Game 1

Posted on May 11, 2012 by nbarber15

It’s back! Summer hockey has officially begun. The significance of this though is that my little brother will now be playing high school hockey with me.

Nixon and Easton Barber

Despite his height challenge, he did very well. He plays defense and was very successful in his first high school game.

Easton is an 8th grader, he enjoys drawing, hanging out with friends, and playing hockey. He is 5 feet tall and weighs 80 pounds. This physically puts Easton behind other hockey players, but Easton doesn’t let his size restrain him. Several times in his first game, kids a lot bigger that Easton pushed him over, but no matter how many times this happened he stood back up and kept playing. Way to go dude! I am proud of him for being tough and never giving up.

I am also happy to report that our team won our first game. With a destructive finishing score of 13-1!

after the game

This is our team lining up to shake hands after the game. You can clearly see Easton, he is the shortest one on the ice. Nevertheless, he powered through and helped us win! If you would like to come see the Park City Miner Hockey Team in action look for a schedule click here.

No Fence to Strong….

Posted on May 4, 2012 by nbarber15

Before I begin my blog post, I would like to mention the death of MCA (Adam Yauch), the founder of the Beastie boys. He passed away today, Friday the 4th. I would like to thank him for giving hope to white people everywhere, that we too could rap. RIP MCA.

Now, this week I received a a great shock when my mother told me that we would be raising calves. My initial reaction was, this is not going to work out. But my mom pursued her cow dream and this week I found myself building a barb wired fence.

Barb Wire Fence

This is my fence. The pipe structure was there before but I had to string the barbwire on there. It is quite the task. It took many hours of long work, and when it was over, I rejoiced!

The project began with us stringing the wire. This required us to walk the whole length of the fence stringing out the wire and attaching it to the posts.

stringing the fence

We started stringing the fence at 6:00 and did not finish until at least 9:00. We carried it over 900 feet, with the weight of the spool was probably over 50 lbs. We just walked and walked with the spool until there was no more fence to cover, and that was the easy part.

The hard part was tying the wire to the fence. To do this we had to cut lengths of the barbwire and tie it to the wire. Then we had to tie it to the pole above and below it so it did not shift around. This went on from 9:00, to 10:00. I just tied and tied more wire. And if you have never tried to tie barbwire before, its really hard. It is strong and does not want to bend. Plus, you have to try to not stab yourself with the wire. To describe the experience, it sucked. I will not be looking forward to this summer, having to wake up early to feed a cow out of a bottle, and having to do the same thing that evening. It is going to be a long summer, a summer of pain and suffering. If you are interested in the process of raising calves, click here. Farewell, and goodbye for now.

Nixon

Posted on April 27, 2012 by nbarber15

Today, I am going to write about my name. Many people have asked me why I am named Nixon. I was named Nixon after the president, which most people think is kind of strange, because Nixon wasn’t necessarily a good president. Lots of people disliked him, and he was later impeached/resigned. If you don’t know who President Nixon is, then click here. But I am not going to talk about President Nixon, I am going to talk this Nixon.

Richard Nixon

Despite what people tell me about my name I am glad to have it. My name sets me apart from everyone else. Some people tell me it is a cool name, others don’t understand it. I am glad to have it though. I think my name is a big part of me. It is part of my character that no one else can have. Others could try to act like me, or speak like me, but they can not be me because there is only one Nixon.

I have never met another Nixon before. I would be interested to meet another Nixon, find someone that I share this one trait with. But no matter how far I search, I have never found another person with the first name Nixon. Therefore, I believe that, at the moment, I am the only Nixon. There are lots of people with the last name Nixon, but I think I am the only person with the first name Nixon. I don’t care what other people think about my name. I will forever be glad to have this awesome name and I hope that everyone I know knows it.

What the heck!

Posted on April 20, 2012 by nbarber15

This post is part of my petition to fix the schedule of Treasure Mountain Junior High on Tuesday, April 24. We would like the schedule to run like the high school. Not just for this day but on everyday where we see this dilemma of un-alined schedules. The high school will be running on a special schedule, with 40 minute classes, ending with an early release at 10:30 AM, and Treasure Mountain will be running on its regular schedule. This is not O.K. and here is why.

Although 8th and 9th grade students attend Treasure Mountain, many of them have classes at the high school that day. This complicates things. They will not have teachers during the hour and a half that they are supposed to be attending that class. Also, many students have more than one class at the high school on that day. Now they are sitting doing nothing, for most of their day!

This also makes it much harder on the poor bus drivers. Who, with this complicated schedule, will not get a break all day. They drive kids to school, then drive kids home from school, have a very small break and right back into driving kids home from school. Not only does this inconvenience our bus drivers, but it is more expensive and not as healthy for the environment. What they could have done in 1 trip will now take them 2. This means spending money to use more gas. Why? We could run both schools on the same schedule and this will no longer be a problem!

(picture from:http://www.usabuscharter.com/USABusCharter_SchoolBusTransportation.html)

I hope you see my reasoning and decide to help my cause!

Finally

Posted on March 30, 2012 by nbarber15

Yes, at long last we have finally reached the end of quarter 3. The road was long and difficult, and is now filled with the bodies of those who could not survive the worst of these school conditions. Such conditions as overload on homework, of tests, many writing assignments, essays, science fair projects, foreign language dialogue presentations, band competitions, sports playoffs and blog assignments. Now that that is all over, we can move on to something better, like quarter 4. Where all that turns into summer, but right now, I am going to share some of the wisdom that I have learned while surviving this intense section of school with hopes that you will learn from my mistakes and survive.

First, do not procrastinate. I should have learned this a long long time ago, but I did not learn. I was foolish, and did not heed the warnings of my teachers. I thought that I chose the easy road, just wait and I can do it at the last minute and it will all be all right. No. I found out that if you do the assignment early, you have more time to work on it, make it better, make it the best. If you begin earlier, you will do better with your school work. This means better grades, and less stress.

Next, PAY ATTENTION! I have previously sat in classes and doodled, looked out the window, and screwed around with friends. I recently discovered that if you PAY ATTENTION, then everything becomes easier! You know the answers to the questions on your homework, quizzes, and even your tests! It all makes sense now!

If you listen to my advice and apply it to your school day, you will not look like this.

Don’t look like this. Take my advice. You will not regret it.

sacrifice….

Posted on March 23, 2012 by nbarber15

This week I learned that sometimes to get something better, you have to suffer. I am not the only person to endure this, there are many instance in real life and fantasy. Like Job, in the bible. Job lived a good life with his family and was rich. Then, god tested him by destroying everything in his life. His family died, his crops were stoled and burned, he was demented and mutilated. But he stayed faithful to the lord and was then blessed with double what he had before. Job persevered and was rewarded.

Now, I am not in nearly as bad a situation as Job . But I feel it is for the similar reasons. Recently I visited Dr. Summsion at Park City Orthodontics, (I highly recommend him) and received braces.

I think about it now and think how much it hurts, and how goofy I must look. Then, I am reminded of their true purpose, to fix me. I will have to suffer now. I will have to deal with the pain, and the funny looks. Not to mention how this affects my status with the ladies! But one day in the future, I will sit back in that orthodontists chair and I will have them removed from my face, only to discover strait and beautiful teeth, and a gorgeous smile that the ladies cant resist. Yes, one day I will have my sweet and glorious victory. Until then, I need to endure, and I will be blessed.

Now that I have applied this to my life, I hope that you can find a way to apply it to yours. Fellow classmates, if you are struggling with a class, don’t give up. You will be rewarded in the end! Teachers and adults, I don’t know what you might be struggling with, but persevere! It will be worth it someday!

Mmmmm… Yummy

Posted on March 9, 2012 by nbarber15

This week, I will be sharing how too make a cake in 5 minutes or less, using common ingredients and a coffee mug, in your microwave. Be prepared world, it is delicious.

Ingredients you will need are: 4 tablespoon flour, 4 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons coco powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1 egg (beaten), 3 tablespoons milk, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, 2 carmel squares.

Start this process by mixing in a small bowl; flour, sugar, coco, baking powder, salt, egg, milk and oil. Mix to combine. Pour solution into a regular sized coffee and push the two carmel into the center of the mixture. Place the now prepared coffee mug into the center of your microwave and heat it for 1 minute and 30 seconds. If the mixture still looks wet when you are done, heat it again for another 30 seconds. Be careful when removing the cup from the microwave, it is really hot! Let it cool for a minute and enjoy!

Cup Cake

If you are as unprepared as I am when making this, then you too can substitute the carmel with a hand full of chocolate chips. You can try to contain the chocolate chips to the center or spread them out throughout the cup. I hope you enjoy this!

The Lorax

Posted on March 3, 2012 by nbarber15

I recently had the chance to go see an excellent movie entitled “The Lorax” inspired by the book by Dr. Seuss. It was an excellent animated film telling the story of how all the trees died, staring this guy

. This is the Lorax (voiced by Danny De Vito), He is the speaker for the trees. He is a mysterious character who appears when a tree is cut down in the forest by the Once-ler (voiced by Ed Helms). I am about to tell the whole story of the movie in the rest of this blog post, so if you don’t know the story and would like to see the movie, then stop reading now!!!! This is your spoiler alert!!

The movie starts with a fictional town of Thneedville, where everything is plastic, even the plants! We see a young man named Ted (Zach Efron) who has fallen for a beautiful high school girl named Audrey (Taylor Swift). To win her affection he goes on an epic quest to find a real tree. He goes to see the Once-ler, a man who lives out of Thneedville and is supposedly the only one who can tell him what happened to the trees. He tells him about when he was younger, he was the reason that all the trees are gone. He tells him that he moved to the woods and cut down a tree to make a fabulous invention, a Thneed so that he could make money. His invention was a success, but when he cut down the tree. Out of the tree stump and a bolt of lightning came the Lorax. He scolds him for cutting down the tree and makes him promise to never do it again. He breaks his promise to the Lorax and cuts down more trees to make his Thneeds so that he can be rich. Until one day, there are no more trees. So the Once-ler has to stop making Thneeds and he lives by himself in shame.

The Once-ler then gives Ted the last truffula tree seed and tells him he must plant it. Ted takes the seed, now on his way to impress the girl of his dreams, but Mr. O’hare (Rob Riggle) doesn’t want trees. Mr. O’hare has been making money selling people air because there are no more plants to make air for us. So when he finds out Ted’s plan to plant a tree, he does everything in his power to stop that.

I will not spoil whether or not he succeeds in planting the seed in town for all to see, but I encourage you to go see this movie, it has an excellent message telling people to watch out for the trees because we need them! Plus, it’s a great movie! I hope this was enjoyable for you and that you feel inspired to go see the Lorax!

People are Awesome

Posted on February 19, 2012 by nbarber15

For my blog today, I have decided to write about people I aspire to be like. In life, I have had the privilege to know many talented and kind people. I aspire to be myself, but aspire to have the traits of these people. Today I am going to share a few of them and why I want to be like them.

The first person I aspire to be like is Jay Tibbitts. Jay is my drum teacher and this is a picture of him.

Jay Tibbitts

Jay is one of the many people who has a trait that I aspire to have. I aspire to be the drummer Jay is, because Jay is awesome. If you really want to see how awesome Jay is then search his name on youtube and watch the first video that appears named “Stanton Moore’s Pie-Eyed Manc” by Jay Tibbitts and watch it. Then you can cruse around and watch other videos of Jay, he really is great! I aspire to drum like Jay.

The next person I aspire to be like is Tyler Alden. I aspire to be as nice as Tyler. This is Tyler.

Tyler Alden

Although Tyler is much older than me and a lot cooler, he still hung out with me, was kind to me, and made me feel included and special. Tyler goes out of his way to make everyone feel special, Tyler would call me to go to activities and such with him and made me feel good about myself. I aspire to be as nice as Tyler.

The last person I am going to tell you about is Tanner Peers. I aspire to be as good a friend as Tanner. Here is Tanner.

Tanner

Like Tyler, Tanner is much older than I am, but still is willing to hang out with me. I consider Tanner as my best friend. We go see movies together, we go camping, shooting, fishing, biking, skiing. There is nothing Tanner would not do with me. Like in the picture above, that was taken on a trip we took with a large group of boys and we hiked Kings Peak. Tanner is the perfect example of a good friend, and this is how I aspire to be like Tanner.

Thanks for listening, I hope this makes you think of who you aspire to be like in life and that you will take the time to thank them for the example they provide you. Thanks for reading!

The Game

Posted on February 9, 2012 by nbarber15

I recently attended my dad’s hockey game, unfortunately they lost. It was fun to watch, since I am usually on the ice, so I took a picture of my dad playing.

Geoffrey Barber playing hockey

I also recently played in the first playoff game for our Park City Miners Hockey team, and I am glad to report that we were successful over the North Ridge Knights! With an ending score of Park City-7 North Ridge-2. Watching and playing these games inspired me to write about how I prepare myself for a game.

Good preparation for a game is one of the most important things you can do. If you go into a game with bad preparation, then you have prepared to fail. Our coach tells us to begin preparing the night before. You should get a nice big meal, hydrate yourself and get a good nights sleep so you are refreshed and energized the next day. We also need to be thinking about the game constantly. The possible situations that may occur, what our job is and how to do it best. Then we meet in the locker room an hour before the game. When in the locker room we have some music playing while we prepare our equipment and think about the game. With 45 minutes left we do a warm up. This usually includes a light jog, and some stretching, making sure we feel physically prepared to go on the ice. We then go to the locker room again and listen to music while we get dressed. Then it’s game time. If we have done all of these things we should be fully prepared for our game. We have now mentally prepared ourselves and physically warmed up. This is proper preparation for any event you may be doing. This can apply to other sports; dance, football, baseball, etc. It can even apply to such things as band or a school day! I really believe that this can help you be better at what you are doing.

I hope that I have helped you with this post and that you continue to read for anything else I could help you with. Please, leave a comment, suggest something for me to talk to you about, let me know you are there! Thanks for reading!