Silly Saturday Post - A Conglomeration

Happy Weekend!

All right. I give up. I've been looking at photos for at least an hour and a half, and could only find just a few photos. I'll include a funny video at the bottom, instead. My boys showed it to me, and it really did make me laugh.

How has everyone been? May is turning out to be a stressful. Work is stressful because I've been buried with assessments. I've also been glued to the internet about all this political stuff. I waste a ton of time trying to figure out all that's been happening. It's all so overwhelming, and I'm going to have to give myself a time-limit. It's making me crazy, cranky, and uber-distracted.

Last weekend I had a lot of fun coming up with a story idea for a Wattpad challenge, but still have to write the actual story. It's flash fiction--very, very short flash fiction--so hopefully I'll get it done this weekend. My other happy times this week have been listening to my kids practice their musical instruments and going for walks. One son is playing What A Wonderful World on his cello (among other songs, but that's my favorite), and the other is working on Ain't No Mountain High Enough (again, among other songs.) We've been exploring Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, 50's, 70's, classical and recent pop music. It's been a lot of fun.

Okay! Here's the photos. Hopefully they at least make you smile!

Do you think this is photo-shopped? If not, that's actually a scary picture.

I visit Nursing Facilities and can never find the front door. What do NF's have against marking their entrances clearly?

Not funny - just cool!

We do have a pun this week!

And a video.  The boys found it. It's from Bad Lip Reading's YouTube channel. There's all kinds of videos there, including other funny Star Wars ones.

I hope you all have an awesome weekend and next week. Now my children are out of school, I might have more relaxed evenings. That would be nice. :)

Nothing Bizarre Happened: But Here's a Bizarre Video

I'm sorry, but I do think Stormtroopers twerking is just a little bizarre. And funny.

 

Have a wonderful rest of your week!

Funny Friday Photos

It's Friday, the weekend is upon us, and Thor 2 is in theatres. Life is good. It's true, it doesn't take much to make me happy. At least, not this weekend!

Um, I seriously can't think of anything funny or interesting to say, so I'm going to move on to the photos.

Last week's winner for funniest photo was:

Here are this week's new photos!

It took me a while to see the rabbit, but when I did... Definitely messed with my head.

I'm so embarrassed for the dog. I bet all his pack mates laughed at him back at the kennels.

Iron Caterpillar?

One stressed cat.

Snowman zombies! What kind of genius makes snowman zombies!

Okay. I don't know why, but the bear at the end keeps cracking me up.

Freaky. Just freaky. But, I always think of cats when I hear CAT scan, so...

A fun little experiment for you to try out. 

Well, what happened? My foot isn't smart. How about yours?

My favorite photo is the Loki bear. I can't tell you why, but I just laugh, so it gets my vote. Maybe it's because I'm so psyched about the movie. 

What is your favorite photo? Are you going to see Thor: The Dark World this weekend? (Or, if you're one of those lucky people where it's been released for weeks already, did you go see it? What did you think?)

Funny Friday Photos: Animals and Star Wars

I hope everyone had a good week! It's Friday, and we can all be happy about that, right? Unless you have to work this weekend, in which case I hope the photos will cheer you up.

It took me forever to find funny pictures for this post! I planned to update word count and chat a little, and now it's so late I have to post and run! While this was a leaner funny photo week, I still found some I thought were funny, and hopefully you will, too!

Last week's winner for funniest photo was:

And here's the new ones:

It makes me happy to see all mothers in the animal kingdom get this expression. Not just me.

Political correctness extends to the animal kingdom.

For some reason it's eyes look like pumpkin seeds to me.

So that's where Jabba the Hut lives.

My eldest used to sleep like that AT-AT.

You tell it, Yoda.

And our pun:

My favorite this week is the Target Locked. 

Was there any that you liked better than the others? 

Have a great weekend!

Funny Friday Photos

I'm thinking about making this a regular feature.  My only worry is that I won't be able to find funny pictures some Friday.  These photos are the rest of the e-mail the cat pictures came from last week.  Enjoy!

And then I had to include a Star Wars one, just because I find this photo amazing... or maybe that's amusing.  I copied it from The Best of Everything, where the Star Wars 100 Day Blogathon is going on!

Have a fabulous weekend!

The Great Star Wars Blogathon

The Grumpy Bulldog showed up here about a week ago, and invited me to participate in the The Great Star Wars 100 day Blogathon.  Since I love all things Star Wars - and blog fests - this seemed like a fun thing to participate in.

Each day, there is a trivia question posted, and a variety of ways to earn points, that culminate in a winner at the end of the Blogathon. I currently don't have any points, but that will be rectified after the end of this post!

Since I don't expect to be the winner of the Blogathon, I'm looking at the trivia section of the blogathon as a fun way to learn about Star Wars trivia.  I enjoy the witty repartee that goes on in the comment section, as well.

Three of the ways I can get points is by entering the Bi-Weekly Star Wars Writing Challenges (you get 100 points for those!), referring people to the blogathon by mentioning it on my blog (check!), and to have someone I referred comment on Briane Pagel's blog, mentioning my name as the referral source (we both get 50 points for that!)  So, if you're interested in joining, head over to Briane's blog and say I sent you!

Sourced from The Best of Everything, who got it from I don't know where!

The current Writing Challenge is: between now and Sunday, March 25 (you can still sign up - and mention my name!), post a 250-words-or-less Fan Fiction Fan Fiction, in which one of your characters from a story you wrote tries to write a piece of Star Wars Fan Fiction.

Disclaimer:  I am not sure what fan fiction looks like, or sounds like, so I did my best. Please be kind. :)


Twelve year-old Quinn, who is Meara's brother, is making an appearance from Finding Meara.  He isn't technically writing fan fiction, but he is creating fan fiction verbally, so I hope it meets the criteria of the blogathon.

*****

Quinn pulled the box of Lego Star Wars pieces out from under his bed.  Sifting through the various sized and colored bricks, he picked out Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.  After a little more searching, he located the light sabers and found Princess Leia. 

With practiced movements, he created a box, and put Leia inside.  He set Darth Vader in front of the box, and said, “All right, let the battle begin.”

Luke sidled up to Vader, light saber in hand.  “Let Leia go.”

“Never,” Darth Vader said.

 “You won’t win.  Evil always loses.”

“You can’t kill me.  I’m your father.”

Quinn scowled, and thought about his own father.  Darth Vader would be a better Dad.  He sacrificed himself to save Luke from the Emperor.  Lucian would never do that for him.

He fingered the Vader figure, and wondered if Luke could have killed Darth Vader, if he knew there was no good left in him.

He pushed Luke toward Vader. “I will kill you, sperm-donor.”  Luke slashed at Vader, who ignited his light saber, and easily parried the blow.

“You are no match for me,” Vader laughed.

“Oh yeah!”  Luke advanced on Darth Vader, light saber whirling.  Vader fell beneath the ferocious blows.

Quinn popped Vader’s head off, a satisfied grin on his face.

*****

On Friday, I have my first Life List Club Milestone Party.  There will be prizes involved, so please don't let my blogathon entry scare you away, and come back on Friday!

Memes and More

It's my turn!  Thank you Cindy Reynders at Saucy Lucy Wisdom and Nicole Pyles from The World of my Imagination for giving the chance to participate in this fun meme. (I feel weird using the word meme, just for the record.)


The rules, as I'm sure most of you know, are:
1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs, and post them as they're written.
4. Tag 7 authors, and let them know.


From Finding Meara, here are my lines (Hazel is speaking, talking to her half-brother, Quinn):

“What are they?”  I scanned the trees, looking for any sign of the magician who had been hurt helping me.  

I didn’t see him, and I didn’t see Garron, either.  Since getting Meara back, Lucian had lightened up on finding me.  Maybe he figured we would come to him ourselves.  I was a little worried, since that was exactly what we were doing.

“Earthforce magic uses the elements to effect change in the world, kind of like Wicca, only stronger.  Lifeforce magic uses the energy found in living things to work change.”

“How come you can use both?”

That's them! I'm pretty sure that they will change once I get that far in revisions (maybe this week - I hope), but for now, there they are.

The "more" part of this post is that I was also tagged by Cindy Reynders.  There were some interesting questions, so I picked out the ones I hadn't answered yet and will answer below.

If you could do anything tomorrow, what would you do? Edit, revise, all day long.

Describe your happy place.  Being out with my family.  I miss them terribly when I'm gone.

What was your first happy memory?  Getting a stuffed Eeyore toy when I was two and a half.

What was the scariest thing you've ever done? I can't think of anything.  I am anxious by nature, so lots of things seem scary, that aren't really.

What is the funniest thing you did today? I'll go with ruining the group dynamic at the table I sat at during the workshop I attended about relational aggression.  As part of an activity, we had to tell the other table members if we would trust them or not.  All of them were strangers to me, so I told them I didn't trust any of them (with that disclaimer of course - they were strangers).  I guess I offended them.  Nobody talked to me the rest of the day.  I actually thought it was pretty funny.

What is the strangest place you've ever got a story? I used to pull cards (one verb card, one character card, and one setting card) to come up with story ideas.  I ended up with a person with mental illness, a bank and sex.  It became Phantom Deposit, the story that was published in Steamy Screams, and the only story I've been paid for.

Where do you write? Usually on the couch with my netbook.

If you just won a ticket to anywhere in the world, and you had to take me, where would you take me and why? Tough to say.  I want to go to the British Isles some day.  I also would like to see Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico; Assisi, Italy; and go back to Machu Picchu or the Redwood Forest, so I don't know where we'd end up.

Now, I get to tag seven people for the Lucky 7 meme and they can answer the tag questions, too, if they want.  The lucky seven are:

Tony Slater at Adventure Without End
Emilia at My Imaginary Beings
LG Smith at Bards and Prophets
Mike Schulenberg
Gary Gauthier at Literary Snippets
Sonia G. Medeiros
Susan Fields

Don't forget the Blog O'Hop this weekend - go sign up if you haven't yet!  I've also been invited to the Great Star Wars Blogathon, so if you see a couple of Star Wars related stories, don't be surprised!  If you want to know more, go here.

The Magic of Star Wars and Writing

I’m feeling a little empty today.  Bereft of thoughts that are interesting or engaging, even to myself.  While I’m writing this, I sound so depressed!  I’m not.  I think I have just hit overload, is all.  The pressure to be witty (which certainly is work for me!), to tweet, to blog, to write, and then all the demands of my non-writing life has just come to a head.

Yesterday I went to the Denver Zoo with my family to attend a six-year-olds birthday party.  It was Boo at the Zoo, and there were tons of people, children, costumes, candy and fun.  The fall day was cool, and we actually saw more animals outside than we have ever seen before.  For the record, I’ve been to the zoo dozens of times throughout my entire life, so it really was quite amazing to see the tapirs outside and standing up.

One of the best highlights for me, though, was the Star Wars troupe.  I love Star Wars.  I was five, I think, when the first Star Wars: A New Hope came out.  Different stages of my early life have the different movies imprinted in my mind.  Harrison Ford as Han Solo was one of my first Hollywood crushes.  My first date was going to see Return of the Jedi when I was about thirteen years old.  The magic of the movie wasn’t ruined, fortunately, by the immaturity of my date.  He crunched spilt popcorn and laughed about it right when the duel between Darth Vader and Luke was occurring.  How rude of him!  We didn’t have a second date, by the way.

Back to the zoo.  There were Storm Troopers, a Tatooine family, and even a Tusken Raider.  I was delighted!  They had full-sized, accurate weapons, for goodness sake.  It was like being at Comic-Con.  Or maybe even on Tatooine.  I tried to get my sons –- who are Darth Vader and a Clone Trooper (Captain Rex, according to the zoo’s train driver) for Halloween this year—to get a picture.  They refused.  They love Star Wars, too, but they were scared to see Storm Troopers in their real world.  But I wanted a picture with a Storm Trooper! So, with a rush of excitement, I gave my camera to their handler, and got my picture with the Storm Troopers.

That’s me, in the teal shirt.  Can you see me?  I can’t, hardly.  But my friend took some closer pictures, so I’m hoping to get one of them from her.

What does all this have to do with writing, you may be wondering?  Well, it was a magical moment.  I was seven again.  I felt excited, and happy. 

That is what writing does for me, too.  The magic of creating, seeing what my subconscious comes up with, and sharing that magic with others is what makes writing enjoyable.  And we all need magic in our lives.  I think I'm going to concentrate on that part for a while, and not worry so much about the other stuff.  I have to believe the platform will come along.  Worrying about it isn't going to make it grow any faster, right?

For the record, I did make my kids take a picture with a Storm Trooper.  We caught them on the way out of the zoo.  This morning my eldest asked to see the picture, and told me he was glad I made him take the picture, because “I like storm troopers now.”  In the picture, we all look very happy.

What creates magic in your life?