Black Hawk poster

phone calls. (part 2)

I was too scared to pick up my phone. I though that I was just imagining it, but the vibration of my phone buzzed my leg, making it too unbearable to ignore. After the 3rd time he called we were in our 10-minute passing time. I answered my phone on call number 4 and to my surprise on the other end I hear heavy breathing.
“Hello, is anyone there?” I asked talking slow and steady.
I heard more puffing. “Okay, seriously is this a joke? Who are you?” I continued, a little more annoyed in a hushed voice. Finally there was a reply.
“Hello, this is Fei-Chow, we need your help. Where did your father keep his safe of files?” He blurted out with a strict tone. I was hesitant on my reply bit knowing what to say.
I ended up mumbling out the words “Why should I tell you? Who are you? How do you have this number?”
Again the man spoke rudely.
“You will not have any information about this matter, that’s final, answer and no one will be hurt. Now let me ask again, where is his safe?” he said.
I didn’t want to answer the question so I replied with a short answer.
“No, you can’t make me” I boasted. Then I hung up the phone quickly.
I rushed to my next class completely ignoring my friends, I was so confused on what has just happened that I couldn’t hardly think.
My school ended 15 minutes before Charlie’s, so I usually just wait for him.
School ended at 2:45 when I was surprised again by a text. U was just expecting it to be Charlie saying something like “oh I’m going to a friends today, catch you later.” Instead it said “what would you do if you brother disappeared?” I shrieked and ran to his classroom.


To be continued…

Phone calls. (part 1)

It was just an average day at Lutherson Academy. The birds were chirping, the sun was out just melting away the rest of the frost from the cold night before. Me and my brother had walked to school together that morning, but rushing out the door we didn’t get to take our vitamins that morning, but honestly that was fine with us. Our mom was always so scared we might get sick, I’m actually surprised we don’t live inside plastic sanitary bubbles! Sometimes it does feel like that though. My brother and I live with our mom and our dog rufus. I miss our dad though, he died when I, Ashley was about 10 years old and Charlie was 3. He doesn’t remember dad very well. By now I’m 15 and Charlie is going to turn 8 next week. He is really growing up fast.

Today I was planning to buy him his birthday present. I’m going to get him a basketball that is signed by Luke Rindenour (his favorite basketball player). I couldn’t wait to give it to him, and see the look on his face. Me and Charlie are really close, but we don’t go to the same school, but they are right next to each other incase he ever needed me.

During 2nd period my cell phone went off and I freaked out. I immediately looked at the caller ID and it said “incoming call: daddy.” I knew that wasn’t possible... my mom said we should burry him with his phone. She told me she didn’t want to keep it. My mom felt bad since that phone was a part of his life and for other reasons I was “too young” to understand at the time. You see my dad worked for a company that had secret assignments, and he would never tell us what he was doing. So the night before he died, we have no idea what happened. My dad was murdered but what the police told my family “ I secret assassin.”


To be continued…

Vasco Nunez de Balboa Animation

Basketball.

Basketball in started on October 22nd. I would have to say this wasn’t my favorite of all coaches, but unlike some girls, that wasn’t going to stop me from playing. I guess you could say I wasn’t very nervous at tryouts, I had a pretty good feeling I would make the team. I didn’t think this because I was cocky; I simply knew I was automatically on the team sine this year only 13 people tried out! I couldn’t believe it! Last year about 25 people tried out, and this year practically no one did. I thought it was pretty sad and I really didn’t have very high hopes for our team that year. I know that probably sounds bad coming from a player on the team, but the turnout was so scarce!

After the cuts were made, which were only 2, it seemed like the team might actually progress with some practice. I think we definitely had some potential. During the first practice everyone was a little discombobulated and no one was very warmed up on her skills from last year. Not to mention we all just wanted to ball at the same time! Now after about 2 weeks of practice I would have to say things are looking a lot better for us.

Tonight is the night before the game; I am worried out of my socks. I really don’t want us to lose; I hate losing more then anything. I’m nervous we might just forget everything we learned at practice. My wish for the game is to win, have fun, encourage people, and just do my best, because really that’s all you can do to support your team. I really have confidence we can win if we try hard.

Physical Therapy

It’s not easy to explain the relationship I have with Jim Christensen. He is an unusual person in so many ways. I first met him as a consequence of my foot injury in 2006. My doctor referred me to physical therapy after turning my ankle/foot in 6th grade.

The environment of the physical therapy clinic is difficult to describe; part organized chaos, a touch of technical wizardry, multiple personality disorders, and some focused compassion. Jim is more like a waiter then a physical therapist. He flutters from patient to patient keeping their glasses full. A toe- up here, some TB flexions, pull up on that, push on that, have some EST, add some ice and I’m done.

On any regular day tons of people pass through the doorway there, young and old, people that just had major surgery, or are hurting in certain places, and things like sports injuries, just what I go in for! The feeling in there is so welcoming, they like when you feel comfortable and the employees just try and make you do your exercises right until they start to hurt. Most people that go there have a heart warming feeling about them selves. The nice couples that have been married for 56 years and are still helping each other put on jackets, there are parents watching their kids gain their motion back. I like the atmosphere in there, because in some way, you have something in common with every person in there, there is no doubt questioning that.

Animation Reflection Essay

After doing the stop frame animation project I found out a bunch of stuff about projects in general. Things like spreading out your time well, why it was good to have a partner, and how it was more difficult to get things in on time than I thought. I was really looking forward to this project because it didn’t seem extremely hard or time consuming and it just looked like it would be a lot of fun. This was the first major project of the year for this class, and I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out. So I’m going to tell you what I thought about it and some of the lessons I learned in the process of doing this project.

I thought that the hardest part was getting everything done by the due dates. I don’t think necessarily that the work was too much to ask but I don’t think my partner and I spaced our time reasonably. We didn’t realize that each scene would take about a day, and that loading the pictures would take so long. Also we didn’t realize how long the audio would take to do, and for the credits to be made. The thing that made us freak out the most, was when the last day came to have everything finished and we still needed to import two scenes, finish all of the audio, and all of the credits and scene changes, but Lacy wasn’t going to be there due to an ASB meeting. That was probably the last thing I wanted to hear, because it meant I had to finish the entire thing by myself. By the time the end of school came around I was nowhere near finished and we needed a whole other scene. So my partner and I faced more challenges than we had hoped for, but we still had some fun, too.

I think the most fun part was making the little clay people and shooting the scenes, even though I have to admit that got frustrating as well. I thought it was fun because we could make them look however we wanted to. Of course we had to make sure they fitted the looks of the actual explorer but we could decide whether he was wearing purple or red or maybe green that afternoon. It was also fun that we could do it with a partner. I don’t think I could have gotten the whole project done by myself. It would have definitely been more difficult to have it done by the due date without my partner. I liked spending time with my partner since she happened to be one of my best friends. Unfortunately, on the other hand, that made it harder for me to focus, but we both learned how we functioned under pressure, that’s for sure!

I think the most important thing I learned was how I have to spread out my schedule better. My partner and I kept coming short within the due dates, and we could never figure out why we were so behind. At first we thought that was because we would miss class due to volleyball games. The only thing about that is some of our other friends who played volleyball too weren’t as far behind as us. Each time a due date came up we would usually just have one of the scenes and the other was close to being finished. I think I learned that we were trying to do so well on each scene and we wanted each one to look perfect. Well, that method wasn’t working for us. Instead of trying really hard to make everything look the best out of the whole class, we should have just focused on getting things done in time. I’m not saying we should have made them sloppy or bad, but we could have taken less time on each little feature that really in the end wouldn’t improve our scene.

After completing the animation, my thoughts on 8th grade work changed. At the beginning of the year, I thought homework and projects would be hard, but midway through the quarter they seemed to not be that stressful. Once this project was over I would have to say my first thoughts on 8th grade might have been right on target. I knew juggling school, sports, friends, and family all at one time would be difficult, though I think I understand now what the rest of this class is going to be like. Now I know that I should space my time better, and think ahead about what I will need to have done by what dates.

Rear Window Essay

Recently, I watched a movie named Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock liked to set challenges for himself and the big challenge he set for himself in this movie was to film the entire movie in one apartment. When it comes right down to it, it seems like it would be a pretty boring movie if the camera stayed in the same place. No one would even watch it if it was really that boring, so they needed something to spice it up and make it more entertaining. Some elements that make a movie good are the music, camera angles, zooming, and what they actually film.

I think one thing that made the film more interesting was the different camera angles and zooming. I thought it was really interesting how they would zoom into a window or through the blinds of someone’s house. I also thought it was pretty interesting how the director would show different angles of the camera. For example, he would show the side view of an apartment then he would show the person walking across the room and into a different section of the apartment. I liked how the camera was constantly moving as well. It gave the movie something more interesting because you had to keep watching to understand where you are in the movie, because if you didn’t, you would miss what just happened.

I also thought the music helped to make the film quite interesting. Most movies nowadays can be scary or suspenseful without music, but in the time when this movie was made they didn’t have as many resources, so the effect that set the mood for the film was the music. I thought they picked great times to add little clips of different tunes. It made the movie so that there were parts where you were on the tip of your seat from pure excitement and others when you just wanted to cuddle up with your neighbor because you thought something was going to jump out of the TV!

The third thing that I thought made the movie unique was how the camera took different shapes. Sometimes it would show the camera as if you were looking out of binoculars so the shape would be a circle. I thought it was also pretty neat how they kept adding new characters, so by the end there was the main character (James Stewart), a detective, the mysterious woman who arrived at his house, the massager, the man next door who killed his wife, and of course all of his neighbors! He even saved a lady’s life who was about to overdose on pills because she was so depressed. I think it just made it interesting that it showed how much you could find out about your neighbors, just by looking into their rear windows!

As you can see, camera angles, zooming, music, and a variety of different characters really made a difference in the movie. Without having those four things the movie probably would have been far less exciting! I think with the right amount of those the film Rear Window actually turned out to be a pretty good film for being so old. Of course, these days everything would be much more high-tech, and probably more interesting to watch, but I would have to say that it was a pretty well made movie. Good job, Alfred!

my summer experince

We were all awake, clean, hungry, and of course we all wished we could be in bed at 6:45 AM, but no it was time for the morning roll call. All of us sleepy heads were getting up to work out with Jay, the Basketball Camp Director. This meant an hour of practice before we go t to eat, (and it wasn’t the yummiest breakfast to wake up to in the first place!)
The work out with Jay is the part that no one looks forward too. This workout consists of hardcore ball handling. There are about 100 of us in a gym, sweating and breathing hard down each other’s backs. We’re all on our toes, eyes focused and muscles tensed because every word slipped meant “pushups”. You could even have up to 120 pushups in half an hour! Lacy and I just stood there staring at each other wondering why we were even at this camp! All we did was drill after drill. The one thing that everyone did look forward to was when Jay said “Ok, water break”. Then of course it was back to figure 8 drills and spinnage with our blue and yellow balls.
Now that I think about it, it was probably one of the hardest, most boring, tiring weeks of my life. I would also have to say I learned a lot and I probably became a better player, even though the whole time I was there the only thing I could think of was coming home and sleeping in my comfortable bed. But now, I really think that it made me a stronger basketball player.

welcome. to new blog

hey people, this is my new blog.
more to come soon.
thanks for viewing. :)