healthy for the heart.

People have been saying that dark chocolate is good for the heart (the actual organ, not the metaphorical one, though, I think it's good for both). Now, there's scientific proof: Chocolate Helps Heart Stay Healthy. Just an excuse to eat more of it. I personally recommend Lindt dark chocolate (70% is the way to go). You can find that stuff almost anywhere, and it is so amazingly good. So much better than the milk chocolate... for lack of a better word... shit. =)

September 21, 2008

This morning, I was wondering about the social connections of teenagers today. Every day, adolescents spend hours on their computers, and amid doing other things (like homework, watching videos on YouTube, googling Hugh Laurie, listening to music on iTunes, and... wow I can think of hundreds of more things), they chat with their friends. Is instant messaging (and the Internet in general) hurting the social skills of today's youth? And what about cell phones? They aren't really used for talking anymore, but text messaging. Has the information generation become anti-social?

I think not. Fifty years ago, kids were pushed out of the house and told not to return until dinner time. Now? If I don't call home to say that I'll be home twenty minutes late from school, I get yelled at. Of course I think this is a little ridiculous being as I stay after every single day. So I either have to give my exact location every step I take, or just stay home. For my parents, me staying home is easier; they know the farthest I'll go is from the computer to the bathroom, maybe make my way to the fridge and curl up in front of the tv. But if I'm going to my friends house, who knows where else I might go?

So if going out is no longer totally supported by parents, how else can I spend time with my friends? iChat. And if I'm not at the computer, I can update my friends with my news and whereabouts quickly with a text. Maybe ask ten people at once if they're free Friday night. And no awkward conversations when all you want to say is "I have work tomorrow at 4." Maybe the conversations are awkard because with this technology, we no longer have the skills to make conversation interesting. I believe this, too, is untrue. I can always find something to talk about with my friends.

I just believe that times have changed, and my generation has just had to adapt to it. We haven't grown farther apart, but are attempting to come closer together.

September 15, 2008

My last year in public school started just two weeks ago. I'm not sure if it's passing me by quickly, or drudging on slowly. There isn't time enough for me to stop and think about it. There isn't time enough for me to enjoy the last year I will have with my friends. Right now, the one night that sticks out in my mind is the one we played Pictionary and it took the teams ten minutes (not an exaggeration, it definitely wasn't shorter) to get the word 'meet.'

I hope I'll have many more ten minute times I'll remember without needing pictures to recall before it's all over.

seniors oh nine.

Is it enough to say that the finite-ness of time has finally hit me?

(Hazel's on the left, I'm on the right.)

some cute-ism.

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of Chef Oskar (above, duh) tiptoeing around me. The cutest-almost-three-year-old was probably sent down to wake me up. I opened my eyes and he was walking back and forth in front of me, unsure of what to do. I smiled, and the first words out of his mouth where:

"Where is the ball?"

After he found it, I got up and went to my backpack. My clothes weren't actually in the bag, but strewn across the floor. Oskar quite plainly told me that someone had to clean up.

[note: my cutest-almost-three-year-old-nephew is actually tri-lingual. Polish with his dad (my brother), German with his mom, and English with his babysitter. All the talking he does to me is in Polish. The things he says in Polish are much cuter than the English translation.]