Maddy's Blog

We have received a photograph of Elvira. She sent it to The Statesman via e-mail. I'm thinking she's a UMD student, but there's no one listed with that name at UMD.

Life as a Fish

For my html project I'm going to use the voice of my fish Chloe. Yeah, it's a little weird that I gave her a name, but I've always named all of my fish whether they've lived for a day or a year.



I got Chloe from my boyfriend Ben last February for a gift. For about a month I didn't think she was going to live because she refused to eat. I've come to realize it may have had to do with the fact that we never refilled our oil tank and it was near freezing in our house for a few months. Ever since the house and the weather warmed up last spring she hasn't really quit eating. She's a little chubby.

I've always wondered what a pet would say if it could talk to its owner...and since my only pet is a fish, I'm going to use her voice.

I didn't really use just one blog or website to get my idea. It seems that people who have pets and regularily blog talk about their animals a lot. The link that follows is to a blog entry where the animal owner has created blogs for each of his dogs. He also has many pictures of pets and animals on his site: animalblog

Another response to UrS TruLEe

If you've been keeping up-to-date with the last two issues of the Statesman, you would see that the ads look much better. You can read the liquor coupons and everything.
As for the math, we don't know how to add or subtract very well, so thank you for helping us out with that. That's something we'll have to correct right away.
I still want to apologize for goin with our instincts about what readers would want to change in The Statesman. We maybe should have done a poll or something...
Anyways...what paper did you say you worked for? I'm not sure that we received that information and I would hate to leave that out when we post your letters from now on. Also, if you have a picture that would be great. We like to match a face with a name and letter.

Here's another letter from the ever-responsive Elvira Fulch.

Reply to UrS TruLEe

Obviously someone wasn't very happy with the changes we made in the Statesman this year. We did really make them to improve the look and feel of the paper for the student body.

I do agree with the fact that we are sometimes lacking in the picture department. We seem to be stretching up to the last minute to find pictures, especially for the front page. This week our choices for the front were: a baby hawk from Hawk's ridge, a picture of the tour guide for the Rain Garden and a picture of a few volleyball players celebrating. I hope you're pleased with the picture we ended up choosing - it was the best we had to work with and I think it's darn good.

The color was greatly needed and will probably be increased, along with the back page staying the front page of the sports section.

As far as the Editor-in-Chief thing...I miss Abby, too. She was my roommate.

We at The Statesman welcome your criticism, so keep the messages going. Also, I don't usually take the time to reply to letters, especially since I'm the Production Editor.

This letter was sent to The Statesman office by Elvira Fulch a dedicated reader. Miss Fulch was the first person to ever respond and wrote in to the newspaper as an Editor of another college newspaper. She won't, however, disclose the name of the paper she works for. We are starting to suspect that she may just be an angry student irrationally lashing out.

Travel

I've been thinking more and more every day about how ready I am to be done with school!!!! Pretty sure it makes me want to jump up and down and scream HOORAY!
But, what to do when it's all over?...something!

I really would love to take a year off from life - maybe just not work or go to school. I would love to travel. I would even love to do it by myself. I know I have a lot more to learn about who I am, as everybody does, and I think it would be the best opportunity to do so.
It would even be awesome to study abroad next semester, although I'm not sure I would finish up in time if I did that.

I would love to go to Europe and visite Ireland, France, Spain and all kinds of places. Besides having constraints that I will place on myself when it comes to this decision, traveling is not cheap. I could stay in hostels the whole time, though.

I just can't quit thinking about how much I don't want to have to stress about a job and stuff right after school, and I don't think I will. If anyone has any suggestions about where to go and how to do it cheaply, let me know!

Bar Preview

Keiren and I ran around in the rain today to try to get more interviews at some local bars. I was surprised at how different the bartenders were. Some were really helpful and some weren't at all. We're working on putting together a fall bar preview for the Statesman this week.

Pretty sure we're awesomely dedicated for running around in the rain. I think we followed Greder's instructions to "be good little reporters."
We had a great time and I hope we continue doing fun stories this year. I think a lot of students would read more articles like this one.

I did get some people to take a picture of the two of us when we were up at Applebees. We look completely amazing!!

Drowned Rats

One of my favorite groups to listen to perform are Trampled by Turtles. I think a lot of other Duluthians agree. Their music just seems to get everybody's juice flowing.

Their first concert I went to, I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, I ended up having tons of fun and dancing around the whole time with my roommate Sarah. We ended up kicking off of our shoes and working up a sweat - it was well worth it.

These pictures are of Dave Simonett and Erick Berry of Trampled. I also took these when I was down at the Bayfront.

Here's a link to the group's web site: Trampled by Turtles
Here's the link to their blog, it's pretty funny: Trampled blog

Photography

My favorite class I've taken so far in college has been News Photography. I think I learned the most in it and it was super fun to run around with a camera. I don't always feel comfortable and am a little bit nervous around people I don't know, so photography seems to provide me with a shield - the camera.

Last Sunday I was given the opportunity to take pictures all day at the Beacon to the Bayou benefit concert going on at Bayfront. It was a gorgeous day and I ended up taking over 160 pictures. Eight of them are running in this week's centerspread and I'm really excited about it.

The picture above was to be of the crowd going crazy during a Trampled by Turtles song - a guy boosted me up onto the scaffolding next to the stage to help me get this shot. But, I changed it to this picture of a lady in the audience dancing with her daughter. They danced around together like this for about an hour.

Storytelling

I found another fictional blog while surfing through other people's blogs. Many of them had lists to links of ficitonal blogs. The blog I found has been going for the last five years. Each year is a book - this year being book 5. Each book/year contains a story about different characters.

The blog is fun to read and engages the reader enough that they want to know what happens next or what happened before. It seems to relate to real life examples and normal day-to-day relationships and activities.

It's intersting how people have such different styles of creating fictional blogs. While many of them are cartoons, some seem to be real.

Here's the link:
Imaginary Year

Pee Yew!!

I would like to introduce to everyone: the Onion, if you don't already know what it is. It is a web site that does fake news stories. They usually range from the bizarre to hilarious.
I suggest you all take a look at it and read some of the stories that are there. They're usually pretty crude and rude, but they're never dull.

They always revolve around things that are currently going on in the news and then have an added twist. For example one headline read, "Oprah stuns audience with free man giveaway."
Here's the link:The Onion

Check it out!

Something in common

It seems like Andrea and Jill have some stuff in common, due to the fact that they are both interested in Literature and Jill has her graduate degree, while Andrea is working on hers. I guess this is what I found relating one of my classmates to Jill Walker.
Andrea's entry is from the first week of class and speaks of her plans for her graduate studies and how interested she is in her area of study.
I can admire that trait in a person, especially as I'm still very unsure if I would attend graduate school or just take my degree and run with it.
I also liked the way she compared her daydreaming/wandering thoughts to hypertext.
Here's the link to her entry:September 7

Time to slow down

I've come to the conclusion that having three jobs - all of which I love - and actually doing well in school isn't possible. So, I've decided to give up on college. I know it's my last year, but I just like working too much.

Just kidding. I'm going to have to make a tough decision real soon. I may have to quit the first job that made me realize that working can be fun, when you make it fun or are doing something you enjoy. I may just work there once a week, as long as it isn't until 2 a.m.

I think I'll be able to get over it. I work at the Statesman doing Production, in the Mechanical and Engineering office as an assistant and at Sir Benedicts. Because I just started Sir Ben's, I'm thinking it might get the boot real soon. The people I work with are awesome, but I'll just have to go and eat there...and not just eat there when I'm working!

Also, a note on the Statesman...the first issue just came out this week, so everyone should check it out. A lot of hard work went in to the issue and I think everyone's feeling pretty good about it. I would say to check it out online, IF we had a working web site.

Keeping the ink on the page and the phone on silent

I've come to two life-changing conclusions. Actually they're not...they're pretty small observations.


A#1. Cell phones make people too available to their friends, family and people with the wrong number. At least for me, anyways. I guess I'm just going to have to keep it on silent when I'm trying to get stuff done. It tends to interrupt me, and usually not at the best times.


B#2. I need to quite making lists on my hands. And, I need to wash the lists off before I go to bed. A few days ago I went and got coffee, and worked at the Statesman for a few hours. Little did I know I had red writing on my face. My cheek read call dad, backwards. Needless to say, I tried to scrub it off...which seemed to do most of the trick. That's a big wOOPS!

Bizarre noises

I had just sat down to think of ideas for my messages when my roommate Sarah came to tell me she heard weird noises outside of her room. She was just going to bed and heard some kind of whimpering/crying and couldn't decide where it was coming from. I went to check it out and heard it...for sure...but also couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

It was a little creepy...no I mean, a LOT creepy!!

We decided it was either one of the neighbors kids - who should be in bed by now, or one of the college kids that lives around the corner crying due to severe intoxication. Our other idea was that it was someone on crack or some other drug.

Pretty sure that tonight when I go to bed I'm going to shut my window just so that I don't think I keep hearing stuff...nighty night...sleep tight!

test

Skunks are stinky.

Lazy ways

I found a blog to use for my personal diary buddy blog. The person that writes this blog has basically NOTHING in common with me, but I found it interesting and a little humorous. The blog is written by a man who doesn't believe in working and has written a book about lazy ways. Here's the link: The lazy way to success

Family life

This is my mom, me and my three sisters at a wedding this past summer. The two on the left are my younger sisters, Isabel and Talia. On the right of my mom are me and my older sister, Briana. My family is really important to me...there isn't anybody that I laugh with more than them. But, you got to feel bad for my dad...he is the only man in the house. Hopefully I'll have a picture of him to put up soon.

Ben the goofball

This is my boyfriend Ben. When I took this picture we were hanging out with some friends at Sir Benedicts...where I happen to work. We've been dating since our senior year in high school, before which we were best friends. He's a good guy...he likes to be goofy like me.

Area of Interest - becoming more interested

I've found by far the most interesting and entertaining blog that I've looked at. With my new position at the Statesman being production I'm becoming more interested in design elements and layout. I found this blog that contains a news designer's front page picks and personal thoughts, along with a picture of that newspaper's cover. It also contains links to front pages of leading newspapers around the world for that day. It's crazy to see how design of newspapers has changed and how important that front page picture is in telling the story for the day. The author of the blog has been receiving entries from reporters that have been in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast these past days. This in turn links to many of the full stories. Anyway, you'll have to check it out...I'm just rambling on about what it contains...Here's the address: Newsdesigner.com

Citizen Journalism

Seeing as the blogging world is quite large it wasn't hard for me to find blogs that offer citizen journalist perspectives on the current situation in Iraq. One blog contributed to by three Iraqi citizens offers insight on the Iraqi struggle and their perspective on current events happening in the United States, such as Hurricane Katrina. The main author of the website is an architect from Jordan. The site can be found at: Raed in the Middle
I also found a weblog that has daily updates on the Iraq war and has links to stories and websites containing current events in the United States and around the world. It can be found at: Iraq War Today

I'll be checking out these blogs on a regular basis and hope you find interest in them, too.

Last first day

Brittany:
Last night I kept thinking that today is my last first day of school, ever. It's a good feeling and when Hegman suggested I attend graduate school last night I told him he was crazy. I keep forgetting that you, Jen and Abby are finished with school and that you're not going through the same feelings today.