SOI - Bake sale

For the SOI bake sale I originally planned to bake a gingerbread cake, but upon looking at the box I realized that the baking mix was not organic. Now I could have baked the cake and claimed that it was organic since I had organic eggs and oil to make it with, but I did not wish to compromise the integrity or the goal of the bake sale. I went out and bought some brownie mix and organic chocolate chips to make some double chocolate brownies. I feel that my dedication to the cause was due to the watching of food inc.I also think that it was better for me to give the people true organic baked goods in order to show them, and the community, that Organic goods can be just a tasty as other food.

Final DI project.

Over the week I finished my final contribution to the DI team. I made the "gun". My original plan of the pinball plunger like mortar fail dismally since the spring wouldn't produce enough force to propel the ball forward. I could have just called it quits right there since I had already left the team and really had no other reason to continue using my time to help them out, but that wouldn't be fair to the team to just leave them flat with less than a week to come up with something else, so on tuesday I got some more PVC pipe and got to work building something else. Since I had very few materials left I made a makeshift compressed air gun. The gun took a lot of work to plan and build, but I eventually got it done with a lot of hard work and some WD-40. I know that the design was far from perfect and it was a little thrown together, but it was a challenge to make especially since the only physics class i took was back in sophomore year and I have never made a cannon of any sort before.

DI leaving

Recently I got my progress report, and it was not good. After a lengthy discussion with my team and family we decided that it would be better for me to leave DI. The competition is on this saturday, but my schoolwork needs to come first. Now that I am on a very tight schedule I need to finish the cannon like I promised as soon as possible. This will be an extreme challenge for me now balancing more work due to my over commitment to the team.

SOI - Bake sale plans

Today at SOI we plan to have a bake sale on next Friday. After watching Food Inc. for the last few days we have been discussing how we plan to raise awareness of non-organic and industrial foods. I loved Food Inc. since it gave us some great talking points about organic foods. The film itself made me feel disgusted about some of the ethics and sanitary standards of the food industry, and it did open my eye to a lot of things, like how the food industry is controlled by 4 or 5 corporation, not the 10-15 that I originally thought. This meant a lot to me since getting some facts and outside and inside opinions really helped renew our faith in the cause and give us a greater body of people to relate to, and work with. Hopefully our watching will give us some good incentive to continue on our mission, and help win the hearts and minds of people in and out of Sturgis.

Tai Chi - Break and Individual

Unfortunately early in February Tai Chi classes were postponed for lack of total interest. However my instructor gave me a sheet of the moves for the rest of the form. It was incredibly difficult to do the form with only my memory and string together known moves with unknown combos. With a lot of hard work and dedication I was able to complete 2/3 of the form. I was extremely happy with this result, since it would be almost impossible to do the whole form in an entire month, but my progress is fantastic for training without an instructor.

DI Vacation

Over Vacation we had two DI meetings. It was a great time where we focused on set building. Prior to this I had done little to build anything so I was a bit rusty with a hammer. As a team up to this point it was hard to get together, but I made sure to go to every meeting I could. At this meeting we got all of the materials and started building our set. I was placed in charge of building the cannon. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I had never built a pinball-like hammer before. My plan did work after I did a little research on the internet and made some modifications. It was a hard process, and more than once I wanted to just put the thing down and go back to my relaxing, but I stuck with it and made sure that I made sure the launcher works. Now that I do have the launcher completed I can begin building the rest of the cannon.

On Monday we had a meeting after school. Unlike the other, it was not as productive and it was very trying with our tempers flaring do to our return to school. While I did not have any ill will to direct it was hard for me to keep my cool and not make things worse the way that we all did last year. The meeting ended abruptly, but we did get a small amount of set work done.

DI Year 2-1st meeting

For our first official DI meeting I could not attend, but I made sure that I was there in spirit. I told my team to call me if they had any questions for me or needed my input on a decision. Given the circumstances I saw this as the best way for me to communicate with the team. We decided that we were going to do a plot based on the college application process. There was discussion of having me as the main character. I would personally enjoy being the main character since I have never done a "major" role in DI before so that I can tackle a more challenging role in the future.