What if? (10)

What if I knew what to write about? I would probably have a really interesting, thought-provoking blog, but I just don't know what to "What if?". I know the topic is open to anything and everything, but finding something to talk about is difficult. I mean I could say "What if I were president?", but I think that is too generic and boring. I could say "What if I won a million dollars?" or "what if I won the lottery?", but come on people, where is the creativity? If you've written blogs like these, I'm sure they are interesting, but I just don't want to do the same thing. =P. "What if I didn't have to work?" Well the answer to that would be that I would be lazy and broke. That's all I could come up with. I mean I would have more time for school work, but that's not exactly three hundred words. This is a difficult process. "What if I could go straight into the job I want without school?" Well, I doubt anyone would want to be treated by me. Without schooling, I wouldn't know anything about how to work on a human body or treat a human body, so I wouldn't want me working on me! All this time and I still don't know what to write about. I need something that shows creativity. Something that inspires thoughtful remarks. "What if the sky fell?" (inspired by Chicken Little) Well what is exactly in the sky to fall? It seems like just a big giant blue nothingness. I couldn't come up with enough to support a logical thought process. "What if there were no cops?" Would there still be crime? I kind of like that one. I may write something on that! Throwing ideas around has lead me to a decent idea! Maybe thinking inspires creativity?

What if? (9)

In the picture above, the red part hanging from his lip is his skin. He got in a fight with something and that is what happened. Also the blotch is from the fight to. Crazy dog.


What if Bruno wasn't so mischievous? My dog gets into everything. He is so curious about things that he shouldn't even try to mess with, like wasps. He chases them everywhere. Then he'll come in drooling because one stung him in the mouth. Then we have to dope him up on Benadryl. Then the swelling goes down, and he is back to normal. One Sunday I came home to a dog who was gushing blood from his nose and mouth. We jump in the car to get him to the emergency vet. On the way there, my mom is frantically driving while I sat in the back trying to control my dog. Blood is pouring everywhere. It is all over me, my back seat, my window. It just wasn't clotting. I didn't know what was going on. We get to the Emergency vet off Summer Ave, and they take him right back. We sit there for 2 and a half hours, the whole time I am covered in blood thinking that my dog is about to die. They call us back. As we walk back, the doctor says, "would you like to see what came out of your dog?" I'm thinking OH MY GOODNESS! So he takes us back to this kennel that has a huge pile of intestines and bile laying in it. Now I'm thinking, "Where the Heck is my Dog!?" In the kennel next to that, there is Bruno, standing there, SO excited to see us. So now the question is, WHAT is that? Well Bruno ate the insides of something on our land. In the process he cut open his nose and he got a big gash in his jowl from the rib cage. All the blood was partially his blood and partially the blood of the animal that he was trying to regurgitate. SOOOO gross! There are many other stories that I could tell, but the moral of the story is we frequently visit the Vet. I have to take a visit to see him Monday because Bruno got in a fight with something and the picture above shows what happened. He has cuts all in his mouth and the ones on the outside of his mouth. If Bruno was less mischievous, I wouldn't be so broke, but that wouldn't be Bruno. We love him just the way he is. He's now in the "Terrible Two" phase. Crap! =P

What if? (8)

What if everyone was colorblind? Well not necessarily color blind, but what if we didn't see colors, or never knew things were different colors? Many things are influenced by color. Things as simple as a stop light depend on color. Everyone knows the colors red for stop, yellow caution or yield, and green for go. What if we couldn't see the difference? Clearly there would have to be another system set into place. Road signs are also in colors. Red always signals stop; the red stop sign or a red flag in racing means to stop. Yellow always means caution; watch out for workers ahead or yield to oncomers. Green is always go. The blue and white lights of a cop car always signal us to stop, and the red and white lights of the ambulance always tell us to get out of the way. So clearly without colors our roads would be screwed up. At my work we have two agents and we use red and blue to tell the difference between the two. We have a red marker for Mark and a blue marker for Paul. People use yellow highlighters to mark if something is important, and teachers generally grade in red ink so it stands out on the page. Colors are a big part of our world, even with things that aren't really threatening like road conditions are. Things like buying a car, color is a big part of someones decision. When people try to match clothes, color is important. People match nail polish or accessories to the color of their outfit. These things are small, but it is a part of color. We even use color to characterize someones mood; blue being sad, red being mad, and yellow is generally used for happy. What would the world be like without color? It's a good question, but I can only imagine it being like the movie Pleasantville. They had no color. It didn't matter, but once they discovered it, color became everything. Color is a vital part of our everyday life. Without it, who knows how we would do things.

Outside Event #3: Molly Crosby

On April 1st, I attended a reading at Burkes Bookstore. Molly Crosby read from her book Asleep which is about a pandemic from the 1920s and 30s called encephalitis lethargica, the disease that makes you sleepy. She read the prologue from the book which was a story about her grandmother who suffered from this disease. Molly's grandmother spent about 180 of her life asleep. She was sixteen at the time. After she awoke, she stayed pretty weak for a few years, but she later married and had four children. She went on to live a fairly normal life, but other victims did not.

The disease varied in all cases. Some were asleep for a few days, some for a few months or years, and some were never to awake again. Some of the cases even suffered insanity. Mrs. Crosby described some of the cases while everyone sat kind of in a trance listening to her. Everyone seemed enlightened by what she was talking about. It was an intriguing story to hear of her grandmother who suffered from the disease. She talked a lot about her research and then she asked if anyone had questions.

Many people had questions. One question was "How hard was your research?" and she said it was difficult because at the time not many people had written about the story and there weren't many journals that she could get her hands on. She had to get a research grant because of HIPAA laws to be able to look at the Medical Journals. Once she got her research grant she began reading all these files on patients who suffered from this disease. Cases that started from what appeared to be Parkinson's that turned into people sleeping for days upon days. Crosby was inspired by Oliver Sacks and some of his research with the disease and she even spoke about his book The Awakenings. Since his book, there has been a movie made about his encounters with this disease. Molly Crosby's book reading was really interesting to see how science writing and research is difficult. It was really nice to see how everyone interacted with her and questioned what she encountered during her research and her to able to have an answer for every question thrown at her. The questions varied from something little to something more complex, and she could answer it. It was my favorite book reading thus far.

Outside Event 2

To: Wendy Sumner-Winter
From: April Bomprezzi (abomprezzi1010@gmail.com)
Date: March 10, 2010
Outside Event 2: Richard Bausch and Wyatt Prunty

Thursday, March 4th, I attended a reading at Burkes Bookstore. When we got to Burkes, the place was packed. Standing room only and people still flooded in! Richard Bausch was the main reader and he read from his book “Something Is Out There.” Before he read, his daughter played some songs on the guitar. I didn't know any of the songs she sang, and she was hard to understand at times. Many people were in awe of her performance as they sat and stared. Once she was finished, everyone clapped, and Richard Bausch began. He recognized his colleagues and the people who helped put everything together. He was a very laid back guy. He made a joke that 'only he could make a church sermon sound dirty'. Everyone laughed and then he began to read.


The story was titled “Immigration.” It was about a couple named the O'Keefes, Rita and Michael. Michael was an Irish man and Rita was his American wife. They were trying to file for permanent residency in the U.S. since his Visa had expired. The night before their appointment at the I.N.S. Office off Summer Ave, Rita is trying to think of all the things they need and she keeps feeling like they may forget something. Michael tells her to calm down and they'll worry about it in the morning. When Richard Bausch reads Michael's lines, he gives it an Irish accent. It really made the story that much better when he did that. It made you feel like you were in the story. The morning comes around and they wake up fifteen minutes before their appointment, and if they are late, their papers will be void and they will have to go through the whole process again. They argue the whole way to the INS building. Throughout the arguments as Richard reads, you can feel the heat between the two. You can imagine the argument. Everyone listens closely and smiles. They finally make it to the INS building and arrive just seconds before their names are called. They go through the appointment with the inspector prying at every aspect in their lives. Rita gets upset when the woman asks “Do you have any kids?” Michael explains that they were almost in a bad wreck on the way there and that she was pretty shaken up by it. The woman leaves the room and gives the O'Keefes time alone. Michael helped Rita get to feeling better. They would become permanent residents after all. Throughout the story, Richard Bausch gives each character emotion. He does each characters accents. You are able to imagine how the scene is. He describes it perfectly.

After Richard Bausch, Wyatt Prunty reads some of his poems. They were short, but long enough to understand the scene. By the time they were done reading, my legs were exhausted. We leave and many stay to get their books signed. We walk out to the car where we were blocked in. Yippee. We went in Burkes and asked if the Silver Volvo could come move their car, but no one spoke up. Finally, thirty minutes later, an older lady comes out of Burkes and moves her car. Frustrated? Yes. Other than that, I enjoyed the readings. =]

What if...? (7)

What if schooling was year round? Would kids like it? Year round schools go for so long and then they are off for a few weeks. Many systems go 45 days (9 weeks) and then they are off for 15 days (3 weeks). They still get the normal holidays, and spring break. They are not going to school anymore days than usual, they still go 180 days. This system would help with people forgetting stuff during summer. I know I usually forgot the stuff I learned during the summer. This would help try and make that issue better. People argue that 3 weeks or 10 weeks, students will still forget, but I think it would help. Students wouldn't get as lazy during the breaks because they don't really have enough time to get into the lazy groove. It allows parents to schedule vacations better, when other families aren't scheduling their vacations. It would help decrease money spent on childcare since the child will be in the school the majority of the time. Obviously some cons go along with this. It would increase the bills because the utility bills would be continued longer. They would need to have food for the kids for lunch and such. This is something that would need to be voted on by each family to decide if it is a good idea for each area. The students wouldn't like not have their long break, but I think the parents would. It doesn't seem like such a bad idea. It's not like each family goes on a trip for the entire summer. Most families go on vacation for just a few weeks, so this wouldn't put anyone out really. Also, schools have enough budget to spend on the extra bills that would come up with the year round schooling.

What if...? (6)

What if we could go back and change the effects of something? Like we could go back to a day and change the way it turned out. Or maybe we could go back and repeat a day that we really liked? Would people do it? I know they say everything makes you stronger, but how does it make you stronger when it's so hard to comprehend? I would go back to November 8th if I had a choice. I spoke with my uncle that day for the very last time. I didn't know that then, but if I did, I would have tried to say something to change his mind. I would try to say something to make him not do what he did November 9th. I don't know if I'll ever move on from the pain. It has been hard to sleep. I'm always tired, but when I go to bed, I can't get my mind off it all. He was an inspiration. I looked up to everything about him, and now it's like I question it all. I was so much like him. What if I screwed up like he did? I say that I have too much to let go of. I have my family, friends, God, everything. But so did he. He loved his family. He was a Christian. But he still couldn't handle it. It's all tough to handle and comprehend. But I make it through it. So if people could go back, would they? I would want to go back, but I wouldn't want him to be suffering like he was, even though he didn't show it. There are also days I would repeat if I could. The days that seemed like they were so perfect, and you didn't want them to end. Though we can't do either of these things, I know I'm not the only person that wishes we could. Even if we could go back, that doesn't mean we could change the effects of the day and make them better. Everyone has free will that can't be messed with, no matter how hard we may try.