1. He knew that joining the Marine Corps would be a hard .......... to hoe but he wanted to join anyway. His father and grandfather had both been in the Corps and he wanted to make them proud.

2. I pitched our product to Mr. Winters like you told me to do, and let me tell you, he is a hard .......... . He wanted discounts on the product and free shipping. I agreed to his terms since we need his business, Tim told the boss.

3. He knew that he would get a raise. He had a reputation as a ..........-hitting salesman and he had been at the company long enough to achieve seniority.

4. He envied his peers those who had an easy, carefree childhood, that is. He had had to .......... up the hard way. He had his first kid, by accident, at sixteen and had been working full-time ever since.

5. He looked for a hotel room that had a vacancy. The snow storm had come on hard and .......... and the roads were quickly becoming unmanageable. His chances of making it home in one piece were few and far between.

6. I know that I have to get my headlight fixed soon. My parents have been .......... on me to get it fixed for the last two weeks and it is dangerous to drive with one headlight, Rene told her boyfriend when he said that she had a headlight out.

7. He didn't like professors who were sticklers for dumb details. For example, his .......... Law professor had taken off half of the available points on his homework because he turned it in five minutes after class started. It wasn't his fault he didn't have a good, reliable car.

8. He couldn't wait to move out of his parents' house. His father was a hard-.......... pastor who punished him for the slightest infraction of the house rules. He also got punished for religious infractions — which wasn't fair in his mind.

9. You won't even say goodbye to your son? I know it is disappointing to you that he is not going into medical school like you did but that is not what he wants to do. Are you going to pull all of your love away from him just because he has different goals? Are you so ..........-hearted that you won't talk to him? Gracie asked Rudy.

10. Why don't you stop making .......... plans to make money and get a real job? You don't think any of those lame plans are going to work, do you? George's girlfriend asked him.