Why I would be an awesome mascot...

As you probably could've guessed, I think I would be a pretty daw gone good mascot for my high school, the Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School Cougars. I was just thinking about this the other day because at our basketball and football games, we never have anybody dressed up in our mascot suit, except on a few occasions. One reason that I would be legit would be because I can dance really good, I mean really, really good. When I hear music, sometimes I just lose all control and dance until my heart feels like it's ready to explode. I'm just kidding, I embarass myself most of the time I try to bust a move. But an actual reason would be that I'm not scared to be embarassed, and especially since I know most everybody that attends the games. I would be all over the court if the ref made a bad call because they wouldn't know who I was (unless they're reading my blog, but nobody reads it, so I think I'm safe.)

Plus, with that comfortable suit I could break dance really well. And our mascot is wearing clothes that come off, so I might be able to do a little strip tease to get the crowd into the game. I think it would be a good credential to have on my college application and hey, it would be pretty neat to be a mascot at a school like the U of I because you get to travel to all of the games for the sport that you are the mascot for. So for instance the Hawkeyes had a game in Ann Arbor, I would get to go watch them get their behinds handed to them, but free admission is free admission, plus you are literally on the field next to the players.

My friend said that his cousin or his cousin's friend use to be the mascot at Iowa State and he said that hardly anybody tries out. As a matter of fact I learned most of this stuff that I am writing from him. I bet to get the job title, you would have to be obnoxious and outrageous, two things that I am everyday. Some of the negatives would be getting your legs split on a goal post, or having to put up with drunken fans give you crap all day.

That's about all I know about mascots, I hope you learned something because I sure didn't.

Spring Break

Only one more day of school until spring break. That means I get to wake up when I want, and do whatever I feel like, but most of all, it means that I get to go to Colorado skiing. ALthough judging by the weather, it looks as if I could go skiing in Iowa. I mean it is absolutely coming down out there, we probably have an inch of snow that is one the ground, plus all the snow that melts when it first in the ground.

But back to my spring break. We fly out to Denver on Sunday morning at like 10 A.M. and we plan to land about 11 their time and get out bags and rent a car and things of that nature. It's about an hour and a half drive to the town that we are staying in. Also, we're probably going to go get all of our ski stuff and groceries that we need. Our first day of skiing will be on Monday when there will hardly be anybody on the mountain because it's a work day.

I think we are going to ski two or three days on Copper. Copper mountain is probably the most known mountain in the area that we are staying. They don't have very many lights so we will probably be limited to 8 to 10 hours of skiing, which is kind of a long time, but we like to ski. I have to tell you about this thing that we do when we are skiing. If somebody falls, the person behind them yells out "skiier down", and everybody that is able comes full speed towards our fallen skiier and sprays him with an avalanche of snow that usually gets inside their coat and pants and uh, it's really cold.

Even when I get back on Wednesday, I still have four days to whatever I feel like, plus I'm pretty sure that I dont have any homework because I have about thirteen tests on Friday.

Well that's all I gots to say, so peace bra.

Bucket Racing

When we were younger, we use to think of stupid things to do in the summer to try to avoid any and all boredness, and one of things that we came up with was bucket racing. There were only two rules in bucket racing, the first was there were no rules, and the second was treat others as you want to be treated, so I guess the first rule really doesnt apply. The object of bucket racing was to make it down my neighbors driveway, turn into the street, do a 180 degree turn around the manhole cover, and back across the sewer line in the middle of the street. But there was a catch, you were sitting on top of a bucket whic was sitting on scooter that was about an inch and a half wide, so I think it's pretty safe to say it was dangerous. It was one of the funnest things I have ever done in my life, and most painful. You could, punch, kick, tackle, shoot an airsoft gun, you could do whatever you wanted to the other racers, and on some occasions there are people in the street who throw balls at your scooter because we only had four scooters to race, so the others would do whatever to try to make you wipe out.

I only remember a few occasions when someone was badly injured, and none of them were me, so I didnt care. One of them was when my friend was getting ready to turn the corner and I was slightly behind him and I kicked his bucket off the scooter and he turned his ankle, and uh it was a mess. He sprained his ankle pretty good and couldn't play baseball for like three weeks, and after that incident, my old man said that we couldn't bucket race anymore because it was to dangerous, but we didn't listen.

You should probably try it some time.

NCAA Tournament

Well, nothing else to write about, so I figured I would inform you how the NCAA Tournament is going. The first thing you should know is the NCAA Tournament never turns out like you think it is going to, by this I mean everybody always says that there isn’t going to be very many upsets this year, and do you know what, they’re always wrong. So far there have been 11 upsets in 30 games. It might still be too early in the tournament to tell but, I think it’s safe to say that my bracket is busted. Well not completely but two of my elite 8 teams are out and 6 of my sweet 16 teams are done as well. I still have a good chance to win the pool however; you can see this if you click on one of the links on the side of the page.

But my surprise team of the tournament, which I am officially calling right now, is Washington State. They have already stunned a lot of people by beating Notre Dame (which wasn’t even an upset, everybody just picked Notre Dame to win), and they’re next game is against North Carolina or Arkansas, but North Carolina is winning by thirty with less than a minute to go so I’m picking North Carolina to beat Arkansas, and then picking the cougars of Washington State to beat the tar heels of Northern Carolina. It would be a huge upset, and if it does happen, you’ll realize how much I know about College Basketball (even though my bracket doesn’t reflect that.) I’m out of ideas so, I guess I’ll close with I hope you enjoy the rest of the tournament.

Wow, I just realized how stupid that sounds, oh well.

Why Baseball Isn't Fun...

You might be wondering I’m writing about baseball in the middle of March, and it’s because I had a game yesterday. Not a pick up game, or a game with some friends, a real life game against another team from Waterloo. That may not even sound that bad, but when you add in the fact that it was below 32 degrees, the wind was blowing, there was no sun, and oh yeah, it was snowing. That’s right snowing. I’m not talking about a flake here and there, I mean it was coming down out there, getting in my eyes and shoes, boy let me tell you, snow is cold.

Alright let me get into the specifics. We were told on Friday that we weren’t going to be playing on Saturday unless it was fifties and sunny, so imagine my surprise to find out in the morning that our game was on when all of the previous conditions were taking place. You know what the worst part of the whole situation is? The guy who sets up the team for our school was contacted by the other coach who said that they didn’t have enough players to make a whole team, so we weren’t going to have a game no matter what. But do you know what the guy in charge of our team said? He said well that’s too bad, I guess you’re to have to forfeit both games”. So the other coach found enough guys to put a team together and we played, and got beat pretty bad.

And that’s why baseball’s not fun when it’s snowing.

Research Topic

Its final! Ive decided what topic I'm going to do my research paper over. Its the sport of boxing not boxers the undergarment like kndy25 suggested. That's right I've decided that boxing would have a vaster river of knowledge than sports heroes from Iowa, all though I learned something interesting. Did you know that Parkersburg, Iowa has more NFL players per capita than any other place in the world. They have four active NFL players for about a town size of 400 people. Plus they have had others in the past which help their numbers. One of the players is Aaron Kampman of the Green Pay Packers.

Back to my original subject. I decided to right about boxing because I know less about it than I do than the other topic, so I would learn a lot of things as well as the reader being able to learn about boxing to. Some of things that Ive been looking into for my paper are going to see a real life boxing match. There are no good ones in Cedar Rapids, but there are a few in Des Moines, but I'm not sure if they are after our paper is due. At any rate I think I should narrow the subject down into something less broad. For instance some of the aftereffects of a boxers career, or the preparation they go through before their first fight. Some of my research shows that some boxers go through seven years of training before they are ready. I wonder if that's true or that was just written to get the point across that boxers train hard-and for a long time.

Well that's it for now, but I would like to close with a joke.

Two men are riding a camel through the desert, and the camel collapses. The men can't figure out what's wrong with the camel, so they carry it to an oasis, but the camel wont drink any water. So one man says to the other "ill suck up the water by putting my mouth on it's butt, and you guide it's mouth into the water" So they do it, and the man not helping out the camel notices that its actually working. But a couple of minutes later the man who is helping out the camel yells out "Stop we've hit the mud"

And with that joke, I'm just like a prom dress-I'm off.

Research Paper

Well, I've been doing some research on the two topics that interest me the most, and I have to say, its pretty exciting.

The first topic, which is in the lead, is local sports heroes from Iowa. I really like this topic because it is about two things near and dear to my heart. Sports, and Iowa. Just kidding about that second one, I only care about the first thing. But anyways I would like doing this topic because I've got a little insight because I've met a couple of these athletes in person. The only bad thing would be that it would be too familiar for everybody because they already know all the things i am going to talk about.

The other topic was boxing. The reason this topic is on my list because people beating the crap out of other people for money really interests me. I might be able to attend a boxing match as part of my research? Just one of a million bright ideas that i have. Plus the biggest pro of writing this paper would be discussing the greatest boxer of all time-Mr. Ali himself. The only bad thing would be that it's kind of a shallow topic and it would be hard to find ways around it.

Well hopefully you can help me decide what topic I should write about, peace homes.

Minor Law Violations

Do you know what sucks? Getting a speeding ticket. Yup, that’s right, yours truly got picked up for speeding about a week and a half ago by the po-po because I was going a little over the speed limit. By a little over the speed limit, I mean doing a 55 in a 35. It’s no-biggy, but I’m probably going to have my licensed revoked and start riding the buss again. That’s ok though because they’re a lot of um, interesting people that ride the buss. But anyways, let me tell you how it happened. Okay, I was turning onto 42nd street from Sycamore drive, I think. And I wasn’t paying attention and as it turned out, I may or may not have pulled out in front of a guy who got really pissed, so I figured I better speed up so he doesn’t get even more aggravated. So, I accelerated up to 55 which I figured was a good “get a way pace”, but apparently the cop thought it was a little too good of a “get a way pace” so, she turned it into a “speeding pace”. Did you know that cops hide in parking lots so they can catch teenagers who barely going over the speed limit? Well I wasn’t as well informed, so me never having been pulled over before, I figured I was immune to a speeding ticket, boy was that a mistake. And the weird thing is, I had three people in the car and one of them happened to say “twenty over, that’s a pretty hefty speeding ticket”, and albeit, he was right. So the cop turns on her lights and I may have used an expletive or two, but I pulled my vehicle off on a side street, and waited for her to come up to my window and explain what I had done wrong. Well, right before she had walked up to my car, one of the people in my car suggested the idea that all of us should start yelling “Bees, Bees, they’re everywhere”, which we all thought was pretty dang funny at the time, so we were still laughing when the cop walked up to the car and do you know what her first words were? “You think it’s pretty funny, don’t ya?” And I didn’t even know how to respond, so I giggled throughout the experience, which I don’t think she appreciated. But when it was all said and done, she marked me down to ten over, which still ended up to be like 89 dollars and 60 cents.

And now, I have a court date tomorrow, which my dad is making me go to, so I will “learn my lesson”, but thinking about it now, I just got a great idea. I’m going to represent myself. Yea, that’s a terrific idea, because what’s the worst that could happen? I end up paying the ninety dollars anyways and I get to miss more school. I gotta go and think of a good argument, cya later.

March Madness

Today is March 9, and do you know what that means? Only eleven more days until the start of the NCAA tournament. 65 teams, and only one national champion, I wonder who its going to be this year. Last year, and the year before, the University of Florida won the national championship, a pretty rare occasion, considering the odds of all the teams in the tournament. If I were going to bet money on the tournament, which I am, my money would be on Tennessee, but that’s right now because none of the bracket’s have come out, so it’s kind of hard to see upsets right now.

Back to the betting thing, did you know that this brings the most amount of money for Las Vegas than any other sporting event of tournament? There are even bets on who will even make it into the tournament. I will probably even lose twenty or thirty dollars only by filling out four of five brackets. But I usually do pretty well when it comes to knowing sports because that’s usually all I do on Saturday mornings and afternoons. Plus, I like to do a little research on teams that I’m not sure about or haven’t seen play in a while, I might be a loser but it sounds like a good idea.

The tournament is regarded as one of the greatest events in sports history because it rich with tradition and upsets, powerhouses and emotion, you never know what you’re going to get when it’s March, and that’s why I’m so excited.

State Basketball

I’m sure everybody else is going to be writing about the same topic, but oh well. I am talking about our state basketball team that is absolutely amazing. Yesterday was our first round game against Southeast Polk, a team from Des Moines that landed a pretty big upset to earn their ticket to the tourney. We didn’t play so well yesterday, however we turned out to be the victors by four points in a down-to-the-wire nail biter. The crowd was dressed in all-white; I have to admit it was pretty nasty.

For our next game, we are planning to wear black t-shirts over our white clothes, and peel them off at the start of the game, and then use the shirts as rally towels, I think it’s a waste of time, but then again, it could be really intimidating. We play a pretty good Davenport Central team who played a very good game against a tough Waukee team who has a pretty good outside presence. It is going to be a good match up and we are going to need to play a heck-of-a-lot better than we did against Polk.

But the game of the tournament is tomorrow, Linn Mar vs. City High. Between us and those two schools, we were ranked one, two, and three all season. And our only two losses came against those two schools, which is bad for us because if we advance into the finals, we for sure would have to play one of those schools. I personally hope it’s Linn Mar because we have a bit of a rivalry and personally, I think they’re worse than City High, but either way, the championship game is going to be crazy.

I hope you enjoyed my journal entry, please keep reading, please.

Research Paper

For the upcoming research paper that we are going to write, here are some of the topics i would like to write about:

1. Sports Medicine- this career field has always seemed interested me because it combines two things i like, sports and medicine. When writing the paper i would hope to discover some of the things that somebody in the sports medicine field does, or how much education they need, or whatever.

2. Local Sports Heros- This topic would be one that i would enjoy because it could grow to include many aspects of the athletes lives. For instance my dad went to school with a guy named Dave Mucurry who ended up in the NFL playing for the dolphins. Stories like that are what interest me.

3. World Records- This is a tricky subject, but an exciting one at that. I would like to write about this because i someday would like to posess a world record of my own. Plus, there are about a million and a half records that will blow your mind.

Danger Island

Do you remember the days when you were younger and use to play those stupid games for hours on end and now that you look back on them and you realize how idiotic they were? Well I have a game that trumps 'em all. It was called danger island and the point was, well there really was no point. But the jist of the game was to make it from one area of a room or floor to the end of the "level", but the catch was we would booby trap the hell out of the area, and you would usually have to do it in the dark. The game was ridiculous. I remember one such occasion when we had purchased a few mouse traps to enhance our fun. It was usually three or four people against the person who was trying to scramble through the level. Oh, did I mention anything went? We would lean two hockey sticks on either side of the doorway and tie them together with fishing line, so when you would walk through the trip wire, you would get hit in the head by the wooden hockey sticks. People would wear dark clothing so we could hide in corners and chuck balls at our opponet. But one of the worst/best ideas we had (depending if you were on offense or defense), was to flip the thing that the computer chair sits on over and put it in the middle of the room. It may not sound so bad now, but it had those tiny plastic pricks on it that would poke your feet pretty bad. Ahh good times.