January 13th, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning! As predicted, yesterday was not very productive. I read a little, I wrote a little, then I just vegged in front of the TV. I feel relatively human today, so I’m hoping I can get some quality writing done before I have to leave at one.

So, you know who Amy Poehler is, right? Actress, comedian, starred on Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation among other things, host of the Golden Globe Awards with Tina Fay. Well did you know she’s also the co-founder of this group called Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. It’s a website and an organization for young girls and women young at heart. Their motto is “Change the world by being yourself”.

This was my “shiny object” of the morning. I’m not a huge SNL fan, and Parks & Rec did not make the short list of TV shows I watch, so I really knew little of Amy Poehler other than she was a popular and talented comedian. I had gone online to wish those born today a happy birthday, like I try to do every morning, and when I was finished, I saw an old classmate of mine had posted this clip. I clicked on it, and was intrigued enough to look up her organization. Check it out for yourself. There are some interesting articles.

No old Victorian as a dorm this time
for Lys. Her room is in the basement
of this building.

I texted a little back and for the with Lys yesterday. She seems settled, and she is jumping back into campus life with both feet. She didn’t mention her knee, so I guess it’s feeling better. Before Lys left Champlain, she was on their events committee, and yesterday – her first full day back at Champlain – she attended a committee meeting and will be helping to coordinate the winter dance. Six classes, committee work, plus required volunteer work, yup, it’s going to be a busy semester.

Dani is back to 100%, well maybe 95%, she’s still a little tired. She was supposed to start with tutoring yesterday, but I haven’t heard back from the school. I’m going to give them a call later to find out what’s going on. Her teachers have been great about her not having to make up a lot of the month’s worth of work she missed, but she still needs to learn the skills she missed. That’s where the tutors were supposed to help. Dani did say some of her teachers were out sick, so more than likely, that’s what the holdup was.

Can I ask you something? Why are guys so dang pig headed about going to the doctor’s? I get a text from Alex Sunday night telling me my son was sick and he wouldn’t listen to her, or her mother, and go to the doctor. At one point he scared her so much, she was on the verge of calling 911 because he couldn’t breathe. Luckily, she had an inhaler on her from when she was sick at New Years, and she got him to use it.

I don’t know if it was Alex’s continued pestering, Alex’s mom calling and threatening to take him to the doctor herself, me calling and telling him he was being a butt and if he didn’t take care of it now, he’d end up in the hospital for a week, his father calling, or a combination of all of the above, but PJ finally went to the doctor. He has a horrible case of bronchitis, is on antibiotics, an inhaler, and steroids. If he had just gone to the doctors when he started feeling sick, it would never have gotten to this stage. ARGH…men! I’m just glad he did go, and now he’ll start feeling better.

Okay, here’s the science portion of the blog today. I don’t know if I have admitted this to you yet, but I’m a weather geek. I think, if I had had the chance to do it all over again, I would have pursued a career as a meteorologist. Clouds, storms, and weather anomalies fascinate me. I am a Weather Channel junkie. A few weeks back I was watching, and they had a piece on about ice spikes.

Ice spikes have a tendency of occurring in bird baths. They happen when the temperature drops quickly and water freezes from the outer edges of a container toward the center. As the edges freeze, the remaining liquid gets pushed to the center, and is left with nowhere to go but up, and it forms ice spikes.

Now, since there was no way in you-know-where you would find a bird bath on my property, I thought I would put water in a half-pan and put it on my back porch to see if I could get an ice spike to form. But, as it often happens with me, I never got around to doing it. We have a cooler outside, by our garage door, that has not yet found its way inside. The cooler has cup holder indents on its lid. Yesterday’s rain filled those indents with water. Last night the temperature dropped from 38° to 18° in a matter of hours. Here are the results. How cool are these??

Yeah, I realize you are probably not nearly as fascinated by these as I am. I’m a dork, I fully admit it. So, have you ever seen these before?

Alright, I’ve bothered you long enough today, and I really do want to get some writing done. I hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

Make me cry…

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

July 9th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! It is going to be another hot and sunny day in Central, New Jersey, but it will only reach the high eighties today, instead of the nineties like the past few days.

Lys didn’t want me to say anything before, but now that it’s pretty much common knowledge around here, I think I can. She will not be returning to Champlain College in the fall. Vermont in the winter is just not her thing, and I can’t say I blame her. That, paired with not feeling challenged by her classes, made the decision to leave fairly easy.

For months now, we have been trying to get all of Lys’ paperwork transferred from Champlain to High Point University in North Carolina, and have had nothing but delays. It’s rather ironic, don’t you think, that they managed to delay things just long enough where she can no longer get her registration deposit and her housing deposit back? Conveniently, they will be keeping a thousand dollars, and if they keep dragging their feet, she is going to miss the deadline to get into High Point.

What, do they think if she missed the deadline, she’ll be forced to return to their school? News flash, it ain’t happening. I’d rather have her take a semester off then return to a school with less than honorable practices. I’m so frustrated at this point, partly because of what they are doing, but also because I was gullible enough to drink their Kool aide. Like my daughter, I had been so impressed by the school, only to find it was an illusion.

After a few hours of writing, then dealing with the college, I went to work. Thankfully it was a real easy day. RV knows Tuesdays are my crazy day, so we usually limit them to one appointment and no running around. I finished up early and was able to take a nap before I had to leave for my writing group.

We had a good group last night. Tamara, who is part of the critique group, showed up thinking it was critique night. She got her Tuesdays mixed up, but we convinced her to stay, since she was there anyway. There were two new girls, Calley & Jacquelyn, who are only in town for a few weeks. They are interning at Princeton University, and decided to spend their night off with us. The “regulars” were there, so it was good to see them, but then a member, who has been m.i.a. for several months, showed up. It was so nice to see Sue again, I only wish we had had more time to catch up.

When I left my writing group last night, and began my drive home, it started to monsoon. The wipers were on full tilt, and I was dodging debris as I inched along at an earthshattering ten miles per hour. The bolts of lightning piercing the night sky were impressive, frightening, but impressive. I was seriously concerned if I would make it home before a tree branch crashed through my car.

I was kicking myself for taking my usual back road route as opposed to going the slightly longer, but less tree filled, highway route. As soon as I crossed the border between Princeton and Montgomery, the rain subsided considerably. Then, when I crossed the border between Montgomery and my town, the roads were bone dry. Okay, I thought, I got ahead of the storm. Now I won’t get drenched getting from the car to the house, my only worry is not getting hit by lightning.

It was all good. I pulled in the driveway. I parked my car on the lawn instead of at the top of the driveway where it would have been under a tree – Princeton looked like a war zone, there were downed trees and branches everywhere, and the storm was headed our way. I gathered my things, and got into the house incident free.

I bring the dog out to be emptied this morning, expecting to see a holy mess, and all is as it should be. I doubt it even rained here last night, so now I’m thinking, dang, I should have watered the garden. It always amazes me when I’m on the edge of the storm line. Princeton is only twelve miles away. They got a deluge; we got nothing. 

Guess I need to water this morning, before the sun gets too high, which means I have to go out now.

I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

“You can’t marry him/her!”

(The love of your life is about to marry someone else.)

Nicholas ~

I am writing you because, even after all these years, I still cannot find the courage to reveal to you, face to face, my true feelings. However, desperate times call for desperate measures; and the possibility of you marrying Margie is about as desperate as it gets, so I needed to start somewhere.

We have been the best of friends for over a decade now. We laugh together, cry together, and are the first person each other calls, when something important, or not so important, happens in our lives. Our families know and love each other.

We love each other, and have expressed it many times, but what I think you fail to see is that, not only do I love you, but I am in love with you. There, I said it. In plain English, so there can be no room for misinterpretation.

I couldn’t let you propose without knowing how I truly felt. If you feel the same, I’ll be on the park bench, at seven o’clock, on Saturday morning. You know which one.

~ Diana

Yeah, a prompt right up my alley. I even had time to go back and fix a booboo before my ten minutes were up.

Your Next Challenge is (from my writing group):

Use the following three: Parrot, Cerulean, Defenestrate (feel free to look it up, most of us didn’t know what it meant either)

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

April 24th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Water's a bit rough and there's still
snow on the mountains

I’ll confess. I took a little nap when I got to the hotel instead of jumping right online and doing my blog. Up before five, then driving for six hours wiped me out. 

Since all of the snow and most of the ice waterfalls were completely melted, I decided to take the ferry over from Essex, New York to Burlington, Vermont. This usually cuts over an hour off of my trip and saves about a quarter of a tank of gas. 

The water on Lake Champlain
is so high from the snow melt
it's lapping up on to the dock.

Unfortunately, we got there ten minutes after the ferry had left, so we had to wait fifty minutes for the next ferry. They only run once an hour this time of the year. So, I still saved gas, but missed the short window between exams when Lys would be in her room.

Since we were late anyway, my nephew and I stopped at Chipotle for lunch. I have never been, but it is one of his favorite places. I had the chicken tacos, and other than them being a little too spicy for me, they were very good, but $1.95 for a little cup of guacamole was a little ridiculous. After we ate, I called Lys’ roommate Rhea, and she let us in so we could bring the rest of Lys’ packing bins and space bags up to her room. Rhea’s just about finished packing, so the room looks so bare. I did give Rhea something extra she needed to pack though; I gave her a copy of Corporate Blues as a thank you for being a good roommate for my daughter.

I can't believe Lys is finished with her first year of college already. It feels like we were just dropping her off, and now we are packing up her dorm. Boy that

I think this was the groundbreaking
for the new sophomore dorms. 

school year went quick! Granted, some of it has to do with her school year ending so early this year. They only had two weeks for Christmas break, where most colleges had five. I’m not 100% sure, but I think Champlain has some construction projects going on over the summer and they needed the extra time. Next year, the schedule is like every other college, and they get out in the middle of May.

So, when I woke up from my nap, I procrastinated some more, and went to the lobby for a cup of coffee – decaf of course. I chatted with the girl at the front desk, then I went outside for a few minutes. Whenever I stay at a hotel, I like to check out the cars in the parking lot to see where everyone’s from, I know, I’m a kook. The one thing which never dawned on me until Samantha, the girl at the front desk, mentioned it, was just because the license plate says one state, it doesn’t mean the folks are actually from that state. If it’s a rental, the plates could be from anywhere. It was an “ah ha” moment. I had never thought of that.

There was one vehicle in the parking lot which really piqued my interest. I came back inside and whispered to Samantha, “Please tell me they’re a guest, and I have no reason for concern.” She knew exactly what I was referring to, and assured me they were a guest. (Sorry, FB readers. If you want to see what I’m talking about, you’ll need to look at the blog.)

Okay, I don’t want to push my luck. Tim is reading quietly while I write so as not to disturb me, and I don’t want to take advantage. I hope y’all have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

Aaarrrggghhh! I can’t take it anymore. Why do they have to make things so difficult? Why can’t anything be simple? Or go easy? It’s a plot, a scheme, I just know it. All the big companies are banning together against us little people. They want to make us feel so insane, we need to turn to them to do everything. See, it must be working, they are turning me into one of those conspiracy nuts.

Every little thing we used to be able to do for ourselves, is now a major production. Example, last weekend, my husband went to change the oil on my car. This is the first time we have had to do it, because the maintenance plan we had ran out. This should be no big deal. He has changed the oil hundreds of times, even on his relatively new, three year old, work truck.

So he picks up the six quarts of oil and the new filter, which should have been his first clue that this project was doomed to fail. The filter isn’t a one piece unit anymore, it’s literally a filter and “O” rings, which need to be placed into a stationary housing. Okay, interesting, but not a deal breaker, so my husband proceeds. He figures out the funky mechanism to release the oil so it can drain from the car – luckily the special adapter needed came with the oil filter. The oil drains, and he goes to replace the filter. He gets the cap off, only to find another top which requires a special wrench.

I ran out of time, but I thought you’d want the end of the story. He realizes he doesn’t have the right tool, so he calls the auto part store, and they tell him they have the wrenches needed. He goes back to the store, makes a wild guess at which of the six wrenches was the right size – the guy at the counter couldn’t tell him – brings it home, and it doesn’t work. My husband ended up closing the oil plug back up and dumping six quarts of cheapy oil in the car, just so I wasn’t driving to Vermont with sludge in my engine. He’ll get the correct wrench and then do a proper oil change next month.

I’m telling you, it’s a conspiracy. They want to make things so difficult, you have to turn to them instead of being able to help yourself. It’s very frustrating.

Your Next Challenge is:

The students have taken over the classroom (or school)

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.