st paul

paddle boat in st paul

      

st. paul

    I spent my morning doing Zumba at a gym in White Bear Lake.  Here are more reggaetone and Zumba songs to add to your repetoir:

 

Allez, ola, ole jessy matador https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG7Pr1DFOio

La maquina de Baile Daddy Yankee  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrLeZaOiAos

Estrellita de Madruga  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHv5eufHe5k

Vamos a Celebra -Alex Zardo  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DewywvZm45M

Gasoline Daddy Yankee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG2VI9Jvmeg

  

I just read in the Lost City of Z that as the Amazon evaporates piranhas get trapped and begin to eat one another. Glad  there are no piranhas in this aquarium!

Japanese tea

sculpture garden minneapolis

 

Short snippet on a story I'm working on.

By the time Miranda dropped off Dougie and reached home, she seen a blinking red glow on her message system indicating a message.  She pushed play and the tape deck turned on, the tape from the cassette begun spinning.  The messenger sounded like a pilot giving flight news.  

"Ahh... this message is for Miranda.  Ahhhh.. this is Steve Corwell.  We received a note ahhh...  saying that you'd like to set up a time to meet with ahhh....,    Call me at your earliest convenience ahhh, 555,5555.  Thank you"
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel!" Miranda exclaimed.  A friend told her once that if she kept busy, work would come to her.

"I never sleep cause sleep is the cousin of death"

i roll my time like a toothpick

ever accentuating- like a dime to big

i roll my time like a roll too big

St Paul

      

    To the hip hip hop you don't stop.” 

gunning the street life

hoping to find street pain

over the umbilical cord that ties you to the mother land

poppin' the ever foreboding words

that taunt your soul

gleaming hope

and getting none

though the death valleys

and street trips  

      

 “With my mind on my money/and my money on my mind.

a total crap monkey without even a dime

untalented plaster you all sayin' forever.

 I dodged the bullet but never is ever

I stand here before you-

 not a care in the worle-

 I dodge the haters and the equal unshare


we all the same,
Everyone of us, all
I'm out- shorty
We all tall

      

      

Writer's tips

Writer's tips
1. When you're writing be careful of using the same adjectives and verbs.  They may come off as mundane or too repetitive: words like yawned, still and mostly.


2. Making sure that you are separating ideas into their own paragraphs.


3. Don't douse a sentence with too many adjectives or adverbs.  A sentence like: The puffy coats sat like a streaming stew is doing a bit too much.


4. Cut the use of too many adverbs especially with "ly" .  Words like suffixes, mostly, extremely, tiredly should be dropped.


5.Think about how close you want the reader to be to the person who is telling the story. 

I dreamed of becoming a writer.
I set my mind to it since I was a kid
i put it in my mind to finish my novel
whether it is a success or not
I want to finish
I want to know what my steps are
I want to pursue and be around the best writers
never scared, never deterred.
clear writing, more sophisticated.

Jewelry Heist

Short Story

Never to attempt a burglary before, he strapped his head with duck tape over his black ski mask.  "Now it should stay in place,"he said to his cat who  meowed and purred between his legs.  He was dared for the first time ever to be part of a jewelry heist.  This would be one of a kind;the gangsters of Hitcombe Bottom comprised of four men, four friends from the same private school who later gone to Oxford together and even graduated as business majors.  But when their business went down the toilet they had it in their mind to do something else.  Ralph was to meet Billy Bob and two others at midnight at Desmond Diamonds on the third floor where they would stop the elevator and climb down the rope inside the elevator's shaft.  They'd drill a hole and make two trips through the store through the entirety of the holiday weekend in order to pull off  heist London would ever see.

If you were

If you were...


If you were a cat I'd bring a bat
If you were a cow I'd say good-bye now
If your were a lazy-day on a Monday
I'd curl by your side and have a latte
If you were a chocolate I'd eat you all up
If you were a sign, 
I'd have to say shut up.

But you are not a cat
Nor a bat
Nor a cow
You are not a lazy- day,
 It is not a Monday
I can't sit by your side, I can't have a latte
I can't tell you-to shut up 
Because you are gone
and that is enough.

      

      

      

      
A story called Clouded Memories

Clouded memories- my plane trip from France.  

At one point on the plane someone next to me  managed to elbow my nose while I was sleeping.  I didn't mind, I had my emotional support dog Periwinkle on my lap.  He lapped my face just in time so that the improper stranger couldn't stick his feet in my face as well.  I was thankful.  It wasn't easy getting Periwinkle on the plane, he had to go through several security checkpoints and almost failed the point that required him to stick his paws in the air while an x-ray machine circled around him.  Being a cocker spaniel-he found it hard to keep that position for five seconds that it required.  But he managed.  My carry-on wasn't so lucky...The French security attendant kept muttering "For-bid-on, For-bid-on" when she all but emptied the contents of my Barbie luggage bag on the conveyor belt.  Before that time I thought it was cute to have a see-through garment bag, but I now realize that isn't cute at all.  It's grossly humiliating.  My finer lace garments were zipped, touched and patted down as if they were the ones under suspicion. 

      

All that's missing is the white picket fence

      

LMAO, How did bush make his name on this turn pike?

      

Gotta love the homes in texas

      

      

texas

      

      

my trip to texas

      

      

      

Gym short story

   

We'd like to take time for everyone to introduce themselves.  Shiva began.  After you introduce yourself, if you would like to make an announcement you could at this time.  We can't hear you.  I cant hear you.  Spoke a member.  Shiva glanced at the mic in her hands and shook it like a babies rattle.  She spoke louder giving and came off like an angry lion.  Speaking loudly just so happened to rackle her throat, getting a lap ban put in last summer caused her voice to become raspy due to the oxygen the they shoved down her throat.

 

      
st. paul public library 

Brainstorming

  Brainstorming 

Short story ideas... I'm thinking of expanding on this story I wrote earlier about private school kids turning into monsters.  Or a short mystery piece that has to do with kidnapping, or a piece about an early century writer who is sent on an assignment. Or a piece about a women with a mental illness who struggles to raise her children in a society where people are looking for ways to get her children taken away but she has tricks up her sleeve to make sure that won't happen.


Picture taken of an elevator in Downtown, St Paul library

      

Writing: a life unlike dancing

I just finished watching a small documentary about being a ballet artist at NY ballet on Youtube and a lot of what the dancers do remind me of what I am doing as a writer.

 I wake up in the early morning and go to a writer's group with a group of people who have the writing tools in hand and their notebooks  and we all know each other and what we have in mind that day and we come listening and share our laughter over each other's pieces but for some of us, this is very serious warm-up to something bigger, something that we practice three or four times a week.

For instance for me I go to writer's group on Wednesday nights, this group involves me to critique and comment on other writers work, it requires me to to take at least four hours to read each of their 10-18 page stories that are part of a larger book that their working on.  Then every morning I spend 1-2 hours writing my own stories. 

 Every second and third Saturday I participate in book club which allows me to read at least two novels a month and do commentary on a the book with other writers.  I read daily so that I can write better but for writers we are not put in this program like the NY ballet students where we are skilled and drilled at a very young age to dance to our fullest degree every day from the beginning of our adolescence. A lot of being a writer has to do with writing on our own time in the wee hours that we in between activities that sustain the other part of our lives that does not contain writing.

Shakopee vs. Champlyn Park basketball Tournament

      

Shakopee squared off in a game against Champlyn Park at the Target center.   Lakeville North and Apple Valley High school helped Shakopee Cheer their way through the game.

What I had to love about the tournament was:

Apple Valley pep squad dressed in beach outfits: tank tops, sun hats and swim shorts

I loved the size of Lakeville North's high school band

I also liked the newest addition to the concept of cheering including holding miniature flashlights to distract players during their free throws. 

I also liked the cheers including, "I think were going to win, I think were going to win."

pic42

      

pic44

      

Veronica's Room

      
I went to see Veronica's Room at Ames Theater in Burnsville, Minnesota.

  Now, I love the emotions of the theater like anyone else but during this performance I sympathized with the character to such an extent that I was having anxiety about what it would be like to be looked up in a room and not know what my captors had in store for me.