Fresh's Corner

A stressful day....

2011-02-08T17:06:00.000-05:00

For those who read my pitiful little blog, I need some ideas on relieving stress at the end of the day. After I get in from work and school the day has take its toll on my poor little being. One can only watch so much Desperate Housewives in hopes that that will turn down the stress level. So ideas are welcome!

I'm back to stay....

2011-01-18T16:55:00.000-05:00

Its been one whole year since the last time I shared anything with the blog world. Sadly, I'm still the same ole' boring Jon Fore. My life is basically in the same place it was a year ago and that very thought has depressed me. However I have made some progress in school, but it is not looking like I will be getting out of here anytime soon. I'm still employed at O'Reilly Auto Parts where I get paid barely above minimum wage, but I'm thankful for having a job and get a bi-weekly pay check.
Also, I have yet to make any progress in the whole "finding a sole mate thing." That person is out there somewhere and when the time is right they will appear into my life and happiness will fill my veins. Until then, my two dogs will have to suffice.

How I Plan to Live The New Year

2010-01-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

First thing I would like to do is to give a shout out to my new follower!!! Thats right I'm now up to 3 count em' 3 followers! So welcome Bethany! Please Please forgive me for all my grammar errors and you will here me speak of UK basketball....for me UK means University of Kentucky not the United Kingdom :P

The New Year is here and, for me like everyone else, it is full of New Years Resolutions. The one at the top of my list, and about 90% of everyone's, is to lose weight. I have said that for the last few years but never lived up to it. This year I pledge it will be different. The main thing that I have done to help lose weight is i have quit drinking pop. I started this about the 3 week of Decemeber and haven't had one since. Also me and a boy at work have a bet going.....who can lose the most weight in 6 months. My goal is to lose 50 pounds, so wish me luck! I will be giving a weekly update here about that week so keep coming back and keep giving me positive feedback

I also need to better in school. The last semester didn't turn out the way I intended it to and I have got to make up for it. So my goal here is A's and B's......nothing else.

Well thats about it for now....

Thanks for Reading!

Dr. Dave, I will miss you.

2009-12-10T11:41:00.003-05:00

First off let me say to my two lone followers, I'm sorry that it has been a month since my last post. I really haven't had the time to take a moment and relect on the stuff going on around me. But today, since my professor let class out 40 mins. early i have decided to a farewell to a very wonderful individual that has really changed my outlook on life and college: Dr. Dave.

I first met Dr. Dave in my BIO-100 class. Carrie HIGHLY suggested that I take him for biology and I took her up on the advice. The moment he opened his mouth I understood why Carrie suggested him. He wrote his name on the board like this: Dr. David (some random middle intital) Eakin P.H.D. I tought dang he must be one of those Professors that thinks very highly of his PHD. Then he erased the the PHD off the board and said, "That really has no meaning. People can put as many letters at the end of their name as they would like but to me it has no meaning." I thought, Wow! Did he actually say that?!?! Then he erased the middle intial and basically said that his middle name was something that we would never figured out because it was embarrasing. It made us laugh. After that he erased the Eakin, and David, and put Dave instead. He said, "Just call me Dr. Dave." And we did.

Dr. Dave's BIO-100 class made the semester the funniest three months I've ever experienced. He wrote "LAUGH" up in the corner of the board most everyday, and when he would tell us a joke that none of us understood (either because it was for science-nerds or wayyy too outdated), get he would just point at that word and we would laugh to satisify him. He would make fun of himself a lot, making himself just as human as the rest of us. One day his wife called during class and we all got to talk to her over speaker phone. All 120 of us.

He also shared with us his own story. He talked us through his life experiences, and most of what he said I could relate to. His was in Boyscouts (where he earned the Silver Beaver Award...inside joke...HAHA). During his first few years in college he didn't do so well. He said that he was in college for the "wrong reasons." A bit later though, he met his future wife, and promptly re-enrolled and pulled his grades up. I simply could not believe that a college professor shared so much of life with his students.

Besides the laughter and personal stories, Dr. Dave made biology relavent to us. He taught us how to read food labels to find out exactly how much sugar and fat are in foods in teaspoons, a measurement we can understand. He walked us threw the Krebs Cycle with silly hand gestures that for all their goofiness made sense. :P Pretty much every topic that he taught us he tied in everyday life, from molecular biology right on up to the biology of aging.

I was sad to see our time in BIO 100 come to end, but I soon learned that Dr. Dave taught another class that I would need for a wellness credit. I stayed up until midnight to make sure that I had a spot in the class of only 20 students. It was in this class that I began to apprecite Dr. Dave more and more. The class was Biology of Aging, and discussed all the aging that the body goes threw as it gets older. Of course his laughter was even more aparent to our much smaller audience. There was the Silver Beaver story, the frying pan lady story and countless others, just to give you an idea.

What Dr. Dave showed me is that there actually are college professors that care deeply about their students, and that will go out of their way to them succeed. He even gave us his persronal cell phone number and said that we could call him anytime, expect that if you were a girl calling after 8pm that his wife would ge a bit suspicious... He said that he sometimes feels like a father-figure to his students, and he really was. He cares so much.

Dr. Dave really inspired me to be the type of educator that he is, to show great passion for your students learning, and to treat them as equals. Because if a student sees how much a person cares for you then the student will excell. In my case, I recieved my first A on an exam in his class. And I was so proud! But it was the compassion that he showed that motivated me to do well in his class.

Its sad that there aren't more educators in this world like Dr. Dave. There are countless stories on the news about teachers abusing students, and plenty of teachers that obviously don't care about anything but their paychecks. So when we meet with someone like Dr. Dave we should be very thankful.

So thank you, Dr. Dave. I will miss you!

What's wrong with leaves?

2009-11-18T14:02:00.000-05:00

Today I'm walking to Einstein Bagels in the cold fall like weather, which I was kinda of enjoying, and I see a bunch of EKU employees racking up leaves and throwing them into trucks to be thrown away. I ask one simple question.....Why? What's wrong with leaves on the ground? To me, the change of the leaves in fall is what makes it so pretty, why rake all that up? Where are the tree huggers of America to stand up for the rights of leaves? Shouldn't leaves have rights? Obama, where are you on this issue? If we can't eat chicken, we shouldn't be able to rack up poor helpless little leaves and....God for bid...BURN them.

But in all seriousness (yes all of that above was me being a smart ass :) My tuition is paying for people to rake leaves...hmph. Just let the leaves lie on the ground. What harm did they do?

Thanks for Reading!

What a game!

2009-11-17T11:51:00.001-05:00

As you may know I love UK basketball, and last night was their second game of the season. If you don't know anything about UK basketball I will give you a brief overview. Kentucky is the best of the best, they have the most wins of any college basketball program, and this year they will hopefully be the first to hit the 2,000 win mark, that is if North Carolina don't beat them to it. They have seven national championships, over 40 SEC championships, UK is the Yankees of college basketball. Well the last 10 years haven't been the best years for UK fans. No championship since 1997 and haven't been close in about 8 years. Billy G. took the helm as UK coach two years ago and life went downhill fast from there. Last year UK didn't even make the NCAA tournament, breaking the second longest streak of consecutive NCAA appearances. Billy G gets fired and here comes Coach Cal :) Now UK has the top recuiting class this year and is expect to win the SEC with problems and make a DEEP run into the NCAA.

So about last night, I'm at working with the radio tuned into 98.1 the Bull the home for the wildcats. They are facing Miami of Ohio, a mid-major team meaning an easy win. It was FAR from that! In the first half Miami had a 19-2 run on UK and was up by 18 points...i was thinking...OMG ! Second half UK makes a game of it, closing the gap midways in the second half and the final 10 minutes UK would go up, then Miami....my heart is pounding, blood pressure racing. With 30 seconds left UK is up by 3, Miami has the ball.......they put up a three.....tie game with 6 seconds left......I'm sweating, pacing the floor, ignoring the phones ringing of potential customers (I'm sure they would understand). With a 5 minute overtime looming, UK's top recruit races down the court pulls up shoots a 15 footer..SCORE !!!! UK WINS!!!!! I'm jumping screeming (and yes...I'm serious) This is why I love this time of the year :)

Thanks for Reading!!!!

GO CATS !

So maybe I take things a little to seriously?

2009-11-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

Today I was in a I-don't-give-a-damn-about-anything mood, and quite frankly, I still am. I get home and decide to push everything aside and play my xbox. Some people that know me find it surprising that that I LOVE sports. (I never thought that I was talented enought to play them in high school, so I just play them on video games and watch them on TV.) I turn on the xbox and start playing my NCAA Football game. (I play as Kentucky, of course.) I start up a new season playing against EKU: I win that game easily. I then have to play Cincinatti and it was a close one! I was down at halftime and I thought I would just start over when I was like "NO. I can do this!"

I had thrown an interception, a couple more stupid errors, threw the controller, and yelled a couple of profanities...Just when I thought I had the game won, they scored! So with less than a minute left, I threw a hail-marry and SCORED! I had done it! I came back and won the game! I was very proud of myself to say the least. I noticed that my heart was POUNDING so I took my blood pressure and it was 150 over 90 with a pulse of 105.

I can't believe I get all wraped in a video game! I always made fun of others that got all into games and here I am doing the same thing...Oh well. It was fun!

How does one manage a bad day?

2009-10-28T18:36:00.001-04:00

When I got out of school and was driving home, I was thinking about all the things I was going to do tonight with the time off work. Here was my list:

1) Get caught up on my English reading, Madame Bovery, which is actually a good book
2) Finish up my season on NCAA 08 football. Last game I have left is the Outback Bowl with Penn State, going to be a hard one
3) Go to chruch and help out with the games at there Halloween party
4) And I thought I might just start a new book.

So what happened to that list????

To start off Dad calls to drive all the way to the house JUST to check the mail box when mom is home. That simply enraged me! Eastern still hasnt gave me my check and im broke, so I didnt have the gas to drive down there and then drive back to granny's (which is my current residence and not by my choice) and back to church and back to grannys. That pissed me off, and the broke the screen on my phone to total blackness. Im not happy.

I pull into grannys (and btw I had mom check the mail) and the horses was out. I had no feed there to coax them back into the lot, and three of them you can't lead. After about an hour I manage to get my two up, and the last three don't belong to me and I said screw em'. I called Dad and tell him that the guy that owns them will have to put them up, he calls him. Dad then calls me back and tells me that the cows were in the hayfield, where ALL the hay I talked about in my previous post was in that field. I take the fourwheeler and drive em out with the last second help from the guy who owns the other horses (who also looks after the cows for us) he tells me that they had been in there since yesterday..WTF!?!?!?! Why didnt you tell us! Thankfully ! they didn't get into the hay, but the simple fact that he didn't tell us pissed me off more.

All of this of course put a halt to my evening plans, but im not going to let it get to me. I didn't have time to get ready to go to church, so I decided to blog about this, vent off my anger, and take a deep breath (like that in Dr. Daves's) and try to make best what is left of my evening. I still plan to beat Penn State and I'm still going to get caught up on reading Madame Bovery. I'm just going to stay positive and look forward to a fresh, calm work-less day tomarrow.

Thanks for reading!

I just found UK's blue white game on TV !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This day is getting better !

A Day of Ups and Downs

2009-10-27T11:34:00.000-04:00

When I finally dragged my butt out of bed, I was looking forward to what today had to offer, not anticipating what was to come. Despite my English class being canceled, today was just going to be a good day. It start with going to McDonalds and waking up with a good cup of coffee. (Their coffee, btw, is the bomb.) So I get in line, place my order of a medium coffee with one cream and three sugars, a bottle of water and a sausage mcgriddle with cheese (those are also pretty dang good) and take off in the truck, listening to good ole' Glenn Beck rant and rave about Obama. So far, pretty good morning.

I stop at the store, see Papaw, and drop off some battery cores for my boss because I'm just that kind of guy. Here is where it goes down hill. While eating and driving I allow my coffee to cool and take my first big swig of coffee and it's disgusting! Apparently they put 10 creams, and instead of sugar I get Sweet and Low. Not good. I try to make the best of it, but after 3-4 sips I have to pour it down the sink. NO COFFEE!

If you really don't know me, then you don't know that I have to have coffee in the mornings. You're probably are saying, "Just go and get another cup." Well I'm broke. So far Eastern has still deprived me of my refund check and my account is running very low.

So, I'm getting ready to go to school without a wake-up. Day so far -- on shaky ground. I get to school, sit in Java and try to inhale the coffee fumes thinking maybe that will do the trick.  Nope. I text the Carrot and she tells me that Trick or Treat is Saturday night, and I'm off work, so I get to go with my nieces trick or treating. (Jara is being a pirate and you would just have to see and hear her talk like a pirate. It's hilarious!) . Day takes a turn for the better.

I tet into history class and our professor starts talking about the New Deal. I'm pretty interested. [I also learned a mind-boggling fact about FDR: Eleanor's (his wife) name was Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, she and her husband were FIRST COUSINS! Their Papas were full brothers. I had NO idea about that![ Anyways at the end of class we get back our essay papers. I was feeling pretty good about the paper and was expecting a high c or low b........low d!!!! Well that sent my day crashing down, and I quote from my facebook status: "I just want to crawl into a hole."

After getting a C on the midterm, a D on the paper, and missing two quizes, my grade is not looking good at the moment. So here I sit, doing the math to see how I can get at least a B in the class, and I find it's going to be challenging.  But I have to get it up to a B. This day is going further downhill fast.

After doing the math for my History class, I figured my GPA. (I need to get a 2.75 this semester.)  But then I stumbled onto my English paper on Blackboard. I scroll down expecting a C at best (it was late and she was taking one letter grade off). Then I see with amazment: a B+!!!!!!!! (And that was AFTER she took it down a letter grade.) So, had I turned it in on time, I would have had an A+, and just like the stock market after hearing good economic news, my mood sky rockets!

Now im off to work, which is always full of awful surprises, so I'm sure the day will contniue with ups and downs...

[Note from Carrie, also refered to as Carrot, the amazing friend that edits this blog: It must be thoroughly understood here and now that Jon is, and forever will, a die-hard Republican. He is not a violent protestor of Democrats, but he will NEVER let me live it down that I voted for Obama. Please excuse his biased tendencies, and forgive him if he's a bit too conservative for your tastes. I promise, he's hilarious enough to make up for it. I wouldn't have put him in my side-bar if that weren't true. ;) Also, please note that I only SLIGHTLY edit these posts. My grammar is much better than this on my own blog, but I feel that a few mistakes add to Jon's anti-English-major personality. Thanks for reading. :)]

A peaceful week coming to an end...

2009-10-23T15:45:00.000-04:00

Well, it's Friday, and after reviewing this week I've found it was actually really enjoyable. Here are a few things that I accomplished:

1) 200 bales of hay baled; 30 rolls. I actually didn't help much in this, but its a great relief knowing that the horses and cows have food for the winter. ;)
2) Picked out some cows to sell this weekend which equals money in my pockets!!! (But it's going right into the bank for this winters farming expenses...)
3) Finished Dan Brown's new book The Lost Symbol. It's a pretty good book, but Angels and Demons is still the best book ever!
4) Completed my financial aid paper work--getting refund money this weekend. That money WILL go into my pocket...buying new tires, paying mom's credit card off, stuff like that.
5) I actually went to a cultural event on campus. I have to go to 4 of them before the end of this month for my (I cant being to spell this word) orientation (is that right ?!?!?!) class. Still need 3 more though.
6) And finally, I got to play NCAA 08 Football!!!! Lost to Florida 21-16. I had that game won, btw, but threw and interception in my in zone, very disappointing. But I walked all over Mississippi State, which was ranked and I'm not, 38-13. Very solid performance. :)
7) Hey I forgot! I did two...count em' two....blog posts !

So how did I get to do all of this? I didn't have to go to work for three days, and that is how it ends. I get to go to work for the next 4 days.

Thanks for reading!

--edited very briefly by Carrie.

Okay, so its been a month...

2009-10-22T17:00:00.002-04:00

Well, a month since my last post, I have finally found the time to make another one for all my wonderful followers to read. (Please note at this time I have attracted a total of ONE follower. :P)  When I typed my last blog, I should have been studying for test that I was about to take. Today I'm doing a post while I should be studying for a Geography test that is less than two hours away... Does anyone sense a theme here?

I have been trying to think about what to talk about. Considering it has been a month since my last posting, I'm thinking this signals that I have a pretty boring life, and that I do.

There are, however, a few things that have bothering me here recently that I think are worth addressing. When I think of college, or higher education, I think of people trying to broaden their education to better their lives in the work force. So, it seems to me that students will be asking question after question of professors. So you would think that they'd receive answers, right? Well thats not the case in not one, but two of my classes. Just a few days ago in one of my history classes (which I have grown to hate for reasons I will explain later) one of the graduate assistants was giving the lecture. I have to say that she is was about the single most boring person on the face of this earth. (Besides me, of course.)  Its nearing the end of the class period and she hasn't finsihed her lecture, and she is pretty much freaking out. A student in the back of the lecture hall raises his hand to ask a questions, and she was like, "I'm sorry, I have to finish this powerpoint!"

WTF!!?!!? (Please excuse my MSN lingo.)

You have to finish your Power Point and not answer a students question?  Forgive if I'm mistaken, but a classroom is where questions should be welcomed, not shunned! In this same class we are given discussion points, so they punish us if we don't talk in discussion, but then ignore our questions! Does this make sense? Am I missing something? Was her Power Point more important than her clarity?

Like I said before, that was not the only instance of a student being ignored.  A few weeks ago in my Geography class a student ask a VERY litgitmate question, one to which I actually knew the answer. ;) The Professor basically looked at him, sputtered a few words and went on, completly not answering the student's question. What is it with these people! It seems to me that when someone gets a degree they look down on people who do not have the "knowledge" they have. This has really been nagging at me and I had to get it off my chest.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, my amassed group of follwers.

--edited briefly by Carrie.

A Little About Me

2009-09-29T11:22:00.000-04:00

I have been sitting in the computer lab in downstairs Powell for 30 minutes trying to figure out what I'm going to say about myself while i should be studying for a geography quiz that I'm about to take in about 2 hours.....oh well. My name is Jon Fore, full name is Jonathan but though the years it has been shorten down to Jon, and I'm currently a Sophomore at Eastern Kentucky University. My major at the present time is History Teaching, but after having Dr. Dave for two classes (if you don't know who Dr. Dave is you will find out) i have decided to change my major to Biology, yes i know that is a drastic change. I have all along decided that i wanted to teach and history at the time it seemed interesting to me. As I have matured and journeyed further down my collegiate life I have found history to be somewhat....dare i say....meaningless. Yes, history has a part in our lives and is important to know, but if I'm going to teach children I want to teach them something that they can apply to their lives and make some use of it. Knowing how our bodies work, and how we can better our bodies seems much more important to teach kids then the Desalinization of Soviet Russia (this topic was assigned to me in one of my history classes to spend a whole semester writing one paper about......needless to say this was the straw that broke the camels back).

After reading this first paragraph you have probably found out that my grammar SUCKS ! I apology if this is hard for some people to read, but hopefully you have found me somewhat interesting and have continued reading. Well i guess its time to talk about Jon Fore the person, not the scholar that i am (hint hint sarcasm I think that is how you spell it) I am a night manager at O'Reilly Auto Parts in Richmond, where I "pretend" I know what I'm talking about we it comes to automotive repair. My dad has been in the auto parts business his whole life, working in my grandparents store Fores Auto Supply and is currently the Sales Managers for O'Reilly's in the Lexington area. In his years in the business he failed to pass any of his knowledge to me and I'm having to learn this stuff on my own, a recurring theme with me and my dad. I actually enjoy getting a REAL hard part to a car that isn't in the computer and having to drag out books and seeing the amazement on customers faces that I actually found it when those flukes at Advance and Auto Zone couldn't. When I actually get away from school and work, which is rarely never, I train and show mountain horses. I have done this for about 5 years now, and if I do say so myself am pretty good at it. I have won a couple of high point awards, and won one international championship. Besides showing horses, I also am i certified horse show judge and the lone picture that you see of me is me judging a horse show (more picture to come...promise)

Ah now the fun begins, and this is where many of you, if you are still reading of course, will stop. I am a dire heart REPUBLICAN and politics is what i live and breath. Obama is destroying our country and in further post i will convince you of such. To gain followers i will stop my political spill at that.

With politics being on passion, another one that i have is college sports. I LOVE UK basketball and this year we are going to be pretty kick ass, thank god for Coach Cal! I also follow college football pretty closely, just wished Kentucky had a decent team. One of my goals in life is to be a basketball coach, high school, college something! I never played sports when I was in middle and high schools because I thought I was fat and that other kids would make fun of me and for the simple fact that my dad NEVER put up my basketball goal at the house.....thanks dad.

In conclusion, because I REALLY need to study now, I'm kinda new to this blog thing and i know that this introduction was probably more boring than me studying the Desalinization of Russia but with the help of the blogging expert Carrie i hope to get better. I wanted to start a blog because during the day there are SO many things that run threw my tiny little brain and i would like to share them with people. For example, why in the HELL is EKU putting synthetic turf on the football and baseball fields while God gave us FREE grass and my tuition is going up? Why would some guy stands in the ravine and plays the bagpipes when he is no good? Why "Barry" has over 30 czars and they don't have to go threw Senate conformation? But that's all for know folks, hope you enjoyed and read more!