Worded or Wordless

More YMCA.  After becoming dizzy from circling making many rounds around the track, I partook in some treadmill walking.  You know this is a virtual age when you realize that there are more touch screen features on certain YMCA machines than others (particularly St. Paul YMCA's vs. New Hope).  While walking on the treadmill, I realized I could watch my favorite sitcom, plug in my I-pod, see my facebook updates or watch a youtube clip from the touch screen.  I chose searching You tube clips, and to my favor I found a rather nice one about a couple who shares their home and their cooking ideas with the world in a video channel called Adventures to the Tar Pit on Youtube.  

Well after having my fill of fantasizing about the tar pit's family version of chocolate chip cookies, I moved on to explore another video clip.  This one is called Toy Hunting.  It introduced some new girly toys that are currently on the market for kids.  And when I say introduce I mean that a young woman literally walks around a department's toy store aisle and picks up toys and describes them to the lesser known audience.  Toys like Briar Beauty Barbie (got enough B's in that name) And a miniature doll called Adopt Me, amongst other dolls.  Now as much as I may like the idea of dolls I couldn't help think of the toys from my childhood

Sally secrets

PJ sparkles

Pillow People

Pound Puppies

Pipe Works

Lite Brite

Popales

Ragedy Anne and Andy

Toys of the 80's and 90's

      

Total lack of awareness

   

A poem

Total lack of awareness, stuck on the methadone.

She was totally unaware.

If she asked everyone in the library for a piece of gum  it was fine.

With her she spoke so load that the folks with the headphones could hear her.  She was unaware.  She didn't care.

She hit down on the computer keys with her manicured nails to the annoyance of the librarians whose shush-shushing noises began a cadence of music and sound.  

Tennant home

   

A Three Minute Free Write

"What a pigsty!"I say.  "Not nearly what I expected."  

This is a woman who clamored down on her tenant for wiping a single hand print on her pure white washed walls.  A woman who wrote passive aggressive post-it notes  on the bathroom mirror.  A woman whom if you passed gas without spraying you were in very deep s#i%.  Or if you left your leftovers in the refrigerator she'd start fumigating the kitchen.  Her tenant's home was immaculate:   rodent free floors with rodent free walls, rodent free pipes and rodent free walls. 

And the landlord's own home was filled with dirty laundry, basket upon basket.  A hoarder's dream.  The kitchen was filled with pop cans, bag upon bag, waiting for the collector's to give her a dollar.  Was it worth it? I asked.  She'd collect the pop cans at work, a book club, at her nearest grocery store.  Are you done with that?  She'd scoop up the can from the patron's hand, throw it in her recycled bag for safe keeping while her home was collecting.

Writers tips

1.Don’t go straight out and tell what the profession of a character is but let their profession be slowly revealed.  The reader will figure it out.

2.Think closely about what the story is about.  Is it about an idea? Or is about a single character? If it’s about an idea each character should be revealing that idea in their dialogue and actions.

3.Be careful of wordage in your writing like using  “had” too much.  It takes away from the intensity of the plot.  Example of a wordy sentence is: It took all afternoon.

4.When your writing about a tense situation, you need to show more emotion throughout the section.

 4.Moral decisions, good or bad, need to be consistent throughout a book to make the character believable.

When Workout is Never Enough

     


Four hours a day from 6am to 10, a South Korean couple in their seventies make their way to the gym from Saint Paul to New Hope to start their workout.  They begin with early morning swimming and an hour later they might move to walking on the treadmill.  Then its weight lifting for an hour.  Then a dance  class. 
"There are no arguments with your partner when they do opposite sports," the Korean woman says.  Only on occasion will this couple do an aerobics class together throughout their four hour workout.   They also own a  beauty supply shop in St. Paul making their day brimming with activity.

Wing Rider

Short Story

As I arrived

I wasn't exactly early

not exactly late

they were still passing drinks

Green Goblets of laden filled alcohol

I passed

I had the tolerance of a chubby toddler.

I smiled at the host.

Steery Sparn, Farnard

Who gleamed at me from underneath his bifocals

Solid eyes that told stories of 

late nights and heavy book reading

He came to congratulate me on my recent success. 

A Great Powder Day:Life is Good

   
A Story called The Ugly Sweater Contest Brought No Warmth or Cheer.


The ugly sweater contest brought no warmth or cheer.  In fact it brought bigger uglies in even bigger ugly sweaters. 

"Why you wear that sweater man?" 

It said, I can't breath all over it, a red turtleneck sweater sinching at the neck.  Too tight for his breathing tube so Tommy Tucker shot a spit ball straight through it, bought the guy some breathing time while Cindy Lou was putting up the Christmas tree.  
"Hand me that skirt, would ya?"  

Why they call it a skirt anyway? Jonathon thinks. Do trees need skirts too?  Are they masquerading for some late night tree fella to take them to the ball; maybe abominable snowman-Would he be wearing a skirt too?  Or maybe he'd be wearing a kilt, a Monsters Inc sorta fella-ready to carry the tree skirt lady away.  But what would they do together late at night?  The bristles of the tree coming in for a late night smooch and the abominable snowman gets pissed.  Tells the tree, he's had it.  His five o'clock shadow was one thing but to be kissed by an overgrown tree was another. 

Housing Vs the Elements

      

Bung Me my Bits and Bobs

Tiny Notes from Expat Blogs

More Expat blogs that I have viewed.  This one is from an Expat who has lived in India.  Her blog spot is at madamletmetellyouonething.com -Isn't that the greatest name for a blog! Well, I was intrigued right away just because I love the dialogue of a language and especially accents and this blog title was clearly the dialogue from India. I can picture the Panjabi behind it. I just finished watching the movie Fargo and I was so deeply moved by the movie and the depiction of the Minnesotan accent. (my accent)

Anyway madamletmetellyouonething.com  blog writer is currently back in the States but her post Blimey-that took long enough gives you a good indication of what her return trip from India was like not to mention that she is from Ireland but has a British accent, awesome!


I like to pick blogs to read based on whether or not they have a picture of the expat's city that they're currently residing somewhere in the cover page.  No pic of city, no visit to blog.  Well that's not always the case but here's a pretty good blog with a picture of Shanghai, China ephemeraanddetritus.com  She has a post called Tiny Notes from Hanoi.  I'm always looking for attention grabber titles in people's posts and this is definitely one of them.  Isn't the name Hanoi for a city just awesome?  It reminds me of different cities and names of people that my parents used to come tell me about as a kid after their military stay in the Philippines.


Here is another great blog from Shanghai huntingcheeseinchina.blogspot.com instead of lostincheeseland.com we've now got a blog about hunting for cheese.  Hmmm sounds great.  Well this blog has plenty of pictures. Fanstastic! I especially like the color in the pictures and specifically one that shows the outdoor market toys for children to buy in China-way cool, who doesn't love toys by the way. 

Snowmen and a tank?

       

If the above picture looks like a couple of snowmen with an elf sitting on top of a tank made out of a igloo than you, my friend, are right!  The ideas that people in Minneapolis have are so fantastic so innovative so creative.

Contest Continues on Victory Memorial Parkway

       More Lights remind me of a scene from Dr. Seuss The Grinch, when two characters Martha May Whovier and Betty Lou Who compete to see who will when the best decorated house contest.

A Competition on Victory Memorial Parkway

       Last night I was patrolling Minneapolis in search of the biggest and brightest houses.  There is a strip called Victory Memorial Parkway in North Minneapolis and its here that I've always wandered if there is a contest each year on which side of houses will be brighter.  I, myself tried to determine which side is more festive and I couldn't decide.

For more beautiful light displays in United States in general visit six-residential-streets-with-amazing-christmas

Dancing Around the Trees

What did I tell you people... a few days after all the snow melted in Minnesota there would be snow two days later.  It's all good. I'm glad the tall trees give us some shelter. Although the ordinances for having trees in your yard is unbelievable.  I was talking to a neighborhood who said that she had to chop down her lovely fern recently because parts of it had died and she said she was so disappointed because she had moved to that home particularly because she liked the tree, and then she had to pay $2000.00 US to chop it down as well! Chopping down the tree is a chore- I should know because my childhood friend's father chops down trees for a living and let me tell you that the only thing fun about it is hoisting yourself up in the tree by rope and being able to gaze at the streets below.

Dancing with Penguins

Apparently even the penguins need ear muffs in this frigid environment.  No time to scope out Saint Paul Minnesota today, I'm afraid.  I am too busy shoveling snow and wiping off the car windshield.  That's fine though there is always something to look forward too and something to see.  The weather man said we got more cold in November than we did in all of December.  

#111 -Sheila found the BUm

Bernardo was found sitting in the park.  The fact that Sheila found him was quite the luck,..

Under 3 sections of the newspaper, he was laying, ruffled dirty, clothes strewn around him despite the fact that the sun was rising and obviously warmer than it had been the night before.  The park itself was enclosed, oval shaped, with two walk ways coordinating paths that wrapped themselves around flower beds.

 

Its center fountain was surrounded with colored tiles.  Parks like this could only be found in crowded cities where some park conservationist thought it would be important to the the well being of one and all.  The park was for lonely young women, the poor, and where mothered could take their tykes.