Everyone is offended by something

I am so sick and tired of everyone in this society being "offended" by something that has been tradition for a very long time. I am sure there is not a single person who is not offended by something. We are all  offended by one thing or another. Now it is the Easter Bunny.

Some schools have stopped allowing children to call the Easter Bunny the Easter Bunny because it may offend some of the other children at the school. Easter eggs and Easter egg hunts are now called Spring eggs and  Spring egg hunts. It is absolutely sickening.

Can't I be offended by their offense? I personally offended that these people who are complaining about the Easter bunny can prevent everyone else from calling it the Easter bunny. It is like when the Atheists were offended by a park that annually set up a Nativity set for Christmas. Just because the Atheists did not like it, the Christians had to get rid of it. That just seems totally unfair. I am just as offended by their offense as they are offended by the Nativity set. Why should they get their way, and we have to make sacrifices and give up things that have been tradition for generation after generation? Besides, the majority of the U.S. population is Christian. The Atheists are actually a minority. So why should we have to give up our traditions just because someone in the world is "offended".

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Easter

This Easter was wonderful yet disappointing at the same time. It was fun because I was able to go to my grandparents' house on Friday to spend the night, and then wake up in the morning to the smell of Grandma's buttermilk pancakes. It was good because I was able to spend time with my sister, who was also there visiting my grandparents. I also was able to spend time with my aunt Lori, aunt Linda, and my cousins; Tyler, Lana, and Erica. I also got the chance to meet my cousin Lana's boyfriend for the first time. He seemed like a really nice guy.

I enjoyed being able to spend time with my family and listen to my grandpa's stories. I loved my grandma's cooking and I will not even mention how many chocolate chip cookies I ate. I loved exploring the many entrances to the basement (there are 4!--it is a really old house which had many additions added later). The original basement is really scary, though. It has stone walls and about five foot ceilings. It is completely dark and there are lots of old artifacts down there, including an old washer and drier, an old cast-iron stove, and a barn door boarded up, with stairs leading out of the storm cellar.

On the more negative side, I did not get to see my brother the entire weekend, nor did I see him on Easter Sunday. Also, my sister had to work all day Sunday (on Easter!) at Red Lobster, so she did not get to eat Easter dinner with the family. In addition, my family did not go to visit my aunt and uncle in Omaha, Nebraska this year, so it did not really feel like Easter. We could not go because Easter is on a Sunday and it takes six hours to get there, and school is the very next day. Despite my mother cooking a fabulous dinner, there were only three people to enjoy it (well...I guess four if you include our old, senile dog, Bailey)--my mom, my dad, and me. It was a quiet Easter. It was cold, and there was no Easter egg hunt. I am too old. In fact, I did not eat even one piece of candy this Easter. What a shame!

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Negative Effects of Social Media

Has social media ruined our social skills? In my opinion, yes. Yes indeed.

When we were kids and when our parents were growing up, people would either have to call each other on the phone or see each other in person to communicate. We could not bury our noses underneath our cell phones to avoid making conversation with other people or to avoid talking to someone we did not like. We knew how to carry a conversation and make eye contact.

Now, we do not even have to see a person or talk on the phone to communicate with them. We can simply go to Facebook and write on people's walls, send private messages, or use instant messaging. This helps to avoid/prevent those akward silences everyone dreads. You have time to think about what you want to say to the person before you say it, without akward pauses. You do not have to make eye contact whatsoever. If you want to see the person, you can simply look at a photo on their facebook but only you can see them, and they do not see you. This makes you feel more comfortable not being face-to-face and having to make eye contact with this person and decide what to talk about. You can even pretened to be someone else! Or maybe get advice from a friend on how you should reply to the person you are having a "conversation" with.

So many time, I will go to a store, a restaurant, a cafe, etc. and all I see is people constantly checking their iPhones for their Facebook and Twitter updates. People will not even say "Hello" to you because they are so engrossed with whatever they are doing on their iPhones.

Our society is losing the ability to initiate face-to-face conversation with other people. Some of us meet people online who we have never even met in person, and when we do meet in person, we do not know what to say to each other and it is "akward". People may say things they would never say in person to someone through Facebook. Or maybe a really shy person acts like someone who is extremely outgoing and talkative, but when you meet that person they do not have a word to say to you.

When we do socialize with people face-to-face, it is almost always something involving social media, such as things someone posted on Twitter as their status, or a photo someone uploaded onto their Facebook that is getting a lot of attention. Most of what teens talk about with each other involves topics such as social media. People merely gossip.

It is so irritating to me when people cannot wait longer than ten minutes before having to check their iPhones for news feed and updates.

Not only has the social media ruined our social skills; it has also ruined our spelling and grammar. When people post on Twitter or Facebook, they usually could care less about spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. Think about when it comes time to fill out a job application and it is just filled and filled with numerous spelling errors. What employer will ever want to hire you if you cannot even do such a basic thing as spelling words correctly or using proper punctuation and grammar? I know I sure wouldn't want to hire that person.

I wish we could go back to the days when things like Twitter did not exist. I personally have never had a Twitter account in my life, and I still do not see the point of it. Who cares what you are doing at every precise moment in your life? What makes you think it is so important that you have to share it with the rest of the world? What ever happend to the thing known as "privacy"???

I wish I could say it's time for a change, but in reality, I do not know how the effects of something like this can be reversed. It is truly sad.

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Simplicity is Elegance

I have seen so many bad wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses in my life. What makes them so bad? First, there is the choice of fabric. So many women buy dresses made of satin. In my opinion, this is the worst choice for a wedding dress because it looks very cheap and it usually does not hang well. It looks so ordinary and also looks like any other cheap dress I could find off the racks of Goodwill or any other consignment store. There is nothing expensive-looking about a satin dress.

  

    
This one fits almost all the categories.
It is too perfectly white, too fluffy, too
much bling, looks cheap, and it is made
of satin. I hate it.

Another thing I dislike in a wedding dress is too much bling or too much of anything. Many dresses today are gaudy. I do not like excessive bead work or a design that is too intricate. Again, simplicity is elegance.

      
I do not think the bead work on this dress
looks elegant. I think it cheapens the dress
and looks like a high school prom dress.

I also have a problem with dresses that are too perfectly white. I think this makes a dress look cheaper. Personally, dresses that are slightly off-white look more expensive to me.


If you want to know my ideal wedding dress, here it is. Simple, off-white, somewhat form-fitting, not made of satin,  no bling.



The dresses below are also very nice, and they are designed by Vera Wang:

   

(Word Count: 255)

Sitting Through Long Orchestra Concerts

This weekend I went to see my brother play upright bass with Orchestra Iowa at the Paramount. Although it was great to see my brother play and I was proud of him, I hate sitting through concerts in general. I would much rather play along with the orchestra or sing or at least be able to get up and walk around. I absolutely love classical music, but it is so boring for me to sit through an orchestra concert, even if it is my brother who is performing. It did not help that my mom, dad, and I were sitting on the balcony and did not have a close up view of the performers.  When my family goes to see my brother play bass in the orchestra at University of Iowa, we are often sitting in the front row. But even then, I would rather listen to music in my car, play in the orchestra myself, sing opera, or play along on the flute while sitting at the computer.

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Emerald Green: New Color for 2013

So, apparently emerald green is the new color for interior design. It was named color of the year for 2013 for its “energizing, exciting, [and] enticing” effect.

But emerald green walls? Really?

Apparently so, according to an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, saying it made a home look regal, warm, rich, etc. In my opinion, it makes it look like you are trying too hard to make your house look expensive and it probably wouldn't match the style of your home.

Although I’m okay with the idea of emerald green accents, I am opposed to the idea of emerald green walls in my home.

Here are some pictures where I think emerald green accents look nice:

Emerald green works in this room because, for the most part, everything about this room is very neutral, but the green in the pillows brings just the right amount of color to the room—nothing is at all overdone.

  

The emerald green of this sofa works in this room because the rest of the room looks very European, with the ivory walls and dark woodwork, the archways, the Persian rug, the ottoman, and the style of the furniture in general. I also like the yellow curtains on the window in combination with the emerald green of the sofa.  This goes to show that this shade of green looks better in small amounts or as accents to add color to the room, as opposed to having the entire wall painted in this color. Well done!

Same with the chair. You can still add color to a neutral room by adding colorful accents, such as the emerald green chair shown above. That way, you still have the color you want without it being "too much". 

To show you what I mean about entire rooms being painted in the color, I have put together some photos of emerald green gone wrong:

 

 

Who would do this to their home?! And I will point out that the majority of these photos were found on design websites saying this was the next big thing and implying that this color looks good!

Below are some photos I found where I am pleasantly surprised to see that emerald green walls can actually look pretty neat sometimes; that is, if they are done in the right style of home and they are the right shade. I still don’t think emerald green walls are right for every home. That I am sure of. And most of the photos I've seen are not done well.

 

  

Even then, I would stick to just using this green as accents such as pillows, throws, rugs, etc. I think it is extremely difficult to find the right shade and to make it work in the average home. Plus, it could be easy to get sick of it very quickly.

(478 words)

The Best Decision I've Ever Made--The Best Advice You Could Ever Take

One of the best decisions I have ever made was in middle school. Although many say that middle school really doesn't matter once you get to high school since colleges only look at your high school grades, what they may not remember is that the decisions you make in middle school really have an impact on how successful you are later in life.

I was in seventh grade, and it was finally time to find out what classes our teachers thought would be best for us to take in eighth grade based on our ITBS scores. The two classes being considered were math and Spanish, and Spanish was required in eighth grade at my school.

I guess I wasn't too surprised to find out that, of the three math classes—Pre-Algebra, Algebra Prep, and Algebra—I was average and put into Algebra Prep. I had never been good at math and had never expected to be put into the highest level. But when I saw what Spanish class my teachers had recommended for me, I was beyond horrified.

It was recommended that I take Introduction to Spanish, and not Spanish I, based on how well I performed on my ITBS tests. I just could not believe it. I felt so stupid, and it seemed like all of my friends had been put into the higher level Spanish class. I refused to feel stupid and be put into the lowest level class. So, instead of following my teachers’ advice, I signed up for Spanish I instead.

To my surprise, it may just be the best decision I have ever made. When my teachers did not believe in me (so to speak), I believed in myself and I took on the challenge. Spanish actually turned out to be one of my best subjects, and I received A’s on just about every assignment, quiz, and test that I took. I absolutely loved learning Spanish and I cannot imagine how different my experience may have been if I had taken Intro to Spanish instead of Spanish I.  My Spanish teacher was absolutely wonderful (even though I seemed to be the only one to think so) and I have learned more in that one year of Spanish than I have in any other Spanish class I have taken since. I don’t know if it was because of my teacher or because of my hard work and motivation, but I know for a fact that it was the best decision ever made.

Spanish continues to be my best subject. Since eighth grade, I have received an A or A+ as my final grade in the class in every Spanish class I have ever taken. Spanish comes very easily to me and it is so useful in life, not just sitting in a classroom receiving grades. After taking three years of Spanish, I had the opportunity to visit my sister in Spain since she was there studying abroad to experience another country and improve her Spanish. While I was there, I was able to use my Spanish with my sister, her host family, her friends, and the people of Spain in general. In fact, very few people in Spain, if any, spoke English to us, even though we were clearly tourists. It was as if they expected everyone to know their language, and they sure were not willing to make an effort to communicate with us in anything besides Spanish.

I had another opportunity to practice my Spanish when my sister’s friend from Spain came to visit our family in the United States. Just from speaking Spanish to Blanca for as little as two weeks, my Spanish improved immensely and it was so fun to be able to communicate to someone in another language. Plus, I knew I was doing her a favor because she did not know that many words in English and it was a struggle for her to communicate to the rest of our family, who did not speak Spanish.

Now , in my fourth year of taking a Spanish class, I still continue to improve and I have never regretted taking that Spanish I class in middle school that was supposed to be “too challenging” for me. As I said, it was the best decision I have ever made. And the occasions listed above where not the only times where Spanish came in handy; I just used them as examples. There have been so many times and places where it has been useful to be able to understand and speak Spanish, and I plan to continue Spanish in college and maybe study abroad like my sister did. I cannot stress enough the importance of challenging yourself and learning another language. It will be the best thing you ever did and, had I not followed my gut and had I taken the class recommended for me, who knows how bad my Spanish would be today. 

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