Flights
Added on Apr, 30 2008 at 9:39 PM by Sarah
Planning a weekend getaway or summer vacation will more than likely be a little more difficult this year. With the growing worries about the gas prices and cost of everything going through the roof, it will be hard for the average American to run off and have an elaborate vacation while spending the last of their savings. I am sure that all of us are carefully calculating our next financial move, trying to predict how the future of this economical crisis is going to play out. I think that maybe we all need to be tucking away some money and preparing ourselves.
I love to vacation and truly think that we all need a little break from life to just be free of all our worries and troubles. I don’t think that it will be truly possible to find any cheap international flights or even cheap airfares on domestic ones. I am considering some very local travel instead possibly driving, but not too far to a destination and getting some rest for a week or so.
I have watched the airlines discount airfares go up and up and I don’t think that these prices will be on the decline anytime soon. Discount flights are no longer really a discount, just less than the regular prices, which are way too high. I know that the airlines do really have to make back the money from the higher gas prices, but it seems to me that a rate hike of $20.00 a ticket should reasonably cover it. I mean if they fill a flight than they should be able to cover the extra cost relatively easily.
In short, if planning a vacation this year, be careful not to overspend. Keep a little on the side just in case. Also, be sure that you stay more local, so as not to have to pay all the extra cost of the travel to your destination. Price increases are happening regularly especially in the cost of food and transportation, so be a smart traveler, stay somewhere with a fridge if you can and pack some goodies that you get on sale at the local grocery. Whatever you do, plan ahead and don’t count on getting any cheap international flights or cheap airfares for your trip.
This just won’t be happening this year.
Concert Tickets
Added on Apr, 24 2008 at 9:41 PM by Sarah
My first experience dealing with concert
ticket brokers was actually my first experience with a concert,
too. It was actually not a bad experience, as far as experiences with ticket
brokers
go. It was just that I had never really dealt with buying
concert tickets before
so not knowing the
logic of the web site I was using, it made things
a little bit confusing. But I was buying tickets with a friend who had
done it many times before, and she showed me the ropes.
I didn’t go to concerts until the tail end of high school. Most kids start going in middle school or junior high, as far as I know – my friends talk about how they used to be “so into” those silly poppy bands like Hansen and ’NSync and the Backstreet Boys, and of course the Spice Girls. Guaranteed, one of those is always the first concert they ever went to. Not that my first concert wasn’t a stereotypical one to go to, as well: it was (give you three guesses) Dave Matthews Band. And before you jump down my throat, calm down, I wasn’t even a DMB fan at the time. My friends asked me if I wanted to go to this concert with them and I said sure, but I had never heard of the band before or heard any of their songs. I tried to get the latest DMB album from a music store, but I went to a used place because I didn’t have lots of money to spend (having spent plenty already on the tickets) and so what I got was not their latest at all – and, as I later came to realize, it was also one of their worst. So I listened to it, and I thought it was kind of terrible. Well, at least I would be with my friends, I thought, and that would make it okay.
Of course, my expectations were totally reversed, and that concert started my years-long love affair with the Dave Matthews Band. It has since cooled considerably, almost to nothing, and the feeling I get from hearing a DMB song is more nostalgia than anything else. But that first concert – outside, feeling the sunset around us as the band played on and on – was something magical.
Voip
Added on Apr, 18 2008 at 9:48 PM by Sarah
Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Brotherhood. Pragmatism and the emergence of compassion. All of these are regularly used to define a generation. Unfortunately, not mine. Episodes and collective experiences are the cogs which forever turn the wheels of cultural characterization, and my generation simply hasn’t had enough of either of these to characterize and define us.
There are only a few real circumstances and events which have had an
influence on my peers and me. On Thursday November 9th, 1989, the long
divide which had separated two halves of humanity, came tumbling down
with the fall of the Berlin Wall. On that day, we became the first
generation to grow up without the mutual assurance of destruction, and
within the longest period of economic prosperity and security since the
roaring age of the speakeasy.
Without this enemy, however, we had little to bind us together, and we
became mired in our own selfish wants. We developed a dramatic lack of
commonality and brotherhood as we spent every waking hour playing
mindless video games and impersonally surfing the web bound together
only by our use of microsoft
response point. What should have given us a reason to reach
out to our worldly neighbors and cooperate with each other, left us
without any shared values.
Perhaps you might say that individuality and independence are the chief
values of my generation, but I cannot. What we have is a lack of common
interest and concern. Our common interests end as soon as we hang up our
cellular and IP
phones. What we need is to step from our homes, look up into
the big blue sky and see that it is not falling. We must witness with
our own eyes, that the horsemen of the apocalypse are not here to whisk
us away, and that the only place a “red alert” may exist, is in our own,
unobservant minds. We have a hope. If anything, we have the chance to
truly unite and fill the streets; the ability to connect with the
millions, even billions of other members of our generation and say “no
more.” We've been given the tools, the Internet, email, IP
telephones; We have the opportunity to define ourselves as the
generation without fear; the one that went to the world and rejected
abject hatred, accepted hope and acted to bring about a lasting peace
and unity.
Test post
Added on Apr, 17 2008 at 1:50 PM by Sarah
This is a test post.
This is a new paragraph.
Rome Apartments
Added on Apr, 14 2008 at 9:51 PM by Sarah
The next year of my life is really starting to pan out right here in
front of me. As I am writing up this entry there sits on the desktop an
internet window with listings for Venice Apartments. About a month ago
I had no idea what I would be doing next year and really didn;t want to
think about it. But when I realized that if I didn;t get to work on
figuring it all out as soon as possible I would be in real trouble when
I had to start paying off my loans. So I did a tiny bit of research at
first in to various cities and state in the United States and came to
the abrupt conclusion that this not where I
want to be a this point
in my life. So I quickly shifted my research in to the rest of the
world. I thought about all of the different places i have ever thought
seriously about living and made a list. Then I looked down the list and
crossed off all of the absolutely nots. The rest of the list was
narrowed by just thinking about my own knowledge about the countries and
which ones had more going for them that I would enjoy than the others.
For many reason I don;t care to list here, I finally chose Italy as my final destination and my topic of research right now. I have picked a different city to research each week as part of the larger search for a place to settle in to. The first week I just looked in to Rome apartments, which were a bit too expensive for me. The next week I looked more at the Florence apartments market which weren't as out of my range, but they would still be a bit of a stretch for me. Last week I was looking in to Venice apartments which had some great apartments and they all seemed to be in my range. When I say all, I mean all of the ones that were filtered through the computer search, there are some multimillion dollar places in all of these cities of course, but I won't even consider them until I get a raise. This week I have spent most of my time looking up Lucca apartments and they also fit right in there with the places in Venice. So I think I have narrowed my search down as far as these two cities and the next thing I want to do is go job hunting. I only have about two months until I would like to move there and if I don't have a job before I go I may just have to stay here a little bit longer until I do.
Barack-Obama
Added on Apr, 11 2008 at 9:54 PM by Sarah
Does anyone know where the democratic presidential nominees stand on the
facts? I mean I have heard a lot
about Hilary and Bill and their ganging up on Barack Obama. I
have heard about Obama and his ties to Islam. I don’t
really watch presidential debates, I find them extremely boring.
I know that Obama
and Clinton both have plans to get our troops out of Iraq and bring them
home. Essentially they have voted similarly on almost
every issue while in Congress, and that to me says that there is not
really a clear dividing line between the two. On most issues Obama and
Clinton have voted in tandem. So if they are almost two peas in a pod,
why prefer one to the other? One useful dividing line, say some
Democrats, is the Iraq war, but is it really. I mean
both candidates have a plan to end the war, so does the plan itself?
I am just not sure that this is nothing more than a popularity contest.
You can either pick
the younger, fresher new wave of Barack
Obama or the more professional, experienced Hilary Clinton.
You can choose a black man or a woman. As far as the
issues go though, I really don’t think that it is going to matter.
I think that both of them think that they can make a difference for this
country; however, I am pretty skeptical. I think that
over the past 8 years, too much
harm has been done to us under the
George W. Bush presidency. I am not sure that the
economy or our popularity in the world are going to change with a new
president. I think that George W. Bush has ruled our
country as if this were a dictatorship and not a democracy.
I think that he has over ruled Congress, his advisors, our allies and
even the United Nations. He has tossed the US
Constitution aside under the idea that it is in the interest of national
security.
The scariest part is that he claims to be doing this all under the
guidance of God. And I really
think that he
believes that. Somewhere along the line, he was told
that in war time, the president is commander and chief and has absolute
power. Well, personally I think that since this
precedent has been set anyone can potentially have the ultimate control
of our country, now that is really scary!
VOIP
Added on Apr, 06 2008 at 10:01 PM by Sarah
The day I met Custard, the sun’s bright rays beat down on the sticky,
black asphalt, of the behemoth Tamarack parking lot. My grandparents had
called us up on their VOIP
telephone days before, were in town from St. Louis, and wished to
explore Woodbury, so naturally we brought them to the new monster
shopping mall recently constructed. It worked out well because
we
needed to stop by Petsmart and replenish our supply of fish food.
This was no ordinary day at the major pet supply retailer. No, this was Saturday,
the only day of the week when abandoned, homeless dogs were brought from
various shelters to the store to be put on display for prospective
owners. My brother and I were psyched! This was the first
time we had
ever visited the store on “adoption day” for dogs.
As soon as we stepped through the sliding glass doors, we headed straight
for the kennels. When we finally traversed the maze of aisles, tanks and
cages, we discovered that only one poor dog remained. He was small, a
foot tall at the most. He had long cream-colored hair which
roughly
graced the linoleum tiled floor. Two enormous, sad, brown eyes glanced
at me from underneath the thick strands of “moppish” hair. His matted
coat was chock-full of burrs and knots. All the other dogs had been
claimed, but no one seemed to want this underweight, loving, sad animal.
No one except me, that is.
I felt an immediate connection with this special dog who we later found out
answered to the name of Custard. He welcomed my gentle touch without
growling in the way he had with my dad and younger brother. We had to
have him! I had to have him! First, however, I had to fall to my
knees
and plead with the all-knowing beings that were my parents, which isn’t
such an easy task when you are an inarticulate third-grader; a task made
all the more difficult over our VOIP
phone.
After many long days and nights of a secret persuasion campaign, I managed
to give them enough confidence in me to bring me all the way to River
Falls, Wisconsin, to adopt the adorably ragged canine I had met days
before. It was a long drive sitting on the small bench in the claustrophobic
cab of my dad’s tiny pickup truck, but it was worth all the
discomfort in the world when we walked into the kennels and saw him
laying on his small patch of carpet, alone and lonely. Custard didn’t
bark, jump, or growl as the dogs in the kennels around him did; Instead,
he silently and lazily licked his paws.
This clinched the deal. We adopted him that darkening, breezy evening and
he forever became a member of the McBride clan.
A little more than a year later my Grandpa died, and Custard was there in
his wise, majestic, ball of fuzz to comfort me as I wept into his soft,
cozy hair. He was my only friend between my fourth and fifth grade
years. When we needlessly moved, and I was forced into switching schools,
he played with me every day and kept watch over me from my side while I
slept at night. Custard was and is the best friend I have ever had, so
when he became ill and required life-saving surgery two years ago, there
was no question in my mind whether or not we would save his life. He
saved mine so many times before; I couldn’t deny the opportunity
to return the favor. The surgery was long, and
expensive, but saved
his life. And all of this is to the thanks of a few phone calls on Asterisk.