Study halls can be a real savior when you find yourself franticly trying to cram for your next test after a night of hanging out with your friends. Or when you just realized that term paper you’ve been avoiding is due next period. Of course, just like anything else there is down side to study hall. What do you do when you don’t have anything to study? When you’re bored out of your mind and the teacher keeps giving you the evil eye, and it looks like she’s about to kick you out if you pass one more note, or tell one more joke to your neighbor.

Fortunately a trip to the office isn’t your definite destination. There are tons of things that you can do to occupy yourself in study hall that don’t involve schoolwork. Yes, believe it or not you can find entertainment at your school and it doesn’t even involve rule breaking.

1. If you like to read you can always bring along one of your favorite novels and escape for the duration of the period, from the mundane boredom into an enthralling tale with exciting characters. You could even take a short trip to your school’s library and discover something new amongst their selection of books.

2. Or if playing games suits your fancy just bring along your laptop computer. There is an almost limitless variety of games which you can download online for absolutely free. The choices include cooking games, speed games, home games, and many more popular games.

3. Also as an incentive to keep your grades up your school may offer downtown passes to students with high averages. So if you want to escape the boredom of sitting in a study hall there many options available to you with a pass. You could go out to lunch with a group of friends, do some light shopping, or even go for a walk to get some fresh air.

Prepare yourself before going to a study hall if you know beforehand that you have no school work to do that has to be done. Bring your laptop computer, with an extra battery of course, a good book, or your downtown pass if you have one. This will make study hall much more enjoyable for you and for your study hall supervisor as well!

Many pool and billiard players cannot afford to have their own billiard game rooms, but because of their love of the billiards they frequent bars to play their favorite game. If you are a pool hall or tavern owner it is vital that you equip your billiards room with high quality accessories to keep customers coming back to the pool hall for years to come!

Far to often the owner does not maintain their equipment and do not give their customers high quality equipment to play on. The rails are loose and play inconsistent, the cloth is fast but the rails are slow. The house cues are in poor shape, have cracked ferrules and poor or no tips. The pool balls are dirty or mismatched. The walls are bare and plain looking creating little if any atmosphere. Customers soon get discouraged and go to another pool hall to play their favorite game!

Pool players are very picky about the equipment and the atmosphere in the place they play in. Players do not want to loose a game because a table does not play well or it has nicks in the felt. The conditions of the pool hall make a huge difference in its success. The atmosphere is very important too, is it clean with pictures and posters on the wall, or is the pool hall dirty and poorly kept? Are the racks in good shape or are they cheap or broken? It is hard to get the balls to break well if you can’ t get the rack tight. It’s now a favorite pool hall of players in town!

My friend recently bought a pool hall in my hometown that is a prime example of this. The tables were old and very poorly kept. Most players in town only went there to play when they had to play league matches there and when they did always complained about the tables. Juan replaced the tables with new diamond tables and fixed up the inside of the bar. They went from having 2 league teams to having 6 teams this year in the pool hall. Now a lot of people meet there after leagues to hang out and play for money. It has made a night and day difference in the way players feel about the pool hall.

Everybody in town was excited about the new pool tables. They are the first diamond tables in Pocatello and a welcome change! It has raised the billiard rooms business considerably just because the owner put in nice pool tables and fixed up the inside of the pool hall. Every owner should take pride in his or her establishment!

The masterpiece of Beowulf gives us a wealth of symbols and themes to analyze. Throughout the epic perception of major icons such as the great two mead-halls of Heorot and Hygelac’s Hall and treasure are important parts of Beowulf. A deeper look into these material possessions and physical places show us that the meade-halls were a significant place of culture and importance, and perception of treasure changed through the story.

The great hall of Heorot was a very important place for the king and soldiers of Denmark. Built when there was prosperity throughout Hrothgar’s kingdom, it was a symbol of hope, light, and strength. Heorot was an ancient mead-hall. As its name suggests, it was a place where there could be feasting and drinking. Historically, a mead-hall was usually a single room hall made especially for this purpose of merry-making for the king and his soldiers. However, Heorot was perceived as much more in Beowulf. First of all, it is suggested in the text that this hall was a place of greatness, and had multiple side rooms and a chamber where the king could sleep. The king distributed the spoils of battle by “offering everyone, young and old, all he could give that God had granted” (lines 63-64). Songs were sung and listened to, tales of old were recounted and passed down, and the reputation of warriors was spread.

It also was perceived as a place of light and refuge in the ever-present darkness surrounding them. After the first attacks of Grendel, the kingdom of Hrothgar became a place of darkness and danger, especially at night. The only place that could be a place of refuge was Heorot, though its strength waned as Grendel repeatedly terrorized the soldiers. Which brings up another point, as Beowulf took place in Norse culture, or somewhere in Denmark, did the soldiers wear Viking helmets as part of the armor? It never was described in Beowulf what kind of battle dress the soldiers wore in the great hall of Heorot.