Strait from Joey's Journal March 2006

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Vacation!

Well a Mini-Vacation at least. Last week-end we had to pick someone up from an airport in a big town three hours away from here. We decided to make the best of things by going a day early! The first day we drove down to Appleton and checked into our hotel. After that we went to a mall and Toys 'R Us (Still my favorite store LOL) We had fun just lookin' around and seeing the variety we don't have back home. (Yes I bought a TRU limited edition 300+ Bionicle Jar) After that we got some Little Ceasers Pizza and went back to the hotel to eat.

In the hotel we had two rooms, all four of us boys stayed in one and the girls and mom and dad stayed in the other. We had fun in my room. We stayed up 'till Five-Thirty AM (5:30 AM) watching TV (Only appropriate shows mind you --mostly cartoons) Eventually we all fell asleep only to be awakened three hours later for breakfast. After we ate we headed for a kid's museum. That was a fun place. There were quite a few interesting things to do there--it was more like a playground than anything though with a giant human heart slide and a life-size play fire-truck there was tons of things for kids to do (I was too big for most things but I got to take the pictures.)

Later we left and stopped by a Magic shop. That was a cool place. My dad was able to get a few tricks for himself and even my little brother Jon got something there. After the Magic shop we went to eat at a nice county buffet. After a wonderful meal we went back to the museum for a bit then the girls went shopping. While the girls went from fabric store to fabric store all of us boys (including Dad) walked around from store to store. eventually we stopped at Wal-Mart for a while. After that we went to Sub-Way, got a soda, and played Crazy-Eights for an hour or so. Eventually the girls came out of the vortex that trapped them and picked us up.

We made it to the airport just in time to pick up Ryan. We fit all his stuff in our trunk along with all of are stuff and drove off to Burger-King. There we had a good dinner and Jon was able to do a few magic tricks for Ryan. When we finished we piled back into our van and drove home.

It was a fun to-day vacation!
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P.S. If you want to be added to my monthly update, Joey's Journal, contact me some how and say so :)

~Joey

Well About a week ago I finished Dissecting my frog-- the last Dissection project that I have for Biology. I'll talk about in more detail when I get the Pictures uploaded but for now I'll just give an overview of my dissection experiences.

In all I had four dissections--An Earthworm, A Crayfish, A Perch, and A Frog. They are listed not only in the order I did them but also in the order of difficulty. (Makes sense--you do the easy stuff first then work up to the hard stuff.) I'm sure If you've been to this blog you've read about my fish dissection and later I'll post about the frog so I won't go into much detail about those but I will talk about the general practice of Dissection.

First you get your animal out of its container. (It could be a zip-lock bag like what I had or it could be a freezer or maybe even you catch your own animal) Then you'll have to obsevre unique structures on the outside of the animal--its head, mouth, limbs, gills, eyes, etc. After that if the animal has an easily removable skin you'll remove that by starting on the under side and cutting an "I" shape (strait up the underside, across both pectoral Limbs [Arms] and both Pelvic limbs [Legs])

If your Animal happens to have an exoskeleton you'll have to remove that. If any of you have eaten Lobster, crab or any other crunchy crustation you'll know that you need to remove the animals suit of armor before eating you hidden treasures. The same goes for dissection--only I hope you won't be eating raw, chemical saturated crayfish. It is pretty simple. You just cut along the top side of the animal the cut right above the legs. Remove the armor and you're done or just beginning...

After you remove the Skin/exoskeleton you'll have to open up the "Body wall" the layer of muscle that contains the internal organs. (Heart, stomach, intestine, etc.) Inside the animal you'll find all the previously mentioned structures But the question is can you Identify them? The stomach/intestine structure is pretty easy to find. Usually it is the first thing that you will see (In the earth worm it is about the only thing you will see! LOL) After that you can usually Identify other structures (Heart, reproductive organs, blood filtering organs [kidneys, green glands] etc.) Honestly it isn't all that bad. The gilled animals are a little messy when you remove their gills but other than that there isn't that much of a mess--if you are careful.

Now after everything is taken out (Or at least Identified) you have to expose the brain of the animal (if they have one) It wasn't that hard to crack the skull but you just have to be careful so you don't damage the little thinker. After the skull is cracked you'll have to peal away the bone and muscle that protects the vital part of the animal.

All in all Dissection isn't that hard but would I do it for fun? No. But because science, my parents, and good grades demanded that I do it I did it and learned from it too--the most important thing I learned is you don't want to be a lab-raised frog.

Something fishy indeed. As some of you know I have been dissecting little animals in Biology class; Yesterday, I had to do a fish...

It wasn't really that bad just a little tough to cut through all of the muscles. Here is how I had to do it.

First I had to Observe the outside. (look at the fins, eyes tail mouth etc.) hen I had to cut off the Gill flap (Operculum) and cut out the Gills. That was the messiest part because the gills were filled with who knows what. (Water, chemicals, or more) After that I opened him up, cut out his insides (Stomach, intestine, etc.) Over all it was quite easy and neat to see how God created the fish.