Thanks for reading

I have switched my blog sites. Thank you for reading. Now just go to my new page which looks alot like this one. You can click go here to check it out. Thanks, and thanks to Colleen for helping me and answering my questions.

Follow up to a good cause

What a day. A while back I posted about Save Darfur, a charity trying to stop the genocide in the African city of Darfur in The Sudan. Well, my friend Mohan at Blogforpeace.org stumbled onto it and mentioned it in his blog. I am excited because this is the first time I have been mentioned in someone else’s blog. I will be changing soon to www.willifordblog.com so I hope all of my readers will update your links and come with me. Have a good day.

My Letter to the Editor

If you live in the same town as I do (and I doubt anyone reading this does) you know that I like to write letters to the local paper when I read something that gets to me. Well, this week there was an article about our schools that “..failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the standard set by the No Child Left Behind federal law.” You should also know that I am very critical of the Republican agenda so of course I feel theis law is ridiculous. I wanted you guys to read what I wrote to the paper and hopefully it’ll get printed.

Dear Editor,

            I read in Thursday’s paper the article entitled “Schools miss the mark” about how some of the schools in the area didn’t fare so well on the end-of-grade tests. I find this to be insane. Not the fact that they didn’t do so well, but the idea of using one test every year to gauge how our kids are doing in school. Ever since President Bush pushed his “No Child Left Behind” Act everything has gone wrong. School systems are forcing our teachers to structure their curriculums around what is going to be on the test at the end of the year and not what the kids need to know. Does anyone else not believe this is a tragedy and our kids are the victims? I think we need to give them responsibility back to our teachers as to what to teach the kids and to judge their progress. Isn’t that what they were taught by the Universities they went to? I’m sure the president thinks the No Child Left Behind and End of Grade tests are a good idea but what about the kids who are smart or average students who do not test well? What happens to those kids? Last Tuesday America decided it was ready for a change; maybe we will get a change to this archaic, insane law.

 

Marcus Williford

I posted my email too so I will let you know if i get any nasty or encouraging emails.

My New Blog

Ok, so after much procrastination I have finally decided to change my blog and host it. For lack of a better name I used the domain name I already had and had redirected here. Everyone who reads my blog go ahead and change your bookmarks and blogrolls to www.willifordblog.com (I know, not very original) Thanks to Colleen for helping me find Verve Hosting and helping me set it up soon. Hopefully you won’t see much of a change but maybe one for the better. Thanks for reading.

My Birthday

Ok, so today is my birthday (33…yuck) and I am going to start my taking a picture everyday since I read that article a few weeks ago but it’s 6:30 and I haven’t taken my picture for the day (my procrastination knows no boundaries) so I will try to find something photoworthy around the house to take a picture of for you guys. But since I have to work at midnight I will probably not get to share it until tomorrow. I will probably be leaving this blog soon but hopefully I’ll be able to export/import everything to my new hosted home. I get paid thursday so I will probably look into that then. Have a fun day everyone

whats going on

Ok, so you all know of my elation at the midterm election results and the resignation of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld but here’s whats going on with me. I joined the fitness center today. My first day included 1/4 mile running on the track, 1 mile of walking on the treadmill, and 1.5 miles on the exercise bike. It’s nice because with working 3rd shift and getting off at 7 am I can go to the gym for an hour when I get off work. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow but I’ll let you know my progress. Also, my birthday (yuck..33) is Friday so I plan to begin my project of chronicling my year by taking a picture everyday for a year. Also, I have just under 3 weeks til I can start blogging for PayPerPost so I’m sure you’ll notice that but don’t worry, I will only blog about or endorse things that I care about.

Election Night thoughts

I’m sitting here watching CNN and Fox News Election coverage hoping that the Democrats can take back the Senate and the House and I wanted to tell you a little story. The County I live in had a sheriffs race that was interesting. The challenger’s position was that he smoked weed for 30 years. He said that our problem wasn’t the pot heads but instead was the crackheads. I just thought that was funny that he would say that and then run for Sheriff. Of course I voted for the guy and of course he lost 88% to 12%. I am happy to see that Rick Santorum, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania and 3rd most powerful Republican in the Senate lost. I guess when he compared homosexuals to people who commit beastiality, people didn’t take too kindly to that. I hope all of you voted today as did I.

Update: Hillary Rodham Clinton won her Senate race 69% to 29% and so far former Redskins quarterback Heath SHuler is winning his congressional race in NC.

Night Shift

Well, I started on night shift at the hospital this week. On weekends it’s 7pm til 7am and thats what I did on Sunday night. Luckily it was a very quiet night and we didn’t have to do anything but patrol the hospital. Unfortunately that makes for a very LONG night. I guess its better than the alternative though. Monday night was better. During the week the shift is Midnight to 7am. 7 hours is not a very bad shift at all. It was quiet again but thats ok. I’m sure there will be nights with fights in the ER or someone trying to finish off a shooting victim. I’ll let you know when the excitement starts.

The Range

Saturday was weapons qualification day for my new job. We got to the range and set up to do the practice run. We went through all of the stages and fired all of our shots and the instructor said, “ok, that wasn’t practice. that was your qualification”. We went back to score them and I made an 87 (only needed an 80 to pass) and my buddy did higher than that. So then we messed around shooting targets to see who could do the best (not me) and left for dinner. We were in a little town called Fairmont, NC that I don’t know much about but we found a little Italian place called You’ll Love It Pizza. It wasn’t bad but after the Uncle Georges Lasagna in Lumberton Friday night that made a weekend with alot of pasta but I digress. We got back out to the range around 6 when it was almost completely dark (and really cold) to do our night fire. We went to load the magazines and instead of the 6 in each like this afternoon I loaded them fully. Theis threw me off, made me try to count when firing, and when we were done I had one round left. Now onto scoring. You guessed it, I scored a74 (when I needed an 80 to pass) so I had to go again. Repeat the whole scenario but this time I started with 6 rounds in each magazine and finished with a 91. Then we returned to the hospital, cleaned and secured our weapons, and came home. I was using a Glock 9 mm which is an ok gun but you can see it here

This week at my new job

Ok, so I’ve been going through firearms training this week to culminate with a day at the range Saturday. Oh yeah, and the weatherman says its going to be 40 degrees saturday…that sucks. Today we had the concealed carry portion of the class and I learned alot. I found out that if someone is trying to break into your house and you honestly believe they are going to try and hurt or kill you then you can shoot them. But if they come into your house and are unarmed then you can’t shoot them. What a learning experience this is. Oh, and I got to bring a 9 mm home to practice getting it out of the holster. And amazingly enough, I don’t even like guns..HAHA. how ironic