Video Essay

Okay so this is the essay that Christina and I worked on for this class. I hope you guys like it. It took us approximately twelve hours to complete nine minutes of video. Yippee!

Reflejando

I'm relatively certain that means reflecting in Espanol, which is precisely what I am supposed to be doing in this post, as commanded by the High King Teacher Person Dude. That is his full name. Personally, I find it ironic that I am supposed to be blogging a reflection. Why is this ironic? Because my second post, which I think may have actually been my first at one point, was titled "Fall Reflections." This post gags me a little bit. That sad part is, I thought it was like the longest post ever. "Whew, glad to have that monster out of the way," was basically how I felt. Bah! What a wimp! Good God child. I think my longest post ever was the one where I was showing that crazy milk man who is boss. It was like 5 posts and ridiculously long. That was fun too.

Let's see here. What else is there to say? Well, I'm definitely bipolar (or manic-depressive, as we have previously discussed). Somewhere during second term I went through this crazy blogging phase and ended up having like 3000 words more than were required for my class. It was, simply put, insane. This past term I've definitely been in the "depressive" phase. I've barely even made the minimum requirement. That is why I have to write approximately a thousand words on my fancy little blog today. I was, oh, 2400 words behind at the start of the weekend. That is a bit of a problem, isn't it?

Let's get back to the reflecting though, shall we? Seeing as I'm not really good at this type of stuff I'm going to look at a few suggestions. I could talk about if I've ever done anything like this before… Sounds good. Nope. I haven't ever done anything like this. I think it is pretty cool though. Even though in two weeks only 215 people have looked at my blog, it is still pretty cool to think that people I've never known, nor will ever know, have read my writing. It is akin to being a famous author! Except for the famous part, of course. You know what I mean.

Another little prompt: do I think I'll continue writing on this wonderful piece of literature? Let's be perfectly honest with each other, shall we? I always feel honesty is the best policy. I would like to continue blogging, and my state of mind right now is that I will. But the problem with me is that I'm a procrastinator of the worst type, and kind of lazy. If blogging isn't required, it probably won't happen very much. Maybe every once in a while I'll pop in and see how things are going in Bloggerland. That's just what I envision happening. It is always possible that I'll go into my manic phase once summer starts and blog up a storm all summer long. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I'm glad you agree. I suppose we can always hope. Just warning you though, it is possible that I will never blog again in my life. Don't think I died or anything, I just stopped blogging. If that turns out to be the case, I guess this is goodbye isn't it? Goodbye faithful readers. It has been nice.

Jimmy Johns!

I did a bit of research and found the commercial that I was talking aboot. Turns out the stupid little sun/face thing is embedded in a sandwich. But that really isn't the important part. What matters is how annoying it is. The end. Hope you hate it as much as I do! (I bet you don't hear that very often.)

Advertissements

    I'm pretty sure this actually isn't the way you spell advertisements in any language, but it definitely looks like it could be French or something doesn't it? Yeah, I thought so too. I'm glad you agree. Why did I title my blog this way? Just because it would look way more cool than it would were it in English (was that good grammar? Doubtful. Whatever). But the reason I'm writing this post is mainly to complain. You see, I HATE advertisements.

Commercials are some of the most obvious and stupid. Every tv show is either around 22 minutes or 45, depending on whether it is supposed to be 30 or 60 minutes. This means that only two thirds of your show is actually… your show. How stupid is this? Real stupid. Why waste so much time on dumb little commercials. One of my least favorite commercials is the one for Jimmy Johns. You may or may not have seen it. It is horrible. It is a little face thing flying through the air screaming. It continues to scream. It really doesn't stop. Just keeps going and going. On and on. Forever and ever. Kind of like this ramble I'm doing for you. It is that annoying and more, my friends. Then it stops! It is blessed peace for about 3 seconds. Then the stupid face/sun thing starts screaming and crying all over again. And then it implants itself in, well, something. I can't tell. But it really isn't important what it is implanted in. Then it goes Jimmy Johns! Or something. I dunno. I hate it. It is the stupidest thing ever. The end.

Another bothersome thing is ads in publications. Especially magazines. Goodness Gracious. They make me angry. I get excited when my magazine is like 200 pages long. Then I start going through and it is practically none of what I think it should be about and mostly about all these random products and stupid prescription medicines. Those are the worst because they have to include a whole page, or two, of all of their stupid warnings and things that go wrong when you take them. If they are so bad are they really worth fixing whatever they're fixing? And a lot of times they don't even work anyway. I think prescription medicines that aren't morphine are overrated. Personally. Anyway back to my magazine complaint.

One time I decided to count how many pages were actual magazine and how many were ads. Over half of the magazine was ads. How completely and totally annoying. What they should do is stick all the ads in the back so that if you want you can peruse them at your leisure. Not just sneakily slip the slimy stupid things everywhere. It is such a pain. I feel really whiny right now, but oh well. It feels good to get this off my chest. Plus, I need to write about a thousand more words today for my blog so I'm feeling kind of pressured, and most of the posts that will be posted today are going to suck, just a warning. But you'll still love me, right?

 

My Lovely Job

I work at the Hy-Vee Salad Bar. It is by far the most interesting job I have ever had, though I bet some people would tell me my job history sucks after saying that. Despite the possibly chagrined comments, I like it.

Back at the salad bar, which unfortunately is maintained between 40 and 50 degrees all day long, we make all of the Di Lusso salads, bagel pizzas, fruit pizzas, and other things generally involving cold food preparation. We also, rather obviously, take care of the stuff inside the... salad bar.

The Di Lusso salads are those slightly over priced pre made salads that look oh-so-delicious. Unbelievably, we sell around 25 different types of salad. I've worked there for three weeks and I've only made around 10 kinds, but I'll try to give you a rundown of our most popular (as if you care). Okay here goes. We have: Garden, Fiesta Chicken, Fiesta Beef, Cobb, Frutto Formaggio, Chicken Club, Chicken Caesar, Homestyle Chef's, Spinach, Greek, Black and Bleu, 7-Layer. Those are all of the types I can think of off the of my head. I'll try to keep you updated on this headline making news. But for now its back to Cabrito (that would be me again) for the weather.

Note: I actually did spell bleu right up above, so if you thought you were some super smart editor of the New York Times, think again. Bleu as in bleu cheese. And you know what? If Bleu cheese is really spelled blue cheese I don't care. Bleu is what the label says and I think the label should be trusted. It is in print and its being circulated around the country, and everybody knows that if its in writing its completely true. Except for if some loser politician writes it, then you know its probably false.

The weather today looks absolutely fantastic but I don't think that that is important or on topic good sir. Back to you for the headline making news.

But by the way, I really don't like my job. It is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boring. The end!

Okay People, This is sad

By the way I'm actually writing this post on the 27th, not the 23, but I figure my reflection post should be last. I was thinking today about how I was proud I had made it up to 2400 words, which is 8 posts with 300 words each, and was our generic requirement. I always do less posts because then I can ramble more about one topic rather than write about a bunch of different topics. As I was sitting thinking about how good I am to have caught up in a one day blogfest I realized something. It should be 400 words, not 300. Oh no. This puts me 800 words behind, which is the equivalent of two posts. Which means two points down the tubes. Which means that now I am here blogging away trying to catch up so that I can get a good grade in this class for once. So here I am. Typing away listlessly. Tired out of my mind. Yay for blogging! Ooh! Guys! I'm at 180 words already, this is good. This is very good. I'm one fourth of the way done!

Just in case anyone was wondering, Embroz is over there frightening a poor young lassie to death. He's telling her this might all be a flash or something. It is a bit distracting. I'm not sure I understand either, but hey. By writing this in here I've probably gotten about 50 more words. Only 550 to go!

So me and my neighborfriend Hanna started watching Lost season one on abc.com last year. Want to know how to get there, just in case you want to watch it sometime? Yeah, I figured you would. First you go to http://www.abc.com. Then you click on the Free Episodes link, which I think is in red. It will open a little box type thing with all of the abc.com shows that you can watch for free. There are quite a few but Lost is the one we are looking for. Click on that, you might have to download the movie player thing but it doesn't take long at all so it shouldn't be a big deal. Once that happens it will take you to the Lost homepage thing and from there you can select the season and episode. The earlier episodes are on the bottom, though, so don't let that trip you up like it almost did to me. Once you click on your episode you will have to choose whether you want standard streaming or High Def. I always do Hi Def but I'm guessing it doesn't really matter. By the way, Emma thinks it is creepy to watch shows online, but really it isn't. Feel free to do it.

Zoom Zoom

NOTE: Blogger is being an immature two year old right now, and will not function properly. The pictures are in the order in which they are mentioned, except reversed. So switch the top and bottom images and you will have it right. Just refer to the top when it seems like I might have been hinting at a picture. Kthxbai.

See this lovely little piece of technology? What is it, you ask? It is a Nike+ sensor, of course. I'm going to tell you all about it.

So you buy the sensor, and if you have a second generation iPod touch then the sensor is $20 and that's that. You're ready to go. If you have an iPod nano it is $15 more expensive because you have to buy a wireless hooky uppy thinger. And that is technical talk, I'm sorry if you didn't understand all of it.

Once you have the sensor you turn on your iPod touch and go to settings. Click on the Nike+ button and you will be able to slide a little switch to the "on" position, which will place a Nike+ icon on your home screen. The next step is putting in your gender and weight, followed by syncing your sensor with your iPod so they can talk to eachother. It's really easy, all you have to do is walk around while the iPod just chills there searching for it. Then once it has found it, they are linked. Easy peazy.

The coolest part about it is the website that you are allowed to sign up for upon purchasing a sensor. Actually, you might not even have to purchase one, I'm not sure. Maybe you should go check and then comment back here so I know? I think that sounds just marvelous (this word, marvelous, must be said in a British accent. Don't Forget). But you will. Nobody ever listens to me. It's okay though. I often ignore myself too.

The website though. That is what I was trying to discuss. Once you've signed up and everything it has a bunch of handy little tools to make sure that you stay healthy and running and walking and all those other wonderful little things. My favorite part is when it graphs your most recent run. It is very cool. You don't believe me? Well I'll show you.

Anyway. Isn't this neat? It shows your average speed over time! Now this one looks a lot worse than is normal for me, just so you know. I took a quick stand break in the middle before I ran again because I had just walked up this big steep hill and I wanted a break, okay? I forgot to pause my workout so... it graphed me standing still for like 30 seconds. But I know what it means, and so do you, so I'll try not to worry about it too much.

It also does something like this except it shows all of your runs. Here, another picture. I'm just going picture crazy today. I can't help it.

See? This shows how many runs I've done and on which date, and how long they were. So far my longest is only 2.2 miles but... By the end of my training thing (a picture of which will no doubt end up on here before this post is over) I'll be scheduled to run three miles. The thing is, the people who plan out the training obviously don't expect people to actually run as long as they are supposed to. My very last day of training say "walk 5, run 30, walk 5." Now, I don't know about you but 40 minutes and three miles? You have to be running like 1 inch per minute to take that long. So it'll probably end up being like 5 miles. When they say one it ends up being two so I figure a scheduled three will be five or six. That's cool. I need the exercise. I haven't legitimately exercised, other than on vacations, since eighth grade. So I suppose I'll be making up for it.

Also, when you are looking at this graph you can highlight one of your runs to see average time and calories burned and everything. Here, why don't I show you.

Neat, huh? I'm glad you agree. So the run pictures you've been seeing are all from yesterday. It was pretty tiring because it was 86 degrees and 40% humidity. Which made it feel really hot. And sucky. But I'll complain about it more to you later. I have places to go and people to see.

Another neat little feature is the training. That is the fourth picture, by the way. You can choose from different programs, or decide to make your own. Mine is called "Walk to Run". Which basically means that you start out walking (duh) and by the end are running more. It not only has you start running but it increases over time from one to three miles. As I've mentioned already towards the end you have a run thirty minutes. This seems like a lot to me. I've probably only run 20 minutes without stopping before and I was going really slow so. I don't know if it qualifies exactly. But this training program sort of eases you into it by gradually having you run more often, and making every other day really easy (only one minute of running). I think it is kind of fun, personally. And when it tells you all the calories you've burned that's always nice too when you're as fat as I am. Did you know that 3000 calories is equivalent to one pound of fat? That means I'm one pound lighter than I would have been if I wasn't running with my sensor dealio. Good stuff.

Personally I think everyone should have one of these sensors, even if you don't have the special shoe that Nike wants you to buy. You can just stick the little sensor under your shoelaces or anywhere really. Be creative. It's totally worth the $20 or $35 dollars. Completely. K that's the end.