Week Seven Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In the portion I read, the terrorists made an attempt to get revenge on Jack and the rest of the Ryan family. It was a very well planned attack that happened at two different locations at the same time. They had followed the Ryans for a good while, learning their routines and habits so that they could practically predict where they would be at any given time.

Independent Reading week Six

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In what I read this week, Jack Ryan goes back to do some work for the CIA. it was interesting how the CIA headquarters are described. It is described as very plain, a bit ugly and kind of messy. they have a kiosk in the lobby that sells soft drinks and cigarettes. The kiosk is worked by blind people, because they are less of a security threat.

Mom's Old Minivan

When I was a little kid, my mom had an old Plymouth minivan. It was
junky in just about every way possible. For starters it looked bad. The model was not too good looking, while this one also had faded paint that in some places ceased to exist. The whole hood and most of the roof had absolutely no paint, and left behind the light gray primer. If you are a person who is easily entertained, you would have a lot of fun with the hood, because you could easily pick off the leftover paint. It was completely box shaped. It was almost all right angles. Anything aerodynamic, had nothing to do with this van. For some strange reason, the interior designer decided to make the seats a conversion of leather and cloth. The back of the seats and the armrest were leather, while the actual seat cushions were cloth. The van as a whole was visually painful.
With a car that ugly you would hope that it was comfortable, but, it
wasn’t. Most of the time the air-conditioning didn’t work, and with the Georgia summer heat, riding in that van could be pretty nauseating. Those leather armrests also split on a bunch of spots, so then they would scratch you if you put any weight on them. Being that we spilled drinks on the armrests as well, that made them uncomfortably sticky. In fact we had spilled things on just about the entire inside of the car, which made most of it pretty sticky. The seat cushions were so smashed that they were no longer anywhere near comfortable. In the back seats you could feel metal bars beneath the cushions. Sitting on the carpet in the trunk was actually more comfortable than the back seats, and yes on a few occasions I snuck into the trunk as my mom was driving. Then there was the sliding door. Boy was that thing fun. Before closing that door you should have had to sign a form stating that, “all damage done to your shoulder is your own fault.” I wasn’t able to close that door for myself until I was seven years old.
The thing didn’t sound too great either. First of all it was a bit too loud for
a minivan. Then, the sounds that it did produce were bad ones. It sounded like someone had dumped gravel into all of the important parts. The muffler didn’t work too well. This gave it the sound of a continuous belch. The seats made a lot of noise too. They creaked every time anyone moved. Then there was that sliding door again. If you were able to close it, it could diffidently wake neighbors. It was the loud sound of scraping metal that was not very kind to ears.
After all of those unfortunate factors, strangely enough, it didn’t smell that
bad. The smell was an interesting collaboration of the burgers, fries, burritos, and all other drive-through foods that we had eaten in that van, mixed with all of the soft drinks we had spilled on the floor and seats. There was a bad side to the way it smelled though. We had lost a lot of crayons into and beneath the seats, and crayons happen to be one of my least favorite smells. Something about them just makes me gag. I was a colored pencils only kid. Most of the time, you could focus on the drive-through smell instead of the crayon smell. This made the van smell very unique. It was the kind of smell that made you feel comfortable, but also the kind of smell that made you think that you might get clogged arteries or have a heart attack just from breathing the drive-through air pollution.
My dad always had a rule for our family, “don’t get a new car until the one you have breaks”. Thank God, it finally did break. My mom did get a new van, and although new vehicles do cost money, having a replacement for the old one was an overall relief. It’s been about seven years since them. We gave it to a guy who takes cars and sells their pieces. Now people all over northeast Georgia gets to experience my mom’s van, one piece at a time.

Week Five Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. It was interesting how it showed how when transferring high priority prisoners, police go to great extents to make sure that there is no interference. Going as far as to transfer the prisoner at four A.M. on Christmas mourning. during the transfer three identical armoured vans drove in seperated directions. All of them taking only back roads.

Week Four Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot games. In the portion that I read Jack and his family go back to America on a Concorde jet. I thought that the scientific things about the plane were pretty interesting. when at it's cruising speed of thirteen hundred fifty-five miles per hour, at an altitude of fifty-nine thousand feet, the air outside was negative sixty degrees Celsius while the aircraft skin was one hundred degrees Celsius. because of all of these factors the plane becomes eleven inches longer than it is on ground.

A Small Portion of My Life

When you’re seven, it doesn’t take much to scare you. When you’re seven,
small things look big.
When I was seven, I decide to go for a bike ride. I did this pretty much
every day. First, I would come down my driveway as fast as I could. I liked doing this because my driveway was both long and steep. By the time I’d get to the bottom, I’d be going so fast, that sometimes I would have a hard time staying on the bike when it hit the curb! I always loved a good adrenaline rush from a very young age. So this day’s ride started just like any other day’s. I came down the driveway as usual and made the sharp left turn that would send me racing down towards the cul-de-sac. All of the kids in my neighborhood loved doing this. We would race each other (or when alone, some imaginary competitor), peddling as fast as we could, all the way to the cul-de-sac. Whoever finished in last place would usually get taunted the whole ride home. I was the youngest and smallest kid on my street, so yes, ordinarily I’d receive most of the taunts. (This had a large part in my liking of riding alone)
On this day I was riding alone. I had no idea what lay ahead for me. In
fact, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of there being anything out of the ordinary down at the end of the street. I had no idea that there was something down there that later that day I would think had changed my life forever! When I entered the cul-de-sac, I slowed down a little to make the wide swooping turn. As I reached the halfway point, out of the corner of my right eye I saw something take a great leap. Then, I turned my head and saw a beast! A Jack Russell Terrier! It stood at an astounding thirteen inches tall! With epinephrine rushing through my veins, I turned and peddled as hard as I could. I was going uphill now, and my bike was a one gear bike. I didn’t have the option of dropping into the lowest gear to make things easier. My bike was completely old fashioned.
I peddled harder than I thought possible. My thighs and calves throbbed in
pain. I looked back to see this great beast gaining ground on me. His muscles rippled as he ran. He was eighteen pounds of pure power, and I was no match. My fear started to overwhelm me, when all of the sudden… he stopped. He walked into the grass and started to urinate. “Finally! A break!” I thought. I knew that this might be my one and only chance of an escape. So I kept peddling. He stopped urinating.
The chase resumed. As he started to regain ground, I wished for my luck to
repeat itself. And it did. For a second time, he stopped to urinate. “Yes!” I thought to myself. I quickly regained the ground I had lost. And he finished relieving himself.
Finally, I reached the hill’s peak! I knew that since it was downhill from
here I could easily outrun him. So, after peddling for a few more moments I stopped. I took in as much oxygen as I could in one breath. Then I turned my head towards the thing which I had fled from. I wanted one last look at this dog. I looked and I saw him stop, walk into the grass, and urinate, one last time. He then turned and went home.
When I thought about my bike ride later that day, I thought I had had a
near death experience. When I think about it now, I don’t think a Jack Russell Terrier could kill a person. I doubt it could truly injure one, even a person as small as I was at that time. I guess it goes to show, “When you’re seven, it doesn’t take much to scare you. When you’re seven, small things look big.”

Week Three Independent Reading

This week i again read more of Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy. In this part of the story a trial is taking place for the terrorist Sean Miller.it was interesting how the prosecutor and all of the media decided to not call him a terrorist, and instead call him a criminal. They decided to charge him with first degree murder instead of terrorism so as to not inspire another attack.