Nico's Blog

One day I decided to try a honey packet, and when I did it somehow turned me invisible which was a letdown. Since I was invisible I decided to do some things that I found fun. First thing I decided to do was try all the foods I could find as no one would make me pay for them because they wouldn’t even know I was there, I would do this because I would want to see what I like and I could get them when I become visible.  Lastly I would walk around to see everything that I can look at in both night and day as I wouldn’t have to worry about anything bad happening to me, I would do this because like why not explore a little bit.

This month I am continuing to read the book Big Bad Ironclad by Nathan Hale. I have not finished reading it and I am currently on page 101.

The story continues with the captain of the Virginia being escorted out of the ship as he needs to heal his leg and says, “I wish I could stay on board!”, and a navy soldier responded with “We will do you proud, captain.”. As the Virginia is closing in on the Minnesota, the South’s ironclad comes in to save the Minnesota from being shot. The South starts to shoot their cannons towards the Virginia, and they keep shooting relentlessly. The Virginia can’t fight back as they are too large and heavy to turn around as the South is circling around the Virginia because of the fact they are smaller making them faster. Although the Virginia is covered by 4 inches of metal they still take bits of damage little by little. Both ships say, “We are totally invincible!!”, as the Virginia takes little to no damage and the South is not taking any shots. The Virginia stops shooting as they are wasting ammo and decides to ram into them instead, the South manage to get away with only being scratched by the ram. While Captain Worden, the captain of the South’s ironclad, is looking outside with the driver, a cannonball is shot directly at his face. Thankfully the cannonball didn’t hit him as the iron protects him, he was still blasted by it though. After a while the Virginia leaves as they completed their mission of destroying lots of ships for a test run and announce that they won, but the south also said that they won as their mission was to drive away the virginia. We learn that the South’s ship is named the Monitor and there is a very large group of people at the docks celebrating the victory of the Monitor Boys, the name of the crew that drove away the Virginia. The book then transitions to William Cushing which is currently capturing a whole town and yells, “I claim this town for Abe Lincoln!”, and they raise the flag of America. William tells his group to confiscate any important messages or letters and guns lying around. A group of slaves tell William that they want to be confiscated and he says they are being confiscated with a smile on his face, and he also confiscates two blockade-runner ships in the port. As they are leaving William’s group spot a rebel base but thankfully the Rebels don’t spot them, almost out of the island they get stuck as the tide shallows. Right there the Rebels spot them and start attacking, and William being the brave Captain he is, he says that he’ll stay back and hold off the rebels while his group gets on the other ships to escape. One of the men asks William, “Alone, sir?”, and William responds with, “No—any volunteers wanna stay?” and all of his men volunteer and they fight back and escape.

I am really enjoying this book so far and would recommend it to people who love books that are packed with both action and history about America throughout the years as well as the other books from this author.

My favorite character is still William Cushing and one of his traits is courage. An example of this is when he says, “I’ll stay back and keep them off until you get away!” This shows that he is willing to sacrifice himself to save his party so they can fight for another day.

My favorite quote in the book is when William Cushing’s party all said! “I’ll stay!” when William asked for any volunteers to stay behind and fight with him. This quote is meaningful to me because this shows that his men are willing to die with their Captain which is something that is good to have in a friend.

This is the daily life of someone on an abandoned island. First off, I got here after falling off a fishing boat going unnoticed from everyone else and ended up on the island I live on right now. I am currently living in a house that I built by the seashore which is how I get most of my food in the day. My daily routine starts with me checking around my house to see if anything broke after I wake up, I then go outside to check what the weather is currently like to see if I will have to be careful, after that I get ready to get some fish for the rest of the day and I also take some seat water and purify it to drinkable water, I continue with checking the weather until the day end for me to do the same routine all over again. The island I live on is pretty nice as there are lots of trees filled with coconuts and reefs around the shore for fish that I eat, the island is very abundant in vegetation, and the island itself is very pretty.

This month I am continuing to read the book Big Bad Ironclad by Nathan Hale. I have not finished reading it and I am currently on page 76.

The book continues with William being put on a ship by Neptune and where his talks are to look for other ships and take them over. Later on William gets out on patrol for blockade duty from his Captain, his Captain also assures William that blockade duty would not be as fun as he thought it would turn out to be. William is then put on a small rowboat which is where he would do his duty, still being optimistic, after a while William started to not like blockade duty. As some time passes of William being bored he finally sees a blockade runner, William’s boat goes straight towards the other ship, and when William’s boat gets close he then yells out! “Stop and surrender! By order of the U.S. Navy!”. William is met with someone that assures them that they are not blockade runners and they can prove it. The person who is talking to William says! “We’re runners. But we’re running for our freedom away from slave country.”.  The people who are running for their freedom tell William that they know where a blockade-runner is, and after hearing this William took everyone to his ship so that they could tell the Captain about the news William was told. William tells his captain about the rebel and then he assists Williams to go there with a party of thirty men and a tugboat, and soon after Williams is in a creek looking for the ship and not long later they find the ship stuck in some mud by the shore. William and his party go on the boat to search for anyone there but find no one, after getting off the boat they plan to tug it out of the mud but a rope snaps and they just decide to burn it. Williams and his party start to leave but get ambushed by what seems to be the crew of the ship they burned down. While they are getting shot William decides to go for the cannon on their ship, luckily he gets there without being shot and aims the cannon at one of the houses with people shooting and then fires which blows up the house. They all go back to the ship where Williams’ captain congratulates him and his team. The book then moves to Captain Ericsson who is working on an ironclad of his own to rival the Merrimack which is then called the Virginia by the north. Stephen Mallory wants to take the Virginia for a test run as it was just finished and he wants to see what it can do. William was out at sea with many other large boats around him, William starts to talk about the Virginia but then gets interrupted by the actual Virginia which is when everyone there was scared to finally see the Virgina out.

I am really enjoying this book so far and would recommend it to people who love books that are packed with both action and history about America throughout the years as well as the other books from this author.

My favorite character in this book so far would still have to be William Cushing and another of his traits is bravery. An example of this is when William and his team was caught by an ambush and William said, “Here take my rifle! I’m going for the big gun!”. This is because in war something that you need is to be brave which is what can save you and your team.

My favorite quote from the book is when William Cushing said, “Here take my rifle! I’m going for the big gun!”. This quote is meaningful to me because when William said this he went for the cannon on his ship to save his entire team which was a very good act of bravery.

Something I like to do in my free time when is play video games with my friends, we have a lot of fun playing together.  When we all play together we usually play scary games for a while, or just any other game we can find or have.

I chose, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light.” – Dumbledore. To me this quote means  that even in the toughest or saddest of times you can still be happy if you try to not pay attention to what bothers you and to just be happy. This quote relates to me because when I find something that I don’t like I just go away from it or leave it alone and come back later.

This month I am continuing to read the book called Big Bad Ironclad by Nathan Hale. I have not finished reading it and I am currently on page 50.

The book continues by Father Neptune coming back from a meeting asking where his assistant named Foxy is. Foxy answers with, “Here sir”. Neptune tells Foxy that they have a big job that they have to work on which is the anaconda plan, Foxy informs Neptune that they only gave four ships ready, and Neptune responds by saying that they need to get their old ships and build new ones. Foxy says that their best shipyard is in Norfolk Virginia which is where their best ship is, the Merrimack. A knoch is then heard on Neptunes door, and Neptune asks Foxy who it is, Foxy says that it’s the Midshipman, William Cushing who was kicked out of the Naval academy, which is Neptune’s job to tell him that. Neptune states that William has almost one hundred and fifty demerits, and one of them was him marching his platoon into a river. Neptune asks why he did it and William responds with, “The drill sergeant couldn’t say ‘Halt!’ in time. so we all marched into the water!”. Father Neptune tells William that he is kicking him out of the Academy and the Navy. Foxy states that they still have one more thing to do, and that is Fort Sumter, he says that Fort Sumter is what keeps all of Charleston Harbor under the North’s control. Foxy also says that the soldiers there are starving and that they have also been trapped there for over three months without getting a resupply. Abraham Lincoln, the current president, wants to send a supply ship to Fort Sumter, the problem is that there are seventy six soldiers in that Fort and are surrounded by over five hundred rebel guns as the South wants control over the harbor, but they can’t since the fort of the North is still there. A ship was then sent out to Fort Sumter which was driven by Foxy himself, we also then learn that Foxy’s full name is Gustavus Fox. As the ship is being driven to the fort one of the Southern forts fires at the ship which would then start a war. Fort Sumter was then taken over by the rebels. Fox then returns back to Neptune where Neptune informs Fox that his ship started the civil war, and Fox replies with “Hey, THEY shot first! I was just bringing in food!”.

I am really enjoying this book so far and would recommend it to people who loves books that are packed with both action and history about America throughout the years.

My favorite character so far would have to be William Cushing and one of his traits is that he is funny. For example, in the story it’s shown that William drew a picture of his Spanish teacher biting a horse’s ear which made everyone else laugh. This shows that William can make people laugh even in the war and that he can cheer people up when they are down.

My favorite quote from this book so far would have to be when William Cushing said, “The drill sergeant couldn’t say ‘Halt!’ in time. so we all marched into the water!”. This quote is meaningful to me because no matter where you are there is not much harm in having a little bit of fun.

The person that I admire in my life is my dad. First, I really want to learn how cook like him as I really enjoy his cooking. Secondly, when I need help I can always go to him to ask for something that I don’t understand. Lastly, I just want to be as good as him.

My word of intention for 2025 would have to be responsibility. Here are some reasons on why I want to focus on this word. For the reason, if I am responsible with school work and do it before it becomes late I have less to do which means I have more time to do other things non school related. For the second reason, when I do things that I am supposed to do everyday more often it becomes a routine instead of something I have to remember to do. For the last reason, being responsible helps me do good in life and have not many problems.

If I became Principal for the day I would make five changes. First, I would add more vending machines to campus and make it so everything in them are just almonds and pistachios as everyone can get a quick snack during passing periods or break time. Secondly, I would make it so that people could choose what they would want to eat by picking out a food the day before and highest voted wins so people would enjoy the food they eat. Third, I would reduce the amount of homework we get a week by only three times a week so people are not overwhelmed by what they have to do. Fourth, I would make it so that you can choose to either do PE or a free study block so people can work on whatever they need to. Lastly, I would make the passing periods longer so people have more time to use the bathroom or get water.