Abduction

"Teenager finds out that that they have been lied to their whole life and their parents aren't really their parents." That is the summary of countless movies and tv shows. Last weekend my family and I were looking for an appropriate movie that we would all enjoy. Which, actually a pretty hard thing to do because a lot of movies now a days are really inappropriate and my Dad does not like to watch movies like that with us, even though we are clearly old enough. Anyway, we were searching netflix for what seemed like forever, when we came upon a movie called Abduction starring Taylor Lautner. So, we decided that to see if it was any good.

It is obviously about a kid that finds out his parents aren't really his parents but this movie had a good twist. At one point in the middle of the movie my Dad looked over at me and said "don't we know how it's going to end? His parents abducted him when he was a baby." My response was "yeah, but lets keep watching anyway."  A few moments after my Dad said that we knew that we were wrong. This is one of those movies that makes you believe that you have it all figured out but you really don't.

 I don't want to give away too much in case you want to watch it but this movie has a lot of action and has a really good twist to it. I thought that the beginning was pretty slow and boring but I'm really glad that we decided to keep watching it because it turned out to be really good. It was also a bit cheesy when Taylor finds out that his parents are lying to him. It seemed a bit over acted but that could have been just me because like I said I have seen a lot of movies that have the same ideas. At times it was hard to follow who was who because there is a lot of different minor characters that look a lot a like and at some points in the movie I kept thinking that Taylor looked like a wolf. Other than those things I really enjoyed this movie. It kept all of my family interested and any movie that can do that is a good movie in my book.

If you are looking for an action, thriller movie I would recommend this movie to you. It is appropriate for families that have older children. Let me know if you watch it, Thanks for reading!:)

Carrie

I finished another book so that means another book blog. I read Carrie by Stephen King. My reasoning for choosing this book was that it was reading day in my class and I forgot my book at home. I also wanted to try another Stephen King book because I liked Pet Symetary. I had heard about this book but I never knew what it was about. So, I decided it was time to read it.

This book is about a girl who has gotten constantly bullied all throughout school by her peers. Her mom is obsessed with god and makes Carrie practice her beliefs with her. The whole town knows how strange Carrie and her mother are. An incident in the locker room after gym pushes Carrie over the edge and causes her to realize that she has this unusual power known as telekinesis. Which is the ability to move objects using your mind. Another such incident at prom causes Carrie to put this power to work when she decides that enough is enough and that revenge is what these people deserve.

What I liked about this book is that all throughout the story there are news clippings and interviews from the rampage of Carrie. It made me want to keep reading to find out what she really did. They also added a realistic quality to the book. This book kept me interested from beginning to end I could hardly put it down. I thought that it also had a pretty good message which is that bullying and harassing people is not okay. You never know what other people are dealing with at home and in their personal lives. In this book the bullies never took the time to try to be nice to Carrie and it did not end well for them. It was however pretty graphic and dealt with mature topics. I would recommend this for girls that are at least in high school and aren't faint hearted because this book doesn't have a happy ending.

They actually made a movie from this book in 1976. I really want to see how they interpreted this story in the movie because it is pretty graphic. I am  going to keep reading books by Stephen King for sure because the two that I have read have been very good. When I watch the movie I will let you know what I think about it. thanks for reading! :)

What Are You Going to do With Your Life?

Where are you going to college? What do you want to do with the rest of your life? How are we supposed to know as juniors in high school what we want to do for the rest of our lives? We have begun the process of registering for classes for our senior year and our teachers kept asking us what we want to do in college, but what if we have no idea?

The whole registering for classes is a big production at my school due to the amount of students. First we have sheets that we have our current teachers sign with their recommendation for the course that they think that we should take next year. Each student decides if they want to do what their teacher recommends or if they want to try something else. Then we have to take those sheets and complete the online process which is selecting the courses from your sheet. We have to start doing this in January just to make sure that the councelers have enough time to figure out the schedules for everyone.

Then there is AP classes. These are classes that are taught at the college level in order to prepare students. There is just about an AP version of any subject. There is a lot of pressure put on students to take AP classes by administrators. At my school it is pretty much required to take at least one AP class before graduating because of the way that they prepare students for college. However it depends on what you want to be as to what type of AP classes if any you take.

It is really hard to think about what I am going to do after high school. People have always made all of the major decisions in our lives up until now. It is up to us to decide which college if any we want to go to and what to major in. It is even harder being the first one in your family to go to college because your family doesn't have that experience to share with you. College visits are the first things that are recommended for high school students.

There is a lot of pressure put on students now a days to grow up. What happened to enjoying high school? especially senior year? Senior year and even junior year ends up becoming very stressful instead of laid back. So, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Thanks for reading:)

Online Shopping

Online shopping has become a very popular way to shop in recent years. This past black Friday had more people than ever shopping online to skip the frustration of the stores. It doesn't stop with black Friday though. Online shopping has become a huge thing.

Pricing is a big reason as to why people to shop online instead of in store. In most cases stores have special deals for online shoppers that you can't get in store. Generally it would cost more to shop online due to shipping rates, so to compensate for this store will have deals to get people to buy it online. It is also quicker to compare products online to get exactly what you want instead of going to stores. Google even has a shopping tool where you can look for products that you want to buy.

Just about every store or brand has a website that you can buy from. Websites like Ebay, Pintrest and Wanelo make it easy for shoppers by having a wide range of products. Wanelo is the newest craze in online shopping. Wanelo stands for want, need, love. It is pretty much pintrest but you can buy everything on the website. When you click on an image that looks like something that you want to buy, you will be directed to a site like ebay where you can buy it. What I love about Wanelo is that the things that they have are really unique things that you wouldn't be able to find in a store. If you are an online shopper I would recommend Wanelo for you.

Sometimes buying online can be pretty sketchy though. You have to make sure that the website that you are buying from is reliable so you don't get ripped off. Making sure that your credit card number doesn't get stolen is another thing that you have to worry about with online shopping. A lot of the time I don't order online just because I want to make sure that what I'm buying fits and looks good on me. I have also heard that a lot of people get in trouble with online shopping because they loose track of how much money they are really spending because they just have to type in their credit card numbers and that's it.

From the way that things are going I'm sure that online shopping will out number in store shopping. Which will be more convenient but also cause problems for people. Anyway thank you for stopping your online shopping for a minute to read this blog:)

American Idol 2013

"This is American Idol" is the iconic greeting from Ryan Secrest, before every show of American Idol. Last night was the premiere of the 12th season. I am one of those people that have stuck with this show from the first season with Kelly Clarkson. In the past few years there has been a lot of changes in the judges. The original pannel of Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul are long gone. This year has brought some changes with the judging, this year the judges are Randy Jackson, Nicki Manaj, Mariah Carey, and Keith Urban. I haven't decided my position on these new judges.

From what I have seen so far I like Nicki's personality a lot, I think that she takes over the "Stephen Tyler" of the show, with their funny comments. I have to admit that I don't really have any background information or opinions about Keith but I LOVE his accent. I am one of those people that are obsessed with other peoples accents. I don't have my finger on Mariah just yet. Then there is my dawg, Randy Jackson. He is not only the last remaining original judge but he is just so real in that he tells it how it is.

This year is pretty exciting for Iowa because there are at least two contestants that have made it to Hollywood week. Alisabeth Von Presley from Cedar Rapids and Gabe Brown from Marion Iowa. Alisabeth actually helps out with our musical theatre groups for speech at my school and I saw Gabe perform at a local restaurant. It is really fun to see people that are from your town on a show as big as American Idol. I hope that they both do really well! I am looking forward to a great year of American Idol.

Thanks for reading :)

Speech

This upcomming weekend is Districts for our speech team. First of all let me explain speech because a lot of people have misconceptions about it. It is not standing in front of a group of people talking. Speech is basically acting. There are different categories such as group and solo mime, improv, choral reading, readers theatre, one act play, ensemble acting and musical theatre. There is also some categories that are non performing such as short film, radio broadcasting and TV. news broadcasting. A student can only be in two events (maximum) each year.

I have done speech for three years now and I have been in short film, radio broadcasting, TV. news, choral reading and group mime. I have really enjoyed speech because it helps with class presentations. It is also a way for people to be involved in theatre without being in a play. At my school we have two musicals, and one regular play per year. I am not a singer whatsoever so I can only try out for the non-musical play. I go to a very large high school so there are a lot of people trying out for the plays. Our last non-musical play was Rumors and it had a cast of about 12 people. So as you can tell this really limits a persons chance of being cast. Speech gives a lot of people opportunities to act that wouldn't have gotten a chance and that is why I love it so much.

Another reason as to why I love speech is that the competitions are so much fun. After you are done performing you can go watch other performances. It is really fun to go support your classmates and watch other schools perform. My favorite categories to watch are choral reading, readers theatre, mime and improv. I just find those categories fun to watch because they are they aren't too long and I have some experience with them. This year should be even more fun because we got more of our friends to sign up this year. For the last two years it has been me and two of my friends but this year we convinced some of our other friends to sign up too.

This weekend is the first competition of three. If you get a one at districts you get to move on to state. At state you have 3 judges and to move on you have to get three ones and be recommended by two judges to make it to all state. It is very hard to get an all state nomination. At all state you can win a banner for the category that you performed in but only one school takes home the banner. For example our improv team took home the banner for  the last two years, which is a huge honor.

This year my school is also hosting the state competition which is pretty exciting. Being the host school means that every student has to have a "job" during the day. Some of the jobs are timer, room chair and hallway monitor. Timer just times the performance and tells the performers when they have to stop. Room chair opens the door to the center when it is about to begin and crosses off the list of performances. Hallway monitor makes sure that people are quiet in the hallways outside of centers that have performances going on.

I guess my purpose of this blog is to tell people what speech is really about. Hopefully, if you aren't in speech right now you consider it because it is really fun. Thanks for reading:)

Reality TV.

Reality TV has become a major type of TV show watched in America in the past few years. Shows like Real Housewives, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo are a few of the most popular reality shows. But what makes them so good? they are just people living their lives. So why do we find them so fascinating? Have you ever tried to explain why you like these shows so much to someone? It is rather difficult.

The Real Housewives of (any city that you can think of) is basically a show about a group of women's drama. The whole show is basically about who said what about each other. It is all about drama. I am addicted to the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I know that it is all drama but I can't stop watching. My Mom and I started watching last season and now we have to see every episode. My Dad has asked me what I like about it and I have a hard time telling him.

Take Keeping Up With The Kardashians, this show has 3.0 million viewers in its 6th season according to By The Numbers website. All the show is about is the Kardashian's day to day lives. So why so many viewers? In my opinion, I think that people like to see how different the Kardashians lives are to their own lives. We are fascinated by celebrities.

Lastly, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Why do we find a bunch of disgusting hillbillies so fascinating? What makes us want to watch their show? Is it because we again just want to compare our lives to theirs? I have to admit that I have seen a few episodes and at times it is just revolting. I always ask myself why I am wasting my time watching these people?

I guess it is just to see how other people live their lives compared to our own. Even so it is interesting that shows like these are actually on TV. because they are just people's lives. Anyway thanks for reading :)

The Summerland Project

If you had the chance would you bring someone you loved back from the dead? Is it an ethical or moral issue? Those are the questions that the play, Summerland Project makes you think about. I went to see Summerland project at TCR last night with my family. It was a very thought provoking play because it was such a controversial topic. It was actually written by someone who worked at TCR and last night was the world premiere.
It was about a man that had lost his wife to a brain aneurysm and he had the opportunity to bring her back to life with a new technology. After the procedure she would feel, look and act like she used to. The only things that would be different is that she would have to be hooked up to a battery to charge and she wouldn't need to eat anything. The whole play is about how controversial this new procedure is and how technology is taking over.
The only thing that could have been a little bit better was that it dragged on a lot and I thought that the ending should have been different. Other than that I really liked how this play integrated science fiction with romance. My family liked it because there was a little bit of everything for everyone.

Thanks for reading :)

Netflix T.V. Shows

This blog will be about some of my favorite T.V shows that are on Netflix. They aren't similar to each other so there is a little bit of everything.

 I know that this show isn't new or anything but I have started watching it in order and I have became obsessed. The show is called The Office. I remember watching it when it was still on T.V but I never watched it as consistently as I should have. For those of you that don't know The Office is about a paper company called Dunder Mifflin. The manager of the Scranton branch is Michael Scott (Steve Carrell). He makes this show so good. The next stand out character is Dwight Shrute (Rainn Wilson). Dwight Shrute is one of those unforgettable characters. The best part about this show is how little work they end up doing and how they spend their time in the office. The Office has a certain type of humor that people either love or hate. My Aunt doesn't like this show because there is no laugh reel so she doesn't know when to laugh. My Mom doesn't get how it is funny. I personally think that it is very comical and witty.

Obsessed, My Extreme Animal Phobia and Freaky Eaters (and other people with OCD shows) are pretty popular shows on netflix (I know Obsessed and Freaky Eaters are on Netflix for sure). People are fascinated with other people's problems. I'll admit it, I think that it is really interesting to see how people have to deal with life and their phobias or OCD problems. Obsessed is a show about people that are obviously obsessed with something. The way that something is categorized as a phobia is that it interrupts the persons daily life. My Extreme Animal Phobia is about people that have and irrational fear of animals. I saw an episode about a person that was afraid of moths and I saw another one that was about a man that was afraid of puppies. They use exposure to help these people overcome their fear. Lastly, Freaky Eaters is a show about people that will only eat a certain type of food. In an episode that I saw the woman would only eat cheesy potatoes. I also saw one where there is a guy that will only eat pizza. So they bring in a specialist that helps them to overcome their eating problems. These shows are interesting because you get to see what made these people the way that they are and how they overcome their issues.

Those are a few of my favorite shows to watch on Netflix if you need a new show to watch try these out. Thanks for reading :)

Social Networking

Now a days everyone is on some type of phone most likely checking Twitter or Facebook. There are so many different types of social media sites. First and foremost there is Facebook everyone and their grandma knows about facebook. It has become a site that you can not only connect with friends but share photos, play games, and creep on people. You can't say that you haven't creeped at least once in your life on someone. I'm not going to explain it any further because I'm sure you can get the gist of it.

 Anyway another popular website is Twitter. Now just about anything that you watch on T.V. has a little hash tag so you can tweet about the show. Twitter is different than facebook in that Twitter is just a little update about what you are doing. There isn't any games on twitter and there isn't very many pictures like Facebook. There are also some different things that you can do like on Facebook you can "like" or "comment". On Twitter you can "re tweet" something that someone said this will just show up like you tweeted it but with the person that you retweeted name is under it. You can "favorite" someones tweet. This shows up that you favoritedsomeones tweet it is just saying that you like what they said. You can also quote what someone said (I don't use this one as much). Quoting is used if you want to respond to what someone said. You can also just tag them in your tweet like facebook. I hope this clears up some questions about Twitter.

The next social media site that is pretty popular is Instagram. You have to have a smart phone or some kind Apple devise such as an ipod to join this site. All Instagram is, is a site for  pictures that people take. There are no status updates or games. You just update a picture of something and then you can add a filter which is just something that will either brighten your photo or make it black and white. Some of the things that you can do is crop it, blur out some of it, or put a frame on your picture. Most of the things that you can do is the same as Twitter and Facebook. The only thing that people do is comment on pictures or like them. Some of the things that you might want to know if you are thinking about getting one is some of the abbreviations that people use: there is "tbt" which means "throw back Thursday"you would say this when you are uploading a picture from a long time ago. There is "OOTD" this one had me really confused when i first got one but it means "outfit of the day" So you would just take a picture of whatever you are wearing. Those are the two big abbreviations that are used on Instagram. There is also photo challenges that people do where you find a list of types of pictures and then you upload a picture everyday.

The next thing that I'm going to talk about is the newest social media app. You also need a smart device or phone to become apart of this site. It is called Snapchat. Snapchat is a way that you can send someone a picture but they only get to see it for a few seconds before it is "erased forever". As you can tell this one can be used inappropriately but most people (by most people I mean my friends and I) use it for ugly selfies. A selfie is where you turn the camera so you are the only thing in the picture. You can draw on your picture or type something on top but that is pretty much it. If you have an iPhone you can send videos but there is no liking or commenting on photos because they are gone within a few seconds.

I hope this helped if you were thinking about getting a new social media site. I know that a lot of people get confused when they start talking about all of the different sites or they think that they are all the same. Thanks for reading and if you have a twitter or instagram follow me at katie2wolfe. Thanks :)

The Importance of Music

Hello, what are you listening to right now? You can tell a lot about a person by what type of music they listen to or what type of mood someone is in. Music is a pretty powerful thing , it can relax us, "pump us up", or take us back to a different memory. Mostly everyday when we walk in to Language Arts my teacher plays music for the first five minutes. I really like this five minutes to a just from one class to the next. Some teachers jump right in to their class when we are still thinking about our last class. My point is that music is a big part of every one's lives whether we know it or not.

As for my taste in music I am normally that person that listens to whatever is on the radio but right now I am kind of obsessed with Florence and the Machine and Mumford and Sons. I'm kind of getting in to Taylor Swift too. I also like the oldies: Journey, .38 Special, Elton John and Bon Jovi are a few of my favorite oldies.Someones taste in music is completely their own and unique take my brother for instance, we are pretty close in things that we like and our personalities but when it comes to music he likes the hard rap but I can't stand it. I think that it is important to respect someone for their taste in music if it is different than yours.

Anyway, if you haven't heard of Florence and the Machine or Mumford and Sons you should defiantly check them out if you like indie/folksy music. Thanks for reading :)

DIY Pintrest Craft

Hello, this blog will be about an project that I just did on Pintrest. Earlier this year I found a really cool idea on Pintrest. So I asked for the materials for Christmas. I ended up getting them and then doing the craft over break. There isn’t really name for this DIY project but it is basically crayon melting.

The only materials are: Canvases, crayons, hair dryer, hot glue (or regular glue, I used my hot glue gun and it worked well) Once you have all of the materials all you have to do is to glue the crayons on to the canvas. Now there is a number of ways that you can arrange the crayons. Some people do hearts or you could just line them up on the top of the canvas like I did. I am actually making another one for my Dad and I am going to arrange them in an arch, like a rainbow. The next thing you have to do is find out where you want to do the melting because it can be really messy.  I recommend doing it somewhere where you can lean the canvas up on a wall or some sturdy object. It helps when you go to melt the crayons if you can have the wax roll down the canvas. Once you have the location you need to get newspaper or an old table cloth to lay out. When doing this you need to make sure to tape some newspaper on to the wall (I learned this the hard way) because when you melt the wax it splatters around. The next thing that you need to do is to plug in your blow dryer and start melting the crayons. You should angle the blow dryer down from the top of the canvas if you want it to run down.

What I liked about this is that it doesn’t take that long and that the materials are common enough things. Sometimes DIY projects are impossibly hard or have weird materials in them. I also like how you can customize this however you want. I put a quote at the bottom of mine from Disney's Pocahontas “Can you paint with all the colors of the wind” I was debating putting “the colors melt like lemon drops” from over the rainbow but I will just use that on a different one. I also saw where people put a silhouette of a couple underneath an umbrella.

Anyway I really liked the way that mine turned out, here is a picture of what mine looked like. Let me know if you end up trying this, thanks for reading! J  

Just Another Movie Blog

Hello, today is the second day back from winter break. So this blog will be about some of my netflix adventures that happened over break but also I will talk about some of the up and coming movies that are on my list to see.

First of all when I am on netflix I usually end up looking for a movie for a long time and then watching some of it and if I don't like it I end up watching the Office. I will do a whole blog about TV series on netflix sometime.

Over break my family and I decided to watch a movie on netflix, my Dad was the person picking out the movie (not a good idea on my part because he tends to pick the weirdest movies.) Anyway, after contemplating for what seemed like forever he finally chose, Clue. The movie is about the board game also named Clue with all of the original characters. It was very interesting to say the least. It came out in 1985 so as you can imagine it was pretty out of date. I thought it was pretty interesting to see all of the characters and how the story played out, having played the game a lot when I was younger. However I did not like the ending. The reason as to why I didn't like the ending was that there was multiple endings that "could" have happened, I thought that it was dragged out too long. The idea was good because they were trying to show how during the game there are a lot of possibilities every time you play. My Mom hated the movie, she thought that it was really "cheesy" and weird. All in all it was a pretty good movie if you have played the game and are in the mood for an old cheesy movie.

I can't remember if I have already blogged about Men In Black 3 but we gave it to my Dad as a Christmas present. I had already seen it but I thought that it was really good. I loved the ending of this movie because it wraps everything up from the rest of the movies. If you have seen all of the other Men in Blacks then I would HIGHLY recommend this movie.

Now for all of the movies that are on "my list of movies to see". First and foremost I really want to go see Les Miserables. I'm sure that you have all heard about this movie because it is such a popular movie/musical. We talked about it in class yesterday and someone said that there is a total of ten words spoken throughout the whole movie. My friend went to see it and said that it was really good. I'm not sure if I want to go to the theatre to see it because everyone says that it is really sad and I am  a really big cry baby in movies.

I have seen commercials about the next movie, it is called A Haunted House. It is making fun of all of the scary movies like Paranormal Activity. It is kind of like all of the Scary Movies because they both make fun of scary movies. Anyway, it looks really funny and I want to go see it.

Call me lame but I also want to go see Parental Guidance. I thought that this movie looked funny even though it looks a little "cheesy". I hope that this movie isn't one that has all of the funny parts in the commercials. I hate it when movie people do that, why would I want to go see a movie when I know all of the funny parts from the commercials?

Those are just a few on my "list of movies that I want to see". Hopefully I will get the chance to go see some of them soon and then I will do a review on them. Oh, I also got a new book over break, it's called The Power of Habit. I will do a blog about it when I finish but as of right now I really like this book. Until next time, thanks for reading :)