‘***DO NOT FORGET TO DO ALL 3 BLOGS THIS WEEK BY THURSDAY NIGHT!!!

In class we have been learning about appositives. You all have a “study sheet” for them as well. If you need a new one, there are extras behind my desk on the black cart. Ask the substitute to give you one. Your assignment today is to write a post about any topic (you might want to write about your hopes for Christmas or what you plan on doing over vacation- just some ideas for those of you who go blank). You MUST use at least 2 appositives in your post. You are to write in paragraph form! This means you are NOT writing individual numbered sentences like we did in the last two days of class. I want you to practice using appositives in a written piece.

**Remember, if you do not use appositives in your post, you will NOT get credit for the assignment. Since your post does not have to be long, I expect EVERYONE to have their ASSIGNED post completed and published by the end of the period. Those who do not post by the end of the period on THIS ASSIGNMENT will lose the Fun Friday morning for this week.

Here is a quick example of the kind of thing I am looking. The sentences with appositives are in bold.

The boy, with a grin from ear to ear, couldn’t wait to open his presents. He dove into his presents with joy and shreaded right through the wrapping paper. It was so exciting to see his face brighten as he looked at his gifts. His face, lit up with excitement, was full of child-like happiness. The boy’s parents handed him gift after gift to unwarap, until there was nothing left to open. It had surely been the best Christmas ever. He had received a load of games to go with the new Nintendo Wii that his parents bought. On top of that, he got a new ipod and even a cell phone. It was a teenager’s dream Christmas. So the boy, gleaming with happiness, hugged his parents and thanked them for all the great gifts.

Nemesis, as you know, is the newest addition to the class pet family in my room. You may not have known her name, but that is what it is… Nemesis. Nemesis is a corn snake and she’s just a baby right now, but she will eventually grow to be about 5ft. long, much larger than she is right now at only a little over one foot long. I’ve learned some quite interesting things about her and her breed since I got her. Nemesis is quite energetic, and though she is small, she has this intimidating look about her, sort of warning strangers to stay away, or she might strike at any moment. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Nemesis was a mean and vicious creature. But, she’s quite the opposite. She is playful, sweet, and affectionate. She often likes to slither all around my arm and weave in and out of my fingers, all the time fluttering her tongue in and out of her mouth, tickling me as it whips swiftly across my skin. That is how she smells her surrounds, through her tongue. Her skin feels so smooth and soft and her colors are so vibrant and bold, especially now that she has shed her skin. The red and yellowish brown colors on her body are brighter than ever, illuminating and eye catching. I think the most interesting thing to watch her do is eat. It is amazing to me how snakes can eat things that are much larger than the size of their mouths. Nemesis eats two “pinkies”, or baby mice, every Monday. She’s so lazy when you feed her though. She sleeps a lot so when it’s feeding time, you have to show her the mice to get her attention. But, once she sees them… ohhh! It’s like watching an animal in the wild hunt their prey. The pinkies are already dead, but Nemesis doesn’t act like it. Her wild instincts tell her to slither up slowly, sneakily to surprise her prey. Her tongue works quickly to smell her delicious meal that is waiting for her. And just when you least expect it, when you’re not paying attention, BAM! She darts forward with great speed and snatches up her prey, slowly devouring it whole… no chewing, just swallowing, until there is no more. Once she has eaten, she lays under the heat lamp that is on the top of her cage. The heat from the lamp helps her to digest her meal. Snakes have a pretty crazy digestive system, especially since they do not chew their food to break it down. Hopefully the weather warms up soon so she can come back to the classroom.

Do you ever feel like you just need to get away; a nice vacation away from home, to relax and restore your energy? I know stress can certainly add up after a while and seem to weigh heavily on our shoulders. People have such busy lives these days and it’s often hard to fit everything in. I know my life sure is busy and I don’t even have kids like most of my co-workers do. My day to day life is a constant teeter totter of teaching my students, tutoring, helping kids with after school projects, coaching my players, reading blogs, grading papers, planning lessons for writing and social studies, designing GT projects, playing soccer, and a bluster of other things. It’s so hard to fins time for rest and relaxation. Sometimes I’d like to just get in the car or hop on a plane and take a little vacation away from it all. You know, slow my life down a bit and enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, I love every bit of my life, especially my job. It just seems that as time progresses, the hours in the day get shorter and shorter, leaving more to pick up where I left off the day before. A perfect example is that I love to read. But, I never seem to have the time to do it. I started reading Twilight over Thanksgiving break and it’s a great book, but I can’t even think about finishing it until we are out for Christmas break because that’s the next time I’ll have time to. I think sometimes everyone could use a little break. We have to take the time to slow down and, not just enjoy life, but appreciate what we have and who we have in our lives.

I don’t know why, but it seems as though my roommate and I are having horrible luck with our animals this year. We have always had a lot of animals in our house. We are both big animal lovers. At one time I remember we had, what everyone called a zoo in our house: 3 dogs, 4 cats, a water turtle, two baby box turtles, a tree frog, 2 fire bellied toads, and 11 salt water fish, and 4 fresh water fish. Oh yeah, and one beta fresh water fish. MAN! Talk about some maintenance and expensive to take care of and feed all those animals. As expensive, time consuming, and even at times, frustrating it can be to own pets, I certainly miss our zoo. Most of you know I lost my cat, Damon two months ago. Well, over the Thanksgiving break, we had to put one of our other cats, Hurley to sleep. Hurley had been losing weight slowly over the last couple of months. I had been pretty concerned about it for a while, especially because I would see him eat and he would act normal, as if nothing were wrong. He would still play with the other cats and sit on my lap to beg for food and lay on my chest, purring loudly in comfort of the attention he was getting as I rubbed his head and scratched his ears.

So anyways, I finally decided to take Hurley to the vet to find out what was going on. When I arrived I had to wait in the waiting room for quite a while because we didn’t have an appointment. When we did get into the exam room, the veterinarian told me exactly what I expected to hear… that in just examining him physically he looked normal. So, they wanted to take some blood and test it for a wide variety of things, including feline AIDS, feline Leukemia and parasites. Since the next day was Thanksgiving, my roommate and I would have to wait until Friday to get results back.

Friday came around and my roommate’s brother had asked if we would help him move to his girlfriend’s house. That morning, my roommates Dre and Diana, Dre’s fiance Brian, and I headed to the East side to help Matt move his stuff to his new place. When we were almost to the house, my phone rang and I recognized the number. It was Dr. Cruz from the animal clinic. When I answered the phone and heard the Dr.’s voice, I knew the news was not going to be good. The Dr. always had this upbeat cheery way of talking, but today there was nothing cheery or pleasant about the tone of her voice. She sounded solemn, sad. The went over all the tests, one by one and they had all come back negative, until the feline leukemia test. Hurley had tested positive, meaning he had feline leukemia.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for this disease. Not only that, feline leukemia is highly contagious, meaning that other cats can get it very easily from a cat who already has it. What that means, is that all of our other cats, since they have been living with Hurley for so long, probably have it as well. There are two stages to feline leukemia. Hurley was in the second stage of it, where the disease starts to aggressively attack the cat’s immune system, making them lose weight and have many problems. They can also get sick much more often than a healthy cat. The disease was actually making Hurley suffer, even though he was not acting like it. So, we had to put him to sleep.

The worst part of the whole thing was telling my roommate, Dre, about the results from the tests. Hurley is actually her cat. He was the first cat she got when she first moved out of her parents’ house, about 6 years ago. So, even though she loves all the animals, Hurley was the “baby”; he was always a little extra special. He was the only animal in our house who was allowed to eat table food. He was a great fan of french fries and Doritos. Those were his favorite things to eat.

Dre was so crushed by the news and torn up about having to put him down, that she could not even go to the vet when we put him to sleep. The whole experience was very disheartening, completely heart wrenching. I could not believe I was here again, only two months later, in the exam room, watching another family pet have to be put to sleep. It NEVER gets any easier. This one was particularly harder because it had not been that long since Damon passed. Our other cat Bailey, definitely misses Hurley and Damon. The three cats were always together and you could tell they really loved each other. Often, they would lay next to each other and sleep. Of course they would play too, often times running and dashing, leaping over us while we were on the couch watching TV or even while we slept.  I would always feel them playing at night in my room, wrestling in the bed… crazy boys. I will certainly miss Hurley a lot… and Damon. I miss our whole zoo we used to have. Now, it’s just a small exhibit

Okay, we have been learning about possessive nouns and contractions in class this week. Remember, a possessive noun shows the reader that the noun has ownership of something. A contraction is where you have two words that have been combined to form one word. Here are some examples to refresh your memory:
1. The student’s homework was incorrect. (singular possessive- homework belongs to ONE student- ’s)
2. The nurses’ committee meets weekly. (plural possessive- committee belongs to the nurses- s’)
3. Jacob’s game is at the rec center. (singular possessive- game belongs to Jacob- ’s)
4. The James’ car broke down. (plural possessive- the car belongs to the James family- s’)

Remember that, in nouns, contractions are spelled the same as the singular possessive form of the word. The way the sentence is READ will tell the reader whether it is a contraction or a possessive noun.

1. Kevin’s going to the game. (contraction- Kevin is going to the game)
2. The boy’s got to get an A to pass. (contraction- The boy has to get an A to pass)
3. Kevin’s homework was incomplete. (singular possessive- The homework belongs to Kevin)
4. The boy’s ice cream melted. (singular possessive- The ice cream belongs to the boy)

Your assignment is to write a post ON ANY TOPIC, ABOUT ANYTHING. You MUST use:
1. singular possessive nouns
2. plural possessive nouns AND
3. nouns as contractions

If you do not use ALL of the three mentioned items in your post, you will NOT get full credit for your post. The idea here is to practice using possessive nouns and nouns as contractions CORRECTLY, with the proper spelling and punctuation!