sleep in though. 

Even though this week has been busy it’s been good.  I’ve worked a lot but oh well I make money and I can’t complain.  At least I’m lucky enough to have a job; I know a lot of people can’t get one with the way the economy is so I’m grateful for my job.  I work in a graphics art company; it’s an interesting place to work.  I only got the job because my best friend’s family owns it and I’m like a son to the owner.  I owe that family a lot, they’ve always been there for me and have always been willing to help me out if I needed anything.  They actually sold me the car I’m driving now, and for a really good price.  My car is a 2000 Mercury Mountaineer and I’ll have it paid off by the end of this year.  They also bought my cell phone so that I can save money.  Yeah even though this has been a busy week I don’t regret it at all.