Stressed Out!

So I don’t know about you guys, but I am super duper excited to be done with classes. Winter break can’t come any sooner. I feel like this whole last week of school has been like complete hell to me. So many things going on and its starting to build on me. So let me give you a little insight to how my week has been.

            So last week about the middle of the week, I had seen an advisor and had my classes all mapped out, everything was perfect. I live out of town and I got my classes all figured out so that I only had to drive to Lacrosse twice a week, how much better can you get. But things started to fade quickly. Being that it was the week for freshman to register last week, I went in to check on my classes, and the one online class that I wanted had to classes for it, and both were filled already, my jaw dropped. So I just figured I would take that class during the summer or next year sometime, but I am really trying to avoid going to school next year because I only got four classes left to take and then I am on a wait list until 2012 for my program. So basically over the whole rest of the week and up through Tuesday morning I was having panic attacks because I kept checking to make sure classes were still available that I wanted.

Come Tuesday, I woke up at around 8. I checked the classes to make sure I was still good. I couldn’t enroll until 8:45 that morning and at 8:30 I was still in the clear. Being that I had to leave to drive to class at this time I had my mom plan to enroll me. By the time I got to La Crescent I got a text from my mom saying to “call her immediately, I only got one class”. My heart sank.  I found out the only class I got was speech, I needed to have my A & P class for sure though, because I can’t enroll in the program until this is done.  When my mom tried to enroll for the class it said it was restricted.  I drove like hell to get to school, I even skipped my class that morning, just to go wait in line to see an advisor. It took forever it seemed like.

So finally I figured out that it was reserved for surgical tech students, and I had to wait until Monday to enroll if there were spots still available. Low and behold, let me tell you I was royally pissed off. So I immediately tried to find another class that would work, well I found one that was a Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Not too bad, I can live with this. So now I’m debating if I want to keep the one I got now or go for the other one when it is available. How fun, right. I’m to the point where I am pretty sure I am just going to keep what I have.

I hope everything works out, I was lucky when for the tech reporting class, they opened another one up for students, I got myself in that right away, So at the moment I’m taking three classes, and will have to figure out if I want to take that last class available for me to take over the summer or next school year. I plan to take it online, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Any suggestions for me on when to take it??

I just hope in the end it all find a way to work out!

Winter Wonderland

I’m sure everyone is starting to get anxious for the snow. You’re either dreading it, or you’re about ready to jump out of your pants because you can wait for it to come. Either or, it’s on its way. The winter can be a very fun thing for people if they have activities that they enjoy doing when there is snow on the ground.

            Things that can be very fun for children to enjoy doing in the snow, can be things such as building snow men, building igloo forts in the snow, going sledding, getting into snowball fights. These are all thing I know I loved and enjoyed to do all winter long with my two younger brothers and my sister when we were little. I remember my dad would come out and help us with things, or my favorite thing was sledding. Once there was enough snow on the ground, as a family we would go sledding, but not without some preparation. Where I live we have a huge hill that goes from the road all the way up to the tree line. Before we could even go down the hill, my dad would get out his snow shoes and walk a path up the hill for us to go down on the sled. By doing this we knew we would get to the bottom, and it also packed down the snow, so we would go faster. We live on a road that is not too busy, which is nice because there were many occasions where we were going so fast that we ended up in the road, luckily no cars were coming. But probably the funniest time was when we got my mom to come out and go for a ride down the hill, my little brother road in the back of our long sled, and mom in the front, by the time they reached about the bottom of the hill they were going way to fast to stop,  so my little brother bailed before they went into the road, my mom on the other hand did not and went air born off the buildup of snow along the curb, landed in the road and went all the way across to the neighbor’s yard and down there hill in there yard. When she got back over, she was laughing so hard she almost wet her pants; she could believe what had just happened. All in all it was quite the thing to see.

            When people become a little older they can get into things like, skiing, snowboarding, snow shoeing, snowmobiling, cross country skiing and so on.  These days I love snowboarding in the winter, I also love going snowmobiling with my boyfriend. These are two things I’m about losing my mind over because I can’t wait until there is enough snow out to do them. Some of the most fun I have had snowboarding was when I went out to Colorado two years in a row and got to go boarding on the Rocky Mountains. It is so beautiful out there that you can’t help but love where you are and love what you’re doing, because there are only so many people that can do what you can do and see what you can see. It was a great experience and I would love to go back out there again.

            So for this week, I think it would be awesome that for your response to this blog, if you would put down one of your favorite memories with snow. Let’s see how many ways snow has been a part in our lives.

Dear, Deer... how much I hate you!

So I had one scary night last Thursday. I had just gotten done at work and was heading up to my boyfriend’s house for a little while. It was a little bit after 9’o clock at night and I was heading up the hill to his house. The road he lives on is gravel and way out in the country. Every night he warns me to look out for deer because there are so many of them up there.  Along the road to his house there are cornfields. In the fall they cut down the stalks for the most part, but still there are some random ones that are still there. The deer love to nest and eat in along these fields.

            So that night I was driving along this road and that when out of the corner of my eye I saw something that just didn’t look like a old dried up corn stalk. Just then it started moving and I knew it was a deer, with antlers. The buck took off running right away and it was coming for me. I knew there was no chance that I would be able to stop in time, due to the fact that I was on gravel and it is very difficult to stop a vehicle on it. So I laid on the breaks as soon as I could. Next thing I knew the deer actually ran into the side of my suburban on the right side of the vehicle between the mirror and bumper. The deer went flying across the hood of the vehicle and landed in front of me.

            This is when I actually hit the deer because in a matter of seconds the suburban was still not completely stopped yet. When the deer when across the hood, I was just praying that it wouldn’t hit the windshield because its antlers were quite large and I feared it would shatter the windshield and come through the vehicle. But I was fortunate to have gotten the vehicle to slow down a bit by the time it hit. I was going about somewhere between 25 and 30 miles an hour at the time on a 55 mile an hour road. Thank god I wasn’t driving 55, or this could have ended very badly.

So sure enough once the deer landed in front of me, it couldn’t get up, it began to kick and roll around until it could get up, which at the time it got up, it took off and ran down into the woods through the opposite field that it had been in prior to it getting hit. I was so scared. My heart was just pounding after the whole ordeal. I immediately called my boyfriend and told him what had happened and he said he would be out right away. I was only just a little bit a ways from his place, so I just drove on the rest of the way. When I arrived I got out of the vehicle immediately and ran around to the hood to inspect the damage. Turns out it wasn’t too bad, there was a about a 5 inch dent on the front of the hood from the deer’s antlers, and I had a few cracks in the grill and one around the framing in the light on the left side.

My boyfriend could believe I had so little damage, he figured it would look about as bad as my dad’s truck did when he hit one a few years back. To describe how it looked, it was comparable to a one-eyed Cyclops. So shortly after we hopped in the truck and went driving through the fields to see if we could find it dead at all, but we could find anything. Ironically two days later when hunting opened, one of his uncles shot a buck that was nice size, but when they looked to inspect it, they found that it had a broken jaw, but it hadn’t been broken for very long, because it was not very skinny yet. Is this the deer I hit or not? I have no clue, but either or at least I ok and there was very much damage to the vehicle.

Now when I drive up their at night I’ve been a lot more cautious and aware, because I scared to dead another deer is going to run out, and it could have a much worse outcome.

Snow?

When will it snow? This is the big question these days. Late last week, the temperatures began to drop quite a bit. It got colder and colder. All through the week I had heard news about freezing rain and possible snow. This got me excited.

            During the winter I love to go snowboarding, this is something I have done since I was in 8^th grade, and it is something I really enjoy; I have gone out to Colorado twice to hit up the big mountains out there. I also enjoy snowmobiling with my boyfriend in the winter. Due to the word of the upcoming snow, I was getting excited, so I ordered a new snowmobiling helmet, a pink one to be exact.

            Thursday night it started to rain. When it got to the morning and I had to drive to school, it was a little tricky. It was hard to tell if it was cold enough out to make the rain freeze at all or make things slippery. But I made it to school just fine. When I left class that day, it was raining out a little harder than it had been when I had arrived. During the rest of the day, it just kept raining, and was really cold. Late that night it had begun to lightly snow. I was getting excited, but I knew the ground was still too warm to be able to hold the snow, so I didn’t get my hopes up.

            Saturday afternoon, my boyfriend went on his facebook, and a friend of his from Mankato had posted pictures of what happened there over the night. Mankato had got 12 inches of snow over the weekend, and Winona had got none. The snow was so close, yet so far away. Kind of depressing in a way, but I know that the later the snow comes the more safe it will be for me to have to drive to school every day. So yes there is a positive and negative side to this whole no snow thing.

            When the snow will come, I have not a clue, but one thing I know, is that I really hate it being cold out and not having snow to go along with the cold. So I hope that it will either warm up a bit or just bring on the snow already. As soon as the snow arrives I know I got a fun winter ahead of me. When you have things that you enjoy doing in the winter, it makes it a little easier to stand the constant cold weather. If you don’t and you hate the winter, well then it sucks to be you, and just to let you know, you’re probably living in the wrong area.

PBR Night

Well this last Friday, my boyfriend and I went to the Bull Riding at the Lacrosse Center. I hadn’t been to see bull riding for a long time. The last time I saw it was when I was in about 5^th grade when I went to a rodeo in Colorado. So I was very excited. I had heard about it for weeks on the radio and thought that would be a really fun thing to go to.

Well sure enough, Friday came around, and it was time to go. We started the night at Hooters since it was so close. It turns out this was the place to be for people going to the bull riding. There were people everywhere in cowboy boots and hats. I had a wonderful meal of shrimp, one of my favorite foods.

After we finished eating we started walking over to the Lacrosse Center and got our tickets. We were in the first section, across from the gates. We had perfect view to see the bulls and riders. During the night we got to see bull riding, barrel racing, little kids riding sheep, a bunch of guys stand in a circle with a bull and see who lasted the longest, and 18 year old guy show us his tricks and moves with a rope.

Some of the highlights on the night were when a bull went after a rider, and ran over the top of him, the rider was fine, as the bull was going back to the gates though, we thought he was in, and then all of a sudden he runs back out and goes after all the people in the ring. After a bit the bull did return to the pen. The last rider to go for the night rode his bull and when the the guy fell off the bull ran around and went after the guy on the horse, the bull did not want to go to the pens, so the guy on the horse roped it and took off fast because he knew the bull wasn’t going to budge and was going to put up a fight.  Next thing I saw the bull was rolling on the ground. The bull was pulled so hard and so fast that it was taken off its feet. Once it got back up it was pissed. It took of chasing the guy on the horse. No one had the rope anymore because it came out of the man’s hands. So at this point people were running away and chasing after the rope so they could get the bull in the pen. After a bit of struggle sure enough they were able to get it penned.

The other ridiculous part to the night was when the little kids were riding sheep. The best one was when the little kids had the sheep fall over and roll over the kid, and the kid was still holding on. Then the sheep took off toward the rest of the sheep standing in a heard. The sheep ran into the wall with the kid still attached, and yet even after this the kid did not let go. A man had to come over and pull the kid off the sheep. This ended up being the kid that won the contest.  It was so funny to watch.

Over all, the night was a fun one that was filled with many laughs and much excitement.

Big Timber, Montana: A Place of Wonderful Memories- Final Copy

             I never knew I would learn so much in one day. It started out early, about 7 in the morning, I had just finished eating breakfast, and the group of us, my dad, my brother, my grandpa, and I and a few other relatives were getting ready to head out to the ranch. It was a cool, fall morning and the mountains were very visible off through the valley.  The peaks were all shiny as the sun illuminated snow covered mountains. Oh how I wish I could go snowboarding was all I was thinking about.  I had no idea what today would hold for work out at the ranch, but I quickly learned what kind of work we would be doing the rest of the day, and all I could think was I hope I don’t screw this up.

            When we arrived out at the ranch, the first thing we did was get out of the truck; Leo came up to us and said we would be herding cattle today. I thought to myself oh wow; I’ve never really done anything like this before. Little did I know how involved I would be in this whole process. Leo then talked to Lloyd for a few minutes while we waited around. These two are both close relatives of mine. Lloyd came back and he said we would be going out to the other barn down the road, taking out the hay truck and loading hay into it. We did this so the cattle would have something they wanted, so it would make it easier to move them.

            The next part was the part I had never expected to come. As we started to walk away, Lloyd calls me over; kind of like he needed to say something to me, well low and behold he tells me he is going to have me ride behind the cattle on the four-wheeler. I figured, hey this couldn’t be that hard, but then he takes me in to get the ATV and this is when I find out it’s a manual. I knew how to drive an automatic, but not a manual. At this moment I was secretly freaking out inside. I made myself take a deep breath, after all, what the worst thing that could happen, all I really needed to do is have Lloyd give me a little lesson on how things ran, so he took about 10 minutes to show me how everything worked, everything was pretty self explanatory, the only thing that really gave me any difficulty was trying to get it set in reverse, but after a few tries it got better as we went on.  I figured, it didn’t really matter if I couldn’t get it because I was in a field, so really all I had to do was drive myself around, to go the other way.

After we got out to the other barn, I got on the wheeler and backed it out of the trailer we used to haul it down with. Everyone else piled into either the hay truck or the other pickup truck. All of us headed through the field and up a very steep hill. I felt my heart just sink as I took a glance back down the hill, realizing how steep it really was. I continued on up the hill; as we reached the top, I felt as if I was on top of the world. It was crazy to see how much we lined up with the mountains in the distance, and it was noticeably colder and windier, so I knew we were pretty high up.

            Once in the fields, we drove around looking for the cattle. After about 30 minutes of looking, we found them way back down in a valley, resting and eating in the shade. We had to get close enough to them with the hay, so they would want to leave and follow it. As my dad was getting the truck closer to the cattle, Lloyd directed me to drive back there with the four-wheeler and try to get the cattle moving. After about 30-45 minutes of this, we had finally gotten all the cattle out of the valley and moving onward to the other pasture. I was told I had to keep behind the cattle and to cross back and forth from side to side to keep them all in one general area, and not allow them to spread out. This trip to the other pasture was somewhere between 1 and a half to 2 miles away. A few times along the way, some of the cattle started to mess with the other cattle and they would get into little fight. There was one moment where I thought the two cattle that were fighting were going to run right into the wheeler, but the sound and size of it spooked them just enough to get them moving right along again.

            This whole move took about 2 hours but we got it done, and really had no issues along the way. I couldn’t believe what I had just done, and how well I did it. This was something that was totally new to me and I had just learned moments before doing. I was so proud of myself. I felt like I had worked very hard to get something very important done, and it seemed to be pretty fun all along the way. This made me really want to do it again sometime.

            Later that day, we were doing some light work around the ranch, when my brother spotted a coyote out in the lower pasture, where some cattle were. Lloyd and my Dad wanted to go shoot this coyote and if they were unable to hit him, they wanted to at least scare it off. So I was then told to go get the wheeler and run along the far edge of the pasture and slowly creep my way over to the other side of the ditch where the coyote was hiding out in. He then told my dad to go set up himself and the gun down in the ditch about 200 to 300 feet from where the coyote was.

            As I crept up on the coyote, all I was worried about was that it would go the opposite way of where I was trying to make it go. I was just hoping I wouldn’t mess up. Then all of a sudden it took off, and the next thing I heard was a gun shot, but my dad missed, and I looked and saw the coyote running up the hill across the valley, then I heard another gun shot, but the coyote didn’t stop running yet. As it was approaching the top of the hill, I heard one last shot go off and next thing I knew, the coyote was down. We did it! I was so happy with how things went, the only way it could have been better, was if the first shot would have worked, that way we could have gotten rid of the dead body of the coyote, but it was too far up the hill in a part that would be difficult to get to so, we decided we would leave it there for the other animals to eat.

            After a long day, I never knew how good it could feel to do all this work and learn so many knew things in one day. It’s a good experience seeing how people make a living in different parts of the United States, it makes you see how hard people have to work to do what they do. I also think that this experience was a good way to see how the world around us and everything in it play a role with everything else. It was a great way to experience life and what it takes to survive or make a living in the natural world around us. It is a way to see life and death, and hard work and respect all in one place at one time. Every day since that entire week I was in Montana, I have wanted to go back so bad and help out at the ranch again and spend time in the beautiful scenery. Big Timber, Montana is one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I have ever been and it is the place of many, many wonderful memories I have made.

                 

10 Seconds

Wow! Who knew I could see my life flash before my eyes twice in about less than 10 seconds.  It was Sunday Halloween night. I had just gotten done going on the walk of horror at St Mary’s University and was running a friend of mine back to his apartment. We were on our way back to my boyfriend’s house, which is just off of Hwy 14 going up Stockton Hill. I was driving up the road, and I had a car in front of me that was just going incredibly slow. This road I was on is a road that has 3 lanes. It has one lane for the traffic coming down the hill and two lanes for the traffic going up, so I signaled over so I could pass this car in the other lane.

 The road I was on is a hill road that has a lot of turns to it and weaves in and around the bluffs. So at this point the car I passed was just a little ways behind me. I was approaching the first corner, when all of a sudden the car coming down the hill moved into my lane. At this point the car looked to me like a big SUV and was about 30 feet away from me. All I kept thinking to myself was I hope to god that car moves back into its lane, because now the car that I had passed was now just about next to me again. There was no room for me to move over even if I wanted to. I kept looking at the headlights and waiting for them to move back to their lane, and then I saw the deer. Not one, but three and they didn’t know where to go, because they were stuck by the guard rail on the other side of the road, where traffic was coming down. I jammed my breaks so hard, because they were running about frantically. I had nowhere to turn, I had to hold my ground in the lane I was in and pray to god I got it stopped before I hit one and got into an accident.

As all of this was running through my head, I couldn’t help but hope to god the car coming down the hill wouldn’t hit one because it could very easily be thrown up into the air and hit me. At this point I consciously had no idea where the car was that I had passed. I was just so concerned with the doe that was running out in front of my car that was not stopped yet.

To my surprise, I missed the doe from hitting the front of my car by mere inches. I couldn’t believe that I got it stopped, because going 55 miles an hour and basically trying to stop it on a dime is not the easiest thing in the world to do, on top of it I was trying to worry about all the other things that could have happened. But to my surprise I was just fine, along with the car. As I proceeded to drive up the hill again, one of the doe’s started running up the road in front of me, but then it slowly crossed over to the woods. By this point my heart was just racing and I was just happy nothing bad happened.

The next morning, my boyfriend called to tell me that when he went back down that road to go to work, he saw that one of the doe’s had been hit. I have no idea if it was hit during the time when I was going up it, or if one of the many cars behind me ended up hitting it, but all I know is one life was ended, so I just hope the person in the car that hit it came out ok.

It’s a scary thing how something can change so quickly and without much warning. It just comes down to how easily you can adapt to change in such a short time. Reflexes, adrenaline, and sudden decisions are all things that I think people take for granted. These are things that could change a person’s life in the blink of an eye, for better or for worse. The scariest thing about this whole story, is it happened in about 10 seconds, and these were all the things that ran through my head in this short of time.

Windy Wind

So much wind and it just doesn’t want to stop. A day to two days before the wind was to come in, we were being warned over radio and newspaper, that winds would be up to 60mph. We were being advised to take things out of our yards that could easily blow away and they advised not to leave smaller pets outside.

            Sure enough Tuesday this week I was driving to school and it was pretty windy and raining at the same time. It was no big deal, but when I left school to drive back to Winona, 45 minutes away, I had noticed a huge change in the wind. I was kind of feeling a little nervous about the drive the next day.

            While at work that night, all I could hear was the sound of the wind just howl past the house of the lady I take care of. When I left and was walking to my car that night, I could have sworn I could have blown away. I could notice that the wind had taken a lot of the leaves off the trees and they were blowing everywhere.

            When I awoke in the morning, I could see the damage that a lot of the wind had done to peoples yards, there were branches from trees and random things from peoples yards blown all over the place. When my mom woke up this morning to take the dogs out, she noticed that a garbage can, that had been pretty well contained in a spot on my deck, had blown all the way down to the road.

            Driving to school that morning was quite a workout, I drive a suburban, so wind hits the vehicle and pushes it around a lot. Going along the river it was pushing me everywhere. I was so glad to make it to school without any major issues. But the funniest thing was when I was on the Cass Street and 7^th Street intersection, a set of stoplights for the Cass Street side had been blown to face the 7^th Street. I couldn’t believe it, that’s some pretty powerful wind to do something like that.

            The best was yet to come; when I got to class I got to hear all the stories people had to talk about with what the wind did to them. I thought the best was when this one lady said she was going to leave and she saw a tree down at the end of her road, she was pissed, and then she saw one of the other guys that lived on a road coming down to leave. He saw the tree and said he would be back with his chainsaw, she thought to herself how perfect he came down when he did, because he does landscaping maintenance work for a job. So when he got back, he cut and she threw logs. She said it would have probably been hilarious to see them doing this, because it was so assembly line like.

            So when it came time to go home, I was a little nervous, but I figured the sooner I got going the sooner I’d be home. So once again, I was holding the wheel for dear life, hoping not to be blown around to bad, when I was about 15 minutes from being home, my thumb started to fall asleep, I thought that was pretty funny, because it told me I was holding the wheel very tight. Soon enough I was home, and very glad to be. I just hope tomorrow isn’t bad, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

A Days Never Wasted If Your Wasted All Day

Who knew such a fun day could end the way it did. It all started last Saturday, my friend had asked me if I would like to go with him to the Winona State homecoming football game.  The game was at 1, so I arrived at the field around 12:30. It was crazy, people everywhere, tailgate parties, people selling things, and lots of drunken students coming for a good day. I had a great day at the game with my friend, I even won a t-shirt, but unfortunately the Warriors still lost the game.

            It was funny because all through the day I kept hearing about how many parties there were, and how crazy it was downtown. I ran into this friend of my moms and he said he had gone for a drive downtown and said this is the worst he has seen the parties in a long time, people drinking and passed out all over along the roads.  It was kind of funny to hear about all the people that had been partying the night before and to hear other people at the game bragging about what time they woke up in the morning to start drinking, so they could be feeling good for the game. Then most of these students’ conversations quickly turned to where to go to party, and what was going down at these parties. I thought it was interesting how many people gave up in the game at half time and took off to go start partying and drinking again. But for me this day just seemed to come and go as another day.

            The following morning I went to work at 11. The lady that had been their prior to me had said she had heard shooting down by her house the night before, but she really didn’t know what was going on. She kept telling me how she thought that this year was one of the worse homecomings. She said people just got way to out of control. I told her then that if there was a shooting, I was sure we would read about it in the paper.

            Well just like I had guessed it was a headline on the front page. It said that there had been two men, the one confronted a group of people outside, hit someone over the head with an object. The residents then went into the house and closed the door. The man then smashed the window. There were two women outside and they began to argue with the man that had broken the window, then all of a sudden the man began firing shots, the two women dropped to the ground. The two men then ran from the scene. Both of the women had been shot, one in the leg and another in the abdomen, both were taken to the hospital, and were later said to be just fine. No names have been released of the victims, because they fear for their lives right now.

            These two men were first described as being black men, but new news from witnesses have released a new statement saying it is two white men now. It’s crazy how people always have a way to blame people of color. A few days later when I saw my co-worker, she said her husband and his friends were being talked to earlier in the week, and questioned, because her husband is a man from Kenya, and he is of color, and so are most of his friends. Police had upped security at the college and were doing more patrols in the area of the shooting.  I later informed my co-worker of the address of where this happened and she soon realized that it was in the house across from hers. She said that explained the red spray paint put out by police on the road. After talking about what happened she was just happy that she was not doing anything outside at the time of the shooting.

            Almost going on a week later, the police have yet to find the men involved in the shooting, they constantly have new news and information for us in the paper, but they are still yet to find them. This is kind of scary to think about because now there are two people that are being searched for for a shooting and they have yet to be found, this means they are out among people somewhere, and who know what they might do next.

            I truly do think that this year’s homecoming celebrations got quite a bit out of control. Between the alcohol, rowdiness, and shooting, these are all not good combinations for college students and I hope this wakes them up and makes them see the reality of the world for what it is.

Big Timber, Montana: A Place of Wonderful Memories

            I never knew I would learn so much in one day. It started out early, about 7 in the morning, I had just finished eating breakfast, and the group of us, my dad, my brother, my grandpa, and I and a few other relatives were getting ready to head out to the ranch. It was a cool, fall morning and the mountains were very visible off through the valley.  The peaks all shiny as the sun shines on their snow covered peaks. Oh how I wish I could go snowboarding was all I was thinking about.  I had no idea what today would hold for work out at the ranch, but I quickly learned what we would be doing the rest of the day, and all I could think was I hope I don’t screw this up.

            When we arrived out at the ranch, the first thing we did was get out of the truck; Leo came up to us and said we would be herding cattle today. I thought to myself oh wow; I’ve never really done anything like this before. Little did I know how involved I would be in this whole process. Leo then talked to Lloyd for a few minutes while we waited around. Lloyd came back and he said we would be going out to the other barn down the road, taking out the hay truck and loading hay into it. We did this so the cattle would have something they wanted, so it would make it easier to move them.

            The next part was the part I had never expected to come. As we started to walk away, Lloyd calls me over; kind of like he needed to say something to me, well low and behold he tells me he is going to have me run behind the cattle on the four-wheeler. I figured, hey this couldn’t be that hard, but then he takes me in to get the ATV and this is when I find out it’s a manual. See the issue was that I knew how to drive an automatic, not a manual, at this moment I was secretly freaking out inside. But I made myself take a deep breath, after all, what the worst thing that could happen, all I really needed to do is have Lloyd give me a little lesson on how things ran, so he took about 10 minutes to show me how everything worked, everything was pretty self explanatory, the only thing that really gave me any difficulty was trying to get it set in reverse, but after a few tries it got better as we went on.  I figured, it didn’t really matter if I couldn’t get it because I was in a field, so really all I had to do was drive myself around, to go the other way.

After we got out to the other barn, I got on the wheeler and backed it out of the trailer we used to haul it down with. The rest of everyone piled into either the hay truck or the other pickup truck. All of us headed through the field and up a very steep hill. I felt my heart just sink as I took a glance back down the hill, realizing how steep it really was. So I continued on up the hill, as we reached the top, I felt as if I was on top of the world, it was crazy to see how much we lined up with the mountains in the distance, and it was noticeably colder and windier, so I knew we were pretty high up.

            Once in the fields, we drove around looking for the cattle. After about 30 minutes of looking, we found them way back down in a valley, resting and eating in the shade. We had to get close enough to them with the hay, so they would want to leave and follow it. As my dad was getting the truck closer to the cattle, Lloyd directed me to drive back there with the four-wheeler and try to get the cattle moving. After about 30-45 minutes of this, we had finally got all the cattle out of the valley and moving onward to the other pasture. I was told I had to keep behind the cattle and to cross back and forth from side to side to keep them all in one general area, and not allow them to spread out. This trip to the other pasture was somewhere between 1 and a half to 2 miles away. A few times along the way, some of the cattle started to mess with the other cattle and they would get into little fight. There was one moment where I thought the two cattle that were fighting were going to run right into the wheeler, but the sound and size of it spooked them just enough to get them moving right along again.

            This whole move took about 2 hours but we got it done, and really had no issues along the way. I couldn’t believe what I had just done, and how well I did it. This was something that was totally new to me and I had just learned moments before doing. I was so proud of myself. And I really wanted to do it again sometime.

            Later that day, we were doing some light work around the ranch, when my brother spotted a coyote out in the lower pasture, where some cattle were. Lloyd and my Dad wanted to go shot this coyote and if that didn’t work, at least scare it off. So I was then told to go get the wheeler and run along the far edge of the pasture and slowly creep my way over to the other side where the ditch was that it was hiding out in. He then told my dad to go set up down in the ditch about 200 to 300 feet from where the coyote was.

            As I crept up on the coyote, all I was worried about was that it would go the opposite way of where I was trying to make it go. I was just hoping I wouldn’t mess up. Then all of a sudden it took off, and the next thing I heard was a gun shot, but my dad missed, and I looked and saw the coyote running up the hill across the valley, then I heard another gun shot, but the coyote didn’t stop running yet. As it was approaching the top of the hill, I heard one last shot go off and next thing I knew, the coyote was down. We did it. I was so happy with how things went, the only way it could have been better, was if the first shot would have worked, that way we could have gotten rid of the dead body of the coyote, but it was too far up the hill in a part that would be difficult to get to so, we decided we would leave it there for the other animals to eat on.

            After a long day, I never knew how good it could feel to do all this work and learn so many knew things in one day. It’s a good experience seeing how people make a living in different parts of the United States, it makes you see how hard people have to work to do what they do. I also think that this experience was a good way to see how the world around us and everything in it play a role with everything else. It was a great way to experience life and what it takes to survive or make a living in the natural world around us. It is a way to see life and death, and hard work and respect all in one place at one time. Every day since that entire week I was in Montana, I have wanted to go back so bad and help out at the ranch again and spend time in the beautiful scenery. Big Timber, Montana is one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I have ever been and it is the place of many, many wonderful memories I have made.

So Young...

Finally there are charges made for the deaths of three Lewiston Altura teens. I remember being in Lewiston the day it happened. I was there for a track and field meet that was scheduled for after school. About 20 minutes before the meet was to begin, a man made an announcement from the crow’s nest, informing all Lewiston athletes to meet by the bleachers. We had heard talk earlier that something had happened but no one really knew much about anything. After the students went to this meeting, to our surprise many of them came back crying their eyes out, no one really knew what to think, and because we didn’t know them well, no one really asked any questions. The Lewiston students were informed that they could leave if they needed to. So by this point all of us were very confused as to what was going on. A group of us went and talked to one of our coaches, and this was when we were informed that a few of the Lewiston student’s classmates were just found in a crash and they already knew that some didn’t make it. When I found this out I had no idea what to think or even how to respond. I felt my heart sink because I felt so bad for these students. It made me start to think about how I would react in a situation such as this.

I remember hearing the names of the girls involved in the crash, and reading the posts on facebook about how greatly they will be missed. I was just happy it wasn’t anyone I knew personally from Lewiston, because I live very close to there and know a few students that go to school there. But, I remember thinking about what happened a lot for the next few weeks. I would have no idea how to react in such a situation.

Then after some time the rumors started to fly about what happened, and all this time I haven’t really known the truth as to what all did take place, until today, when I read the headline on the front page of the paper. After investigation, police stated that the girls were racing, which I had heard some rumors along the way about something like this but now they even know the other person involved. 

The other person involved was a boy from Lewiston Altura High School, he is 17 and is being charged with 3 counts of criminal vehicular homicide and one count of criminal vehicular operations. Wow, this is something that will be on his record forever and the worst part is he hasn’t even barely started life, he is so young. And on top of it they want to have his charges filed on him as an adult. I thought it was interesting that the step-mother of the girl that had been driving the vehicle and had died, said she felt that the charges were too harsh. She also stated that the poor boy has been through enough and that it doesn’t matter anymore because nothing will bring those girls back. I think this is a very true statement. I myself also think that the charges were too hard for this young boy; he is already going to have to live with the thought that he was involved in the death of three of his classmates for the rest of his life. And if you look at it from an outsiders open perspective, it is not just him to blame, these girls were also racing, it is just as much their faults as it is his, so why not put the charges on all the girls and the boy, even though grant it the three girls are dead, but really all it took was for one of them to speak up and tell the girl driving to slow down or stop. I think this is a case where there really is not just one person to blame, but the whole group. This would be a different story say it was involving a drunk driver or something else, but this was a combined thing, and I don’t think this boy should be getting charged so harsh.

I guess after reading the article I was just shocked to read about what happened, but in a way I almost feel better to know now exactly what happened, it just tells us that vehicles are really items that we have a privilege to drive, not a right, and if we don’t drive responsibly, we are sure to pay the price at some point or another.

Schools So Over Rated These Days!

Please go to the following link and view the video: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html


Well before watching the video I really thought it was going to be some boring English literature type of video, but now I have completely changed my mind on this. All I can say is why didn’t my parents send me to a place like this when I was younger. I really envy those kids that are able to go to this place. Through this type of learning that is being taught, kids are learning some of the most valued skills in life. Things that can help them solve minor problems, but things that if they want they can let their minds soar and they can create new and even bigger things.


I know that my years going through school I went to a Catholic High School where only the basic english, math, science and social studies type classes were taught, plus religion class, but we were never offered any type of industrial tech type of courses. I know that going through school this is one thing that I know I wish I really had the opportunity to take, because some of the lessons learned in these classes are lessons that can be used countless times in life. I think it should be mandatory for schools to offer industrial tech and shop classes to students because some of the lessons taught can be more useful than some of the other lessons taught in classes that are offered. These classes offer life lessons that can be used many times through life.


I think Tulley is saying that sometimes you have to take out the pressures of school and just allow kids the opportunity to make mistakes and be able to learn from them. Give them the opportunity to be creative and help them as much as you can along the way to complete what they set out to accomplish. I really like his point in the video about how the kids don’t have to take tests. I think tests make kids way over stressed and most kids cram as much in as they can before a test, when it is based on fact that unless you review something seven or more times, this information they studied will only be in their short term memory and will shortly be forgotten.


Some of my experiences like the ones these kids have exposure to I have had either from learning from my dad or from some of my closest friends that are guys and they enjoy doing this kind of stuff in their spare time. Other than that I really have not had much exposure to this kind of learning that these kids in the video have had.


I would love to be able to attend a school like this, I have taken tests to tell me the best ways in which I learn, and have been told multiple times by them that I learn best by using my hands. So this says that I can interact with the way I am learning, and I believe this to be very true because I most often catch myself using my hands in some way when I am trying to learn.


I think much too often society gives up when they see that they are going to fail, or they think there is no way in hell they will be able to accomplish a certain task and give up before they even gave it a shot. We need to be taught that even if you fail, there is always some way you can turn it around to get something out of it, and many lessons are learned through failure, so if you give up before you fail, how are you suppose to be able to learn, build from it, and move on to accomplish more things.

My Labor Day Weekend Excitment!

Over the Labor Day weekend, I took a trip up to the Minnesota State Fair. While I was there the first thing I did was walk through the horse barn. After the horse barn I went for a walk through the streets and looked at all the food that was being sold, trying to figure out what stuff I would like to eat. After walking around for a bit, I took a walk through the International Bazaar, but didn’t really find anything that interested me. Towards the middle of the day I went in the Miracle Barn where all the baby animals are. While in there I pet a baby duck and had a calf suck on my finger. This was one of the best parts of the day so far. As me and my boyfriend were getting ready to leave, we went into the arena. Inside they had horse drill teams competing inside. This was very cool to see how people had control over their horses enough that they could put on a very exciting show for us. Lastly we stopped at a vendor and got some Italian food to eat before we left. All in all it was a very fun weekend at the fair.

Hello! This Is Who I Am

Hello, my name is Bailey Brabbit. My birthday is January 20th and I am 18 years old. I currently live in Winona, Minnesota. Every day I drive 45 minutes one way to come to class. I am looking forward to my enrollment into the Physical Therapy Assistant program here at Western Tech. I have blond hair and blue eyes and I stand about 5'9". I have two brothers and a sister. I graduated from Cotter High School, in Winona, in 2010. During high school I was very active in volleyball, softball and track and field especially the field part. This past summer I decided to try a slow pitch co-ed softball team with a bunch of my friends. We had some good times and some even better memories. In my spare time I enjoy four-wheeling, snowmobiling, snowboarding, bonfires and just hanging out with friends. I work at St Anne's Extended Health Care and I also do home health care. I really enjoy the home health care because it pays very well, but I have also learned so much from the lady that I take care of. My favorite color is blue. I love eating at Olive Garden. I'm a big t-shirt, sweatshirt and jeans type of person. This is my first year of college and I'm hoping I can get everything I can out of it and learn a lot to help me transition into my program next fall.