GBE2's Three Story Challenge

GBE2’s weekly prompt is to write three five sentence stories. Each story must be independent of the other stories. Sure. I can do that.

Spiderman

From the television set, Spiderman pointed his fingers and blasted the bad guy with his sticky web.

       “Hollywood has it so wrong,” Spiderman said.

       “What do you mean?” Mary Jane asked.

       Spiderman stood and turned his back to Mary Jane and then sent multiple spider threads out of his ass with a loud fart. “Have you ever seen a spider spin a web from its fingers?”

The Fog

Faint street lamps glow through the window of the office complex as Christopher yanks his  work out of the printer and slides the papers into his briefcase. At half past ten, he knows he must head for home where his wife will question his late hours, again. Outside his office, a misty fog settles over the desolate parking lot, so Christopher taps his remote and is soothed by the flashing lights of his black Eos. As he curves around a bend of the deserted back street, something swoops out of the fog and splatters his windshield with the crimson blood of a fresh kill. With his heart pounding in his ears, Christopher slams his breaks and gingerly steps out of the car to see what lifeless animal will stain the road; nothing. 

Reincarnation

After standing in this forest for 237 years, my brittle arms grow tired of holding leaves that will only dry out and tumble to the solid Earth below. We've seen many of our friends die from the ax of a lumberjack, but I do not fear him for he will provide me with a new beginning. The wisp of a man dragging his sharp tool toward me can't be more than twenty and hardly seems like the executioner I've dreamed of for the past thirty-seven years—the time since I decided that I’d lived too long. The kid continually swings his ax into my trunk until I topple onto the rain-soaked ground. Now that I’ve been reincarnated into Fifty Shades of Gray, life has become more interesting than watching trees grow in the woods.

Wordless Wednesday: Lea & Hans Drive a Minivan

Even the most exciting people eventually turn into boring adults. 

Musical Monday: Playing Dead

 

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Facebook

Unknown college student Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February, 2004 as a 

social networking site for Harvard students. Who would have thought it would spread from college students to those in high school, and eventually to middle school tweens? But wait, now your dog has a page along with your mother and grandmother. So either you learn how to block unwanted stalkers or keep it clean. Here's the filter my kids must have purchased because I never see anything inappropriate on their sites, even when I check out their pages in that stalking mom kind of way.

Wordless Wednesday: Flu Shot

If you haven't gotten your flu shot yet, 

GO GET IT TO BE PROTECTED.

It's just a little bruise.

Musical Monday: The Cardinals Rock

I always said that the Cardinals rock. Here's a short clip to show you it's true.

Proud to have been born and raised 

in St. Louis. Go Cards!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






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Soccer Mom

Years ago, I spent many evenings and several weekends on the side of soccer fields watching my son play. On a visit to Nashville, I revived my soccer mom roll by attending a

Victorious Secret Game. The players have changed quite a bit as well as the climate of the game. My son's team grabbed any pink shirt as they held back to keep from showing up their less skilled opponents. A highlight of the game came when a player tried to kick a ball into goal, but instead, the defender kneed the ball back at him. 

"My nuts! He got me in the nuts!" The young man hollered.

So at the end of the game, I did what any soccer mom would do. I asked him, "How are your nuts?"

He went into more details than I needed to know about his nuts, which are fine. 

Final score: Victorious Secrets 4 / Other team 1

Wordless Wednesday: Butt Buddies

At the writer's conference, I met my butt buddy.

The stranger was trying to pass 

behind me in a narrow aisle. 

That was weird.

 

Musical Monday Meets Numa Numa

Back in 2004, my son traveled to Israel where he heard a top Romanian song playing on the radio. He bought the cd and brought the song home to his friends. The teens instantly loved Ozone and ended up dancing to the Numa Numa song at the end of their youth group musical. Soon after that, a fat kid made an internet sensation of himself as he danced to this song. Here is the original music video by Ozone.

And the dancing fat kid's version of it . . .

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






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Monday Music Moves Me's theme is to have a song with a man's, woman's, boy's, or girl's name in the title. Since no one around here knows what "Dragostea Din Tei" means anyway, I figure I can get away with this song.

Smile Brilliant! Giveaway

Each year when I attend the Southern Women's Festival, I pass multiple ladies participating in a teeth whitening exhibit, which costs a lot of money. Maybe the company offered a discount at the show, but it was still well over one-hundred dollars.  I know this procedure is costly because today I received the Groupon below.

Teeth-Whitening Treatment B. Center Memphis — 4 miles from Home 45-minute blue-light treatments can render teeth two to eight shades brighter
View Deal $400 $145

Even with the discount, the price is still ridiculous.

I recently received a package from Smile Brilliant that included everything I needed to whiten my smile. The kit sells for $69.95 but is on sale for $39.95. I've really wanted to do this because my smile has grown yellow over the years, but our budget is tight since we've put two kids through college and a third is halfway through. I've questioned the dentist about whitening treatments, but he also quoted a hefty price tag for the procedure. Dang! I figured I'd never have white teeth again, until I stumbled on a blogging opportunity to try a home whitening kit and blog about it. I hope it works.

First I took a picture of my chompers on Sunday, Sept. 29th with my cell phone. Although I hate to point out my faults, my teeth are yellowish in all but the tips. My tips are white because as a little girl, I fell and scraped my enamel. One might say, that's not bad, the tips of my teeth are white; however, this feature makes my yellowing teeth more noticeable due to the contrast.

Next, I had to remove the plastic between batteries on my glow light. This allows it to work. The hard part came when I tried to get gel out of the pen. My directions didn't say anything about twisting the bottom, so I fought with the thing until I visited the company's website, which instructed me to twist the bottom of the pen repeatedly to get the gel to move up to the brush. I was told that gel pens are stored with the brush side up to keep them from leaking during shipment and the gel settles in the bottom of the pen. For this reason, I might have to twist my pen 20-30 times. I twisted the thing 40 times before any gel rose to the surface. After getting the gel onto the brush, the rest was easy. Paint each tooth, put the plastic guard over the teeth, insert the ridiculous looking blue light into the mouth, and wait.

The gel had that fresh dental taste to it, not that I'd recommend eating it, but it is meant to go into the mouth and felt okay in there.

Here I am looking stupid with this blue light thing sticking out of my mouth. Kinda reminds me of Millie with her tongue hanging out, but as I always told my kids, "We do things for beauty." Beauty even hurts sometimes (like the eyebrow tweeze), but this procedure is painless. Plus, my husband liked it because it kept me from talking. The directions say to keep the Whitening Light in the mouth for (20-45 minutes) and if you have time continue whitening for an additional 20-120 minutes. The longer you do it, the better the results. I was looking stupid for one hour and ten minutes; however, it's okay to look stupid when no one is around to see you–––unless you take a picture and post it on your blog.

Are you ready for the results? Below is what happened after one use. My kit has seven uses, so I can keep doing this and watch my teeth get whiter and whiter every time. The procedure was easy enough for even me, so I will do this again and again until my teeth look pretty enough to compete in the Miss Tennessee pageant.

The result are hard to see with a lousy phone camera like mine, but I have no doubt that my teeth are looking slightly better after this first application, and my husband concurs. They're nice and shiny, too.

I tried this again three days later, and here are my teeth after the second application.

After only two applications, I'm happy with this product and am eager to see how much whiter my teeth will get. I would highly recommend Smile Brilliant to friends and family. You may order your kit through their website at http://www.smilebrilliant.com. Please let me know if it works for you, too.

So what do you think? 

Is my SmileBrilliant?

 

If you'd like to try Smile Brilliant, write a comment on this post, and I'll send the winner a coupon code. Since I'm not one of these fancy bloggers, I guess I'll just have to write your names on paper and reach into a paper sack.

Wordless Wednesday: Bad Day

WOOF! WOOF!

                                Snip. Snip.

                                                       arf. arf.

And you think you had a bad day?

Photo by Judy

Musical Monday: Pumped Up Kicks

When I first heard this song, "Pumped up Kicks," by Foster the People, I loved its catchy tune 
and great beat. Then I actually listened to the lyrics 
and realized that it's a sad commentary on 
society. Knowing what this song is about has ruined 
my happy, dancing mood. When this song plays on the radio, I can't imagine the pain it must bring to those personally touched by school shootings. A song with this topic should not be so fun and bouncy. Do I still love this song? Maybe, but not as much as I used to.

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

The Rev App

With all of my thoughts banging in my head from an idea for a lesson at school, a new twist for my unfinished novel, or a funny idea for a blog post, it would be great to have a secretary hanging around. I could just say, "Jot down this idea," and then I'd never have to worry about my thoughts flying out the window like usual. Guess what? The time for help with memory is here at http://www.rev.com.

Technology reaches Rev. It's an app that records voice commands and then sends your thoughts back to you via email. What could be a better way to pull thoughts together with just a click of a button? 

Some might say, just get Siri. I would, but Siri comes with a high priced phone, and mine is fine––Thank you very much. Plus, I've read that Rev does what Siri won't do at a price of a dollar per transcribed minute. That's right. Rev will transcribe your words and mail them back to you in an email. This would be great for when you're driving and can't stop to grab a pen and paper or the dream that you wake up from and just know it's a scene in a novel waiting to happen. However, I'm not too coherent in the morning when it comes to sitting up and writing. Being a visual kind of gal, it would be great to have my thoughts written out for me because losing ideas means loss of money and/or opportunity. I'm always meaning to do something that just doesn't happen, but Rev could save the day.

Also, if you visit http://www.rev.com, you will find some high profile shout outs for various businesses, such as Yahoo, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. They all had positive words for this new app.

Here is what Rev has to say about themselves on their webpage, http://www.rev.com:

"Rev.com is a new breed of service provider. Like traditional vendors, we rely on a network of hand-picked freelancers. Unlike traditional vendors, we use technology to offer unbeatable quality, speed, and value. 

Rev’s proprietary technology platform is built to create a great work environment for translators and transcriptionists, so we can deliver clients ever increasing speed and quality. 

Rev's mission is to give more people the freedom to work from home. We are bringing the best of the office to our online workplace. We believe that attracting the best workers is the key to delivering great service to our customers."

Also, if you visit http://www.rev.com/press, you can read reviews about Rev from big name companies like Yahoo, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. They all support this newest advancement in phone apps. So stop on by and see what you've been missing.

Perfectly Imperfect Coworker

I have a coworker whose nose runs whenever 

she gets nervous or excited. This unusual

trait could lead to some odd situations. 

Picture this:

On her wedding day, she faces her groom with snot dripping down her lips and onto her formerly dry dress.

"You may kiss the bride," the priest says. 

If that ain't love, nothing is! Gives runaway bride a whole new meaning. 

"Welcome to parent night. I'm your child's teacher. HONKKKK!"

She's swimming in the ocean when a shark approaches. She may or may not die depending on whether or not it likes the free sample.

Picture Juliette with her nose running.

How about the fairy tale love story scene?

"Romeo! Romeo! Where for art thou dear, Romeo?

"I'm down here taking a shower!"

Or, maybe, "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your"

––drip. 

"That's not what I was going to say!"

Wordless Wednesday: Jay Asher

Look who I met at The Midsouth SCBWI Conference.

Here I am with Jay Asher, author of the New York Times Best Seller Thirteen Reasons Why.  

If you haven't read his book, check it out.

Musical Monday: Hump De Bump

Here's one with a fun sound. I love the 

Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






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I'm Alive!

Here's a short post just to assure you that I wasn't turned into a zombie or eaten by a shark.

Hello from Nashville!

I'm in the music city this weekend for our annual Midsouth SCBWI Writer's Conference. Note I made it here after late parent conferences Thursday night and working all day Friday. I drove here by myself in rain so thick, people were afraid to drive. Too bad the brave one was stuck behind them. Hopefully, I'll meet my dream agent or editor. 

See ya Sunday night.

Joyce

#WW: Bagel Bandits

We had a feast after the fast.

But, someone ate our leftover bagels.

             

#1 Suspect      

and 

Her Accomplices

Musical Monday: The Cup Song

Here's a short sweet one for the time impaired, like me. Have a great start of the week.

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






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#GBE2: Slippery Slope

Would you say, "Yes" to a friend invite from a stranger who looks like this?

Let me rephrase the question, if you hadn't been married since before this kid was born . . . would you?

My daughter got the random invite, but she told handsome, "No" because after a reverse google search (however you do that), she found the photo to be a fake. When I google searched the name of the person seeking new friends, I found the photo below.

I have a feeling this is not the guy looking to hook up with young college girls, but I may be wrong. 

Yep. My daughter went down the slippery slope of engaging in conversation with a stranger on the internet. Of course, I've met all of you blog visitors personally, right? At least that's what I'd like to tell my kid. Anyway, she's definitely mine. Here is a transcript of her conversation with the stranger.

1:51am Erica: Hi Jack! I just wanted to say that whoever you are that you should not hide it. Embrace yourself and actually use a real account instead of creating a fake one. Hopefully you will learn to have better self esteem in the future. I wish you the best of luck in life! -Erica

2:02am Jack: how do you know that's actually not me

2:03am Erica: You just changed the picture. But I did a reverse image search because the profile picture looked unreal.

2:06am Jack: you shouldnt care that much

2:08am Erica: well you shouldn't friend people that you don't actually know.

2:08am Jack: well you should just ignore it

2:09am Erica: I did. notice that we are not actually friends.

2:09am Jack: but you are talking to me so that is not ignoring but okay

2:10am Erica: yea you do make a fantastic point but at the same time I am distracting myself from doing homework and trying to teach a stranger a valuable lesson so I feel that it is a win win for me.

2:11am Jack: thanks mom. you shouldnt put your nose in other peoples sh*t. and do your homework. its important

2:12am Erica: Well thanks for trying to teach me a valuable lesson as well! Now why don't you go back to creepily friending people that you don't know. It was a pleasure talking to you. And by friending me you made it my business btw! Good night!

2:12am Jack: nice chattin with ya

2:13am Erica: Nice chatting with you as well!

I think he chatted with her just to see her beautiful face over and over again. Below is my response to her after she shared the chat and hoped I wasn't mad at her for making a blog worthy post with a stranger:

• Joyce:  Quit stalling with the homework.
  
  Notice the time stamp on the conversation. Yep, proof! It was definitely the older gentleman in the second picture. 
  
  BTW, is it weird to want to correct the spelling, grammar, and capitalization of her conversation before posting? I left it as is, however, I did edit the curse word. :)

Wordless Wednesday: Four Leaf Clover

Last month, I found a four leaf clover, which means, “Good luck.”

Let me try that again. It means,

 “GOOD LUCK.”

Well? Any day now.
F - this. I'll make my own luck.

 

Musical Monday: The High Holidays

Happy New Year

5774

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava’s Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.






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Good Yontif

I am home from work today but will soon be headed to synagogue to usher in the new year 5774. This is the actual year, had the world not started the count over again at the time of the common era. I like the calendar reporting events this way because B.C. is confusing. For example, one can be born in 254 BC and die in 198. So how old was the dude when he died? See what I mean? Not that anyone keeps track of dudes from back when, unless he was an angry Caesar (not the salad) who used his enemies as cat chow. Contrary to movie scenes, Caesar did not feed Christians to lions because he lived before Christianity--but I digress.

We celebrate Rosh Hashanah through the blowing of the shofar, a rams horn, to represent our call to worship. I've tried blowing into ram's horns but all I get is winded and drool down my chin. Kudos to those who can make them sound.

Also, last night, after services, we attended a wonderful party where we dipped apples in honey as a symbol of a sweet new year. If you haven't tried this, I highly recommend an apple, bowl of honey, and a wet wipe to keep your fingers from sticking together like silk to Spiderman.

Most importantly, this is the week for us to reflect upon the year and seek forgiveness from anyone whom we have hurt, knowingly or not. So, if I did or said anything to hurt your feelings, please forgive me. Sure, God will forgive us, but he asks that we seek forgiveness from those we have sinned against first. It is most important that we forgive each other and work to get along among those we live with because that's what counts in the eyes of the Lord.

L'Shana Tova Tikva Tenu

Happy New Year to all those celebrating the High Holy Days.

Wordless Wednesday: What Happened to Mowgli?

Where's little Mowgli? 

Daniel thinks this big dog ate him.

Judy's Photo

This big dog still has a sweet face.