Thanksgiving

So my Thanksgiving was fun. My boyfriend and I woke up and fed our daughter applesauce (we figured that we'd be having applesauce later so we'd give her some in the morning.) The night before Thanksgiving I stayed up pretty late baking all different deserts and things and on Thanksgiving my mom woke up early to cook our turkey and ham as well as a few other things. I helped her bake some pies and stuff..

We got all packed up with the food in our car and then we went over to my uncle's house at around 3 o'clock or so and ate dinner at maybe 4:30 or so.. The baby had some sweet potatoe (again, figured we'd give her something we were having.) Then she tried some mashed potatoes and she didn't seem to like them at all. I think it was only because she wasn't expecting such a different taste than the sweet potatoes. After dinner I got what my boyfriend calls "the itis" from the turkey and I fell asleep for a while. When I woke up everyone was eating desserts and drinking coffee/tea/milk and I joined them. Later on my mom and her husband went home and took my baby with them, my boyfriend and I stayed over my uncle's house for a while and we played some board games with family. I won, of course. =]

All in all it was a good Thanksgiving. I hope everyone else had a Happy Thanksgiving!

"Can a drug culture be changed?"

I thought that the question "Can a drug culture be changed?" was referring to an actual drug culture, like a drug test. After reading some of my classmate's responses to the question I think I was wrong. I am going to answer that question as well the question that most of them answered though..:

I definitely think that a drug culture can be changed. I think there are many doctors and scientists that know just what to add or take out of a drug culture to change it.

I do not think that a culture with drugs will be able to change. I think that drugs have become so common that there is no way to completely get rid of them. I think in other countries drugs are less of a big deal. I think in our country though that drugs have just become a part of so many people's daily lives that the drug culture cannot just be changed. Hopefully sometime in the near future drug varieties and drug use will decrease, but I highly doubt it.

Compare & Contrast

I think there are a lot of differences between Tweak and Beautiful Boy such as, they start at different points in Nic's life, they are from two different points of view, Nic's father doesn't know everything about Nic as Nic obviously does.

My thoughts on Beautiful Boy are not quite clear to me yet since I'm not too far into the book.

What's the appeal of meth to users? other drugs/alcohol/tobacco?

I think the appeal of meth to users is that it's a way to get away from everything. It is a way to just forget about your problems and your life and just... "live."

I think the appeal for other drugs is just about the same as meth. Tobacco is just a quick fix for stress or other emotions you're dealing with. Alcohol is also a quick fix, but I think people like to drink for fun (when they are not alcoholics.) Alcoholics drink because they've been drinking for a long time and their body has built up a tolerance to the alcohol.

Personally, I think all narcotics should be illegal. Including pot, heroin, cocaine, lsd, crystal meth, speed, and all of the others. I think pot should be legal for medical purposes only and you should have to have a prescription that can only be filled every so often.

I think cigarettes (as well as all other forms of tobacco) should also be illegal. They have no benefits at all to the human body. Everything they do is just adding to people's illnesses and creating more.

In reality alcohol should probably be illegal with the exception of wines. I guess I don't think alcohol should be illegal though. I think there should be stricter rules about alcohol and bars and things like that.

Research

My research is going decently well I suppose. I've never really been good at doing research, or motivated to do research. But, this time... I'm trying. I'm actually doing the research. I guess it's because I'm interested in my topic, since I chose it myself... and since I can relate to some aspects of it. Of course, even I don't know the answers to most of the questions I asked. And, I don't know other people's answers... I only know how I would answer the questions, somewhat.

If I were Nic's parent...

If I were Nic's parent, I'm really not sure what I would have done. I guess I would've tried hard to keep track of him and what he was up to. I would have admitted my own faults instead of treating him like everything was his fault until the end. I guess I wouldn't know what to do without being in a situation like that first, which, I'd kinda rather prefer to never be in. =)

Resources

For my paper I plan to research teenage pregnancy,

• why have the rates of teenage pregnancy gone up so high so quickly?
• do most of the women keep the babies or do most of them have abortions?
• is there a specific race of girls that is getting pregnant?
• is there a specific state that the rate of teenage pregnancy is higher than others?
• do most teenagers get married soon after they get pregnant?
• is there a certain cliche of girls who get pregnant more often than others?

I plan to find the answers to these questions as well as some others.
Here are some websites that should help me:

1. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120501208.html
3. http://www.livestrong.com/article/12504-teen-pregnancy-rates-usa/
4. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,380323,00.html
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/washington/06birth.html
6. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_ATSRH.html

there are a lot more sites that I will probably use, but these are a few of the ones that I think will be helpful.