Monday, May 17, 2010

L is For Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong, an amazing long distance cyclist and athlete. An average man with an average life, then it began. It all started with a little bit of differences in his body, then the pain came. Doctors and Specialists had only one diagnosis…… Cancer. On Wednesday October 2nd Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was not long after that it also spread to his lungs, abdomen and brain. Being a healthy 25 year old man, he had no idea what his chances of getting cancer were. He had won the Tour de France 7 times in a row and trained every day of his life since he was 12. He never knew what his life had in store for him.

Lance was born in Oakcliff near Dallas Texas to 17 year old Linda Armstrong. He had no real father his whole life, so Lance and Linda struggled as they grew up together. Lance started sports when he was seven, mainly biking, running and swimming. In his teens he was introduced to triathlons. Lance won many awards and was best in his age group throughout the years. He got better and better at doing what he did, so he got invited to France, Austin Texas and even Germany to train with the pros. Lance recalls Linda being the most supportive person in his life. She always drove Lance to all his triathlon events and swimming meets regarding all her other plans and things to do. As I was saying, Lance really didn’t know how his life would turn out

I’ve got what!? Lance asks the Doctors again in amazement. But he didn’t hear them wrong, he did have cancer. He could barely tell his family and friends about the shocking news. They had to prepare him for his rounds of chemo therapy and his 3 major surgeries, in his lungs, abdomen and brain. The cancerous virus was spreading rapidly all over his body, so they had to move quickly. Doctors told him he had about less than 40% chance of living but Lance wanted to think otherwise.
Two weeks later, he was ready for his first 2 intense operations on his abdomen and lungs. Once that was over he layed restlessly in the hospital bed wanting desperately to get back on his bike. Weeks went by, then it was time for his third surgery, this time on his brain. The surgery went well and all the cancer was gone, for now. Three weeks later he started his first round of chemo. For 10 hours the harsh chemical dripped into his fragile body. Then all they could do was wait. Friends and family came to visit him and help on his long journey back to life. Those few months for Lance with chemo, were torture. Lance finished all his chemo therapy on December 13 1996.
Lance went home to recover from his illness, trying to get through a whole year without signs of cancer. It was a long year. Lance tried really hard to get back on his bike, but he thought it was hopeless. He tried harder and harder and he slowly regained his physical strength. As the 1 year mark came around, he made it. Still to this day Lance Armstrong bikes competitively and will always be remembered as a hero.

Life Lession: Don't let one bad thing ruin what you love.
I commented on Erika's blog on The Beginning

Saturday, May 8, 2010

S is For Soccer


At the moment I am sitting in a very nasty Holiday Inn located somewhere in Niagara. It is has one bed, a smelly pull out couch and a T.V that you need a microscope to see. It is not the best hotel I have ever stayed in, and the beautiful view from out our room window (recycling plant) does not make things better. But there is a reason for all this misery, I'm in a soccer tournament. It is a Tournament that happens every year and teams from all over Ontario come to play.

Today was probably the WORST DAY EVER!!! 3000 mile per hour wind, red checks, white hands, frozen feet, and random crying Italian people, you name it.... it was happening. We had to play 3 games today, 8 AM, 12 AM, and 4 PM and trust me none of them were pretty. We battled hard and it payed off. The first game we lost 2-1 the second game we won 3-1 and the third game we won 4-0. Since we won two of the three games we played we had to play the next morning at eight. My Dad and I had the night off so we decided to order some pizza and watch some hockey, you know like father son bonding time. But it was the exact opposite of that. After the pizza came at 7 o'clock my dad fell asleep and when he falls asleep it is next to impossible to wake up. I was nudging, punching and yelling at him and he still didn't wake up. After an hour of 2 he woke up and the night continued.

The morning came quick and I did not get a very good night sleep. I had to search the hotel for my soccer clothes and i could not find anything. Obviously the Craigs are running late so we had to get some Tim Horton's before the game. As we pulled up to the field I hopped out of the car and begun to warm up. The game felt like it was 20 hours because it was so darn cold. Thew game was almost over and the last 5 minutes the other team scored on a penalty kick. The score was 1-0 and that meant that our team was out of the tournament. We had to go home and I was a little sad but at the same time I was excited to see my mom on mothers day.

Life Lession- DO NOT STAY AT THE HOLIDAY INN!!!!

I commented on Andys blog.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

C is for Commercials

So your sitting on your leather lazy boy in the corner of the basement watching the Stanly Cup playoffs with the t.v turned up as loud as it goes. Your sitting on the edge of the couch just waiting for your team to score but......then.......a.....comercial comes on!!!! Commercials can be good or bad, sometimes I love commercials, in my opinion the Bud light commercials are the best but once and a while you get the longest worst and most boring commercials ever. I have to say that the worst commercials are the enterprise rent a car.....like come on can that old lady get any more annoying!!! "Enterprise rent a car for me, sounds expensive" Its not expensive mom" " If it wasn't expensive why didn't you get me a bigger car" AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! That commercial comes on like every second!!! Well, ya that's my negative look on commercials but for every 5 bad commercials you get one great one!



Commercials have changed alot over the years. Commercials used to be very simple, black and white and did not have a real meaning to them. Now adays a simple 30 second super bowl add can cost the company 2 million dollars, and that's only the 30 second spots. The first American television advertisement was broadcast July 1, 1941 and only costed 4 dollars. The add aired at half time at a Philadelphia Phillie's game, the add was only ten seconds long and was advertising Gibbs Toothpaste. T.V commercials are filled with catchy theme songs or quotes and almost always catch your eye. They are used to suck in kids like me and want me to buy there product like Doritos....every time I see a Doritos commercial my mouth starts to water and i crave them soooo much.



I don't know if you have ever herd of this but its a little something called PVR. PVR lets you fast forward all the commercials and let you go back to your show. I respect that and I think that's a great idea but its killing the marketing world. How are all these company's going to survive without advertising there products. Hopefully PVR will not take over the marketing business or even the world. Well this has been a very cool blog and I just want to list my 5 favorite commercials. Another thing that annoys me are infomercials. Snuggies, Magic Bullet, Slap chop, and many more, these are all the cheesy and very funny infomercials. Infomercials are normally longer than regular commercials but are very repetitive. Like come on do you really need to show the phone number 10 times and ya we get it if we call now you will double the offer and get the second one free! Well that is my blog for the week and I hope that every time you watch a commercial you think of this blog.



1: Doritos commercial with the baby and the momma http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0EVSP_6XZA

2: Telus commercial with the hippo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dhq-gkyCQs

3: All Budd light commercials

4: Side kicks 25% less salt and the cute little salt guy crying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OekR7Ocu86M

5: Snuggie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxMJlmmnd5g&feature=fvsr

I commented on Tommys Blog

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

F is For The Future.


Every time I see that telus commercial It tells me that the future is friendly, but i think to my self that that is wrong. In my mind the future is going to be a dark grubby place with gray smog covering the sky. No air to breath and defiantly no wild life. By that time the trees will be gone, the grass will be brown and the animals will be extinct. Well what now telus, what now! One of the reasons I don't think the future is friendly is that my sisters are going to be gone to university and I'm going to be a lonely goose. It sound extremal cheesy but I'm going to really miss them. And when there gone I'm going to be all alone with my lame parents.


Personally I don't believe in the whole 2012 theory, but i do believe that the world will not be the same. Can you imagine the type of cars we will be driving in about 10 or 20 years. Or even the television. We think having the new mac book pro is cool and very high-tech but by the time my kids get laptops there going to be as small and thin as a credit card, faster that you could even imagine and be 3-D. Well all of that stuff is going to be great but before all that new technology comes out we are going to have to go through some tough times. A little some thing called global worming.


The Arctic warming up, glaciers melting, and intense heat waves covering the globe. That is global warming. Im sure that you have heard of global warming because it all over the news but if we don't react fast enough the world could be a hole other place. In my mind we can use the new technology to our advantage. Like maby we can have a machine that sucks up all the air and cleans it, or maby we can make cars that run off water. there is thousands of possible ways to help our earth but we just are not taking action. It all comes back to Gandhi famous quote- "Be the change you want to see in the world.'' I think that is the best quote because it is telling you that if you do a certain action to change the world maybe your action will grow and actually change the world forever. Well i guess telus is wrong, the future is defiantly not friendly. Thank you.


Life lesson: Be the change you want to see in the world, stop global warming.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

H Is For Hippopotamus.


You might ask why I would write a blogg post on hippopotamuses because it is a very random animal. They are not a very common favorite animal to little boys and girls because they are not very appealing to look at. But this blogg does have a purpose, I LOVE HIPPOS!!! They are my favorite animal in the world, my second favorite animal is the four toed sloth, followed by belugas but I'm not going to get to that yet. Here are some facts about the one and only.......Hippopotamus. Hippos are located almost in every country in Africa.

Hippopotamuses love water, which is why the Greeks named them the "river horse." Hippos spend up to 16 hours a day submerged in rivers and lakes to keep their massive bodies cool under the hot African sun. Hippos are great swimmers and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. However, they are often large enough to simply walk or stand on the lake floor, or lie in the shallows. Their eyes and nostrils are located high on their heads, which allows them to see and breathe while mostly submerged. That's why every time you see a picture of a hippo they are all ways under the water with there little eyes above the water. When hippos bask (sun bathing) a red oily substance comes out of there skin and works like sunscreen because there skin is very sensitive. Did you know that at birth a baby hippo is about 100 lbs.

At sunset, hippopotamuses leave the water and travel overland to graze. They may travel 6 miles (10 kilometers) in a night, along single-file pathways, to consume some 80 pounds of grass. Considering their gigantic size, a hippo's food intake is relatively low. If threatened on land hippos may run for the water, they can run as fast as humans but only for sort distances.


Hippopotamuses are very territorial . A male hippo often marks his territory along a riverbank , while defending it against other male hippos. Male hippos challenge one another with threatening gapes. Their canine teeth are 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and they use their heads as battering rams, especially against rival males while fighting over territory. It is so cool to see hippos fight because it is very aggressive. Besides the fact that they could kill a human Hippos are, in my mind the best animal in the world. They are so cool!!!!!!!

Life lesson: Hippos might not look like the cutest animals but they are very awsome. Just give them a chance!
Blogs I Commented on: Jordans, Tommys, and Michael Os blog!

Monday, March 1, 2010

S is for Superstitions.

Don’t walk under the ladder, don’t step on the crack, and whatever you do, don’t spill the salt. Ms. Weldon, are you one of those people that thinks that a simple action could result in terrible luck? Maybe that’s because you’re a bit superstitious. But when we ask ourselves why we are so scared about little things like stepping on a crack, we don’t really know the answer but to be honest I think it is kinda stupid. What we really need to know is Are superstitions real, or are they just in our heads? My blog for the week is about superstitions.

For years, many superstitions have left people puzzled, such as, why are people so afraid of walking under a ladder? Well….we don’t really ask questions about this…. we just don’t walk under ladders. But why? I guess its common sense that the ladder could fall on us, but Noooo, that’s not it. From Christian beliefs, by leaning a ladder up against a wall, the ground the wall and the ladder make up what looks like a triangle. This triangle is believed to represent the Holy Trinity and by walking through it, means you are in league with the Devil??? a little crazy don't you think!

Why does breaking a mirror result in such a horrible 7 years of bad luck? I guess that it would make sense that it’s unlucky because obviously, you could easily cut yourself on the pieces of glass, but there is another reason…..Some time ago, people believed that your reflection in a mirror reflected your actual soul. And by breaking a mirror, you broke your soul and got lots of bad luck. As for the 7 years of bad luck, Romans believed that it would take 7 years for them to recover and to piece their soul back together. Also have you ever noticed that there is no 13th floor on most hotels, hospitals or buildings, no 13th aisle on airplanes, or no 13th street or avenue in many cities? All these are connected to the one fear of Friday the 13th. Thanks for reading my blog!

Life lesson: Superstitions are very hokey and no one should believe them!