April 25th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning. It’s six a.m. and I’m up, showered, dressed, have my first cup of coffee, and I’m typing away. When we came back from dinner last night, the room was a little chilly, so I cranked the heat (which had been off) to seventy so the room would warm up. I had every intention of turning it back down to sixty five before I went to sleep, but I forgot. At four thirty, Tim woke up because it was rather toasty in the room. He turned down the heat and promptly fell back asleep. I, on the other hand, laid in bed and wished I could fall back to sleep. It didn’t work so well. I gave up at about a quarter after five, and got up. It’s going to be a long day.

After I finished my blog post yesterday, Tim took a look at my computer. I guess he couldn’t stand all my grumbling, cussing, and hair pulling, so he put me out of my misery. I’m not sure exactly what he did, and I really don’t care, but I can now type, navigate pages, and do searches without all the redirect pop-ups detouring me every five seconds. Yeah!!!

Around seven last night, even though I was still pretty stuffed from lunch, we went out for dinner to a restaurant they don’t have by us, but I have eaten at before, when we went to the Hunter Hayes concert last year in Connecticut. It’s called Ninety-Nine, and it’s really good. They have a huge selection to choose from, and the prices are very reasonable. Tim was so excited when I told him he could have one beer. It was so cute, the waitress, Chrystal, asked if he wanted a pint or a tall and he hesitated. I chimed in and said, since I

was only allowing him one, he’ll take the tall. She laughed, I laughed and Tim turned red.

I cheated a little yesterday. When I went to check my word count, I noticed I was really close to a cool number, so I added, “Oh beans, I needed to write just a few more words to have 44,444 be my word count for the day, so I’m cheating a little bit here.” There have been times where I was close to an even number, and I’ve gone back and added a few words or a sentence, or I un-contracted a word into two

words, but the changes always pertained to what I was writing. This addition of twenty eight words was an out and out cheat, but I don’t care. Sue me.

Our “cabin” for Camp NaNoWriMo is doing great this time. I think there will be five of us who actually make goal. I was the only one who made goal in July. I have no idea about November, because we aren’t in cabins then, just kind of on our own. What I don’t understand is why some folks sign up, and then either don’t write at all or never post their stats, or why people put up ridiculous goals of 100K words, and then freak out and don’t write at all. They don’t realize by them not doing what they promised to do, brings down the

whole cabin.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to fall short of a goal, like your goal is 50K and in the end you wrote 46K, at least you tried. Your effort supported the cabin, it kept the group’s spirits up, kept them working toward goal. When you log on in the morning and you see stats of zero, or that your cabin as a whole is at 25% when they should be at 75%, it’s discouraging to all of us.

Sorry. I’ll step off my soap box. It’s time for me to sneak back to the lobby for another cup of coffee. These little 8 oz. cups don’t cut it. I’ll do the challenge when I return and then I may be able to squeak out a few paragraphs on Faerie Tale Queen.

I hope y’all have a fantastic day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

The students have taken over the classroom (or school)

Thank God this only happens once a year. I don’t think I could survive it, if it occurred more often. In all honesty, most of the kids do a good job, really put forth an effort, but there are always a few who leave me scratching my head.

Five years ago, we got a new Principal here at Crestmont Middle School, and let’s just say she was forward thinking. She has implemented many new programs which get the students involved, excited, and thinking toward their future. The teach/principal for the day program was one of them. Every February, on the last day before the kids have off for Presidents’ weekend, select kids and teachers swap places for the day.

In the weeks leading up to the event, teachers choose the students who show an aptitude for the subject and the possible desire of becoming a teacher in the future, and they are given the opportunity, for one day, to test the waters. Ms. Davidson, the Principal, also makes her selection of who will replace her for the day as well. The only difference is, that student plays Principal for the entire day, whereas the other students may be only teaching a class or two.

If I had more time, I would have went into detail as to how the program was to work, and probably a comical anecdote or two where the program did not go exactly as planned, but there’s only so much you can do in ten minutes. Oh well.

Your Next Challenge is:

Use the following three in a story – Lamppost, Fedora, and Banana

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.

September 10th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 
 

Deep down, I am a numbers person at heart. I like looking at a bunch of data, discerning patterns, collecting facts. So when I got my six month report from Facebook, I just had to play. One of the bits of data Facebook gathers is the location (city, state, country) of people who have viewed your page. I was floored by some of the numbers.

I completely took out the data from my home state of NJ which was over 15K views in 6 months, and NY and TX (both state were over 1K) because these three areas are saturated with my family and friends, so as far as I’m concerned, the numbers are skewed unfairly in those regions. I also took out PA, since it is right next door, so it too was probably guilty of skewed numbers as well.

Here’s where my surprise began – CA, where I know exactly 2 people, was just shy of 1K, half of which were from Los Angeles, Knoxville, TN – 316 views, Olympia, WA – 224, Charleston, SC – 422, Raleigh, NC – 333, Hamilton, MT – 199, Fort Gratiot, MI – 350, Chicago, IL – 633.  I think I have one friend in MI, one or two old classmates and one relative in NC, and I visited TN last summer and chatted with the hotel staff about my books while I was there. All told, 23K views of my FB author’s page in the past 6 months.

But wait, it gets more bizarre. Those were just the domestic numbers. Add another 4K for foreign numbers, almost 1K of which was from London – yes just London, not all of England. Again, I personally know exactly 2 people in all of England. Mumbai, India – 358, Birsfelden, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland – 360, Hong Kong – 278, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada – 322, plus another 400 from countries I have never even heard of and doubt I would even be able to find on a map!

I realize that was a WHOLE bunch of numbers and I have probably bored you to tears with this post, but it blows my mind to think something I am writing – me, a simple mom from central New Jersey – is being read all over the globe. It is quite humbling and exciting all at the same time. Now if I could just figure out how to convert these numbers to sales, I’d be all set.

On a personal note, my daughter had a good first day at school. She was so proud of herself because she didn’t get lost “even once”, and she was quite pleased with her teachers. Let’s keep our fingers crossed it continues through the year!

I kidnapped my girlfriend Sharon, with only a five minute notice, and dragged her to the airport with me. Don’t you just love having friends you can do that to?? My son and his girlfriend had a great trip. They met a father and son from England who were visiting the US for the first time, and they hit it off so well, they spent the entire weekend with them. They have even made plans on getting together in the future.

It’s funny, all of us have managed to meet people while on vacation who we continue to remain friends with – Red and Rose, the couple we went to visit on the way home from dropping my daughter off at college, for example. There’s also another couple we met in St. Maarten who were on their honeymoon, Jim and Jen, who we keep in contact with. I believe they just celebrated their 20^th wedding anniversary. Seven years ago, when we were in the Dominican Republic, a pack of kids found each other on the first day, and they have all stay in touch. It has been nice seeing pictures of them growing up. You never know when or where you’ll find a friend.

OK, I have rambled on for more than enough today. I hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

The first day of school…

 Star Date: September 8^th, 1971. Alien Planet: Menlo Park Elementary School. Since I had never gone to pre-school, kindergarten did seem like an alien planet, but within minutes, I was happy as a clam. I had the most beautiful teacher in the world, Miss Payne. She was tall, and not just from the perspective of a five year old, she was taller than my mom, and she had the silkiest long light brown hair I had ever seen. She had a melodic voice, a warm smile and you could tell she absolutely loved her job.

Now all of that would be of the utmost importance to a young child, but it was not what endeared her to me; already at my young age, I knew some beautiful people were not very nice. What made me love my first day was there were two kids who were very upset, Michael and Debbie. They were standing on opposite sides of the room crying. They were scared and did not want to be in kindergarten. Instead of Miss Payne just going over to try to talk to them, she asked me if I would go and talk to Michael, and she asked another boy, Jimmy, to go and talk to Debbie. Both Jimmy and I were successful in calming down Debbie and Michael, and they joined the rest of the class with no more fuss.

 

For this, I thought Miss Payne was brilliant. She, an unknown big adult, did not approach the crying children and scare them more, she sent other children so they could feel comfortable. The other children (Jimmy and me) got to feel important, needed and on our very first day were established as the two kids to go to if something was wrong; and she showed to the class, even though we were young, we could still do very important things to help each other.

I stayed in that school system through 6^th grade, and even after seven years, Jimmy and I remained the “go to” kids when our classmates had a problem. It’s amazing how your very first day can set the tone for your entire school career.

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

I remember where I was that day…

 

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.